Yes! Isn't he coming back hurt? What about the other guard spot, same situation. Why couldn't we run on day one? Not after they got hurt, but day freaking one. What happened to all those wet dreams of 1,000 yard seasons for both Ricky and Ronnie? It all fizzled. Why? Can't run up the middle - blame Satele. Ok, can't run to the left, (even with Jake Long), can't run to the right,....now who we gonna blame?

Part of the problem is not having a receiving threat. But clearly, BP intended on piling up big guys on the line to run the ball. He keeps saying we're run first. We got a new O line coach too. We need to finish what we started.

Yeah, I would put that 6-5 people mover right next to Jake Long. Then I'd run the ball, especially in wildcat formation, right over the defense.

Yes, I doubt it will happen. But I'm just saying it's what I'd do, and it would be the smart move. We'd have one of the most dominant O lines in the league.

That would be awesome.

I am fine taking a guard with a #2, but not our #1. We need other positions more, we have starters at those positions assuming they come back healthy and they are expected to

I would bet almost anything that our first pick will be Darius Butler or Sean Smith. I am betting on Smith if available.

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“I'm here" You're welcome!" - Kenny Powers

I'm right there with you re: Duke. The end of the 1st round is a great place to pick up the draft's best guard. Also, I know the staff all love Thomas and, therefore, so do we. But, he's played about 1/4 of a game uninjured in his entire pro career. I don't think that the Thomas/Smiley combo is entrenched and healthy enough to take Guard off the board at 1.

I've said it a million times, so I won't belabor it...OL is arguably the most important and impacting 'position' in determining a team's success.

tsstamper Wrote:
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> I've said it a million times, so I won't belabor
> it...OL is arguably the most important and
> impacting 'position' in determining a team's
> success.

What happened to the adage: DEFENSE wins games? With Pennington at the helm, we're not going to become the 2000 Rams. We're not going to win games by matching our opponents scores like in those old Marino Jets games. We'll need defense to win games, which is why we need to pick up a CB or ILB in the 1st round.

I buy into the adage, but I don't feel that it's the only thing a team has to have.

I guess I feel that we're just a lot closer on the defensive side than we are to having the OL that we need to have. In our losses, the highest individual rushing total would have been Ronnie Brown's 58 yards against Houston...a game the Texans had to come from behind to win. In the other ones, our leading rusher had fewer than 40 yards. For most of the season, we had to rely heavily on the Wildcat to augment our running game from pretty bad to decent.

Meanwhile, our defense kept our opponents in the teens every game after the first 6 except the high-scoring loss to NE and the KC game which was a bit of a shoot out in a win for us.

If I were to identify the reasons I think we lost games last year, they would be:
- inconsistent running game
- teams with big receivers gave us fits
- Baltimore just took us to the shed twice with hard-hitting, smothering defense

I would love to have a defense like Baltimore's that can just shut down a team. And, I won't be upset if we draft a CB, LB, DL with the first pick in order to further improve our team. However, I do feel that our inconsistent running game was the top problem we had last year.

tsstamper Wrote:
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> I
> do feel that our inconsistent running game was the
> top problem we had last year.

I think Sparano's firing of our O-Line coach says a lot. I think Sparano felt we could have done better with the personnel we had. I wouldn't mind it if we drafted a center high, but I think a decent guard can be acquired in later rounds (5th and later). Pretty much any center can play guard, and most tackles can as well. On the other hand, few O-Linemen can switch to center if they've never played it before.