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03-25-2013, 10:54 PM #97Veteran Poster
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Re: Ozzie isn't rebuilding this team, he's upgrading the defense.
Signing Spears and Canty is adding not overhauling. They are cheap and are at positions where we lost no one (like adding Corey Graham last year). I think these signings were great. Cary and Kruger were always going to leave. The latter because he was going to be too expensive, the former because we didn't need him (at even very reasonable or cheap prices). Those would have been like letting JJ and Redding go, which to me isn't part of an "overhaul."
I suppose we are just arguing about what we think the word "overhaul" means, but to me it means getting rid of a lot of things on purpose that one wouldn't get rid of if they were not overhauling, and replacing them with something better/different. Only Pollard and maybe Reed (if we lowballed him on purpose), I think fall into that category. Ellerbe we wanted, and not really only for cheap, but for reasonable.
As with all these moves/decisions there have been forks in the road along the way, and in many cases which fork we went down was determined by others.
Knowing our cap situation, tell me what our roster looks like right now, in your opinion, if Boldin accepts the paycut and counts $5.5M towards our cap instead of $1.5M (dead money) right now. Now add Ellerbe at $4.5M per year. Who is here? Would you still consider it an 'overhaul?' That is what I am getting at.
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03-25-2013, 10:56 PM #98
Re: Ozzie isn't rebuilding this team, he's upgrading the defense.
Ozzzie is typically in the Good to Very Good range. Right now, we have to give him an Incomplete (with a B to B+ his probable final grade).
He will re-sign McK or find an approximaely equal FA, then take care of LB and S in the draft. We WILL be competitive next year.
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Re: Ozzie isn't rebuilding this team, he's upgrading the defense.
That could mean we are going into more of a 4 man front like we did back in 2011 which worked really well. They dropped Jarret Johnson back into zone quite a bit, but mostly had him blitzing or setting the edge as a strong side LB. Maybe that's what they plan on doing with Upshaw. They had Redding lined up at LDE, maybe they move Suggs there and play Doom at the RDE spot either standing up or in a 2 point stance, then you can have Ngata and Canty in the middle. Its all about getting your best players on the field.
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03-26-2013, 11:04 AM #100
Re: Ozzie isn't rebuilding this team, he's upgrading the defense.
Yes, I do. They'll obviously use multiple fronts, so he could be at DE at times and they may play more of a 4-man front at times as well, so he'd be more in the traditional DT spot, but I do think that he's going to see more time - much more time - at NT.
I think they've essentially given up on Cody. Not that he won't make the team, but IMO they've given up on relying on him. At this point, whatever they get from him, I think they'll consider a bonus. He's now considered to be "depth".
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Re: Ozzie isn't rebuilding this team, he's upgrading the defense.
We basically gave our Ellerbe $$ to Dumervil.
Obviously ILB was a position of need more. But you can't have enough pass rush they say.
I am confident we will get one of the top 5 ILBs or S's in the draft. Plus it is a deep draft for defense.
Plus "next man up" for the guys we do have, and maybe a late summer cut veteran for depth at ILB if need be.
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03-26-2013, 11:23 AM #102
Re: Ozzie isn't rebuilding this team, he's upgrading the defense.
I wouldn't characterize it as adjusting on the fly. Adjusting on the fly is what you do when your QB is injured for the season in week 2. You don't have a backup plan for that. The Ravens don't get caught by surprise very often. There are events they cannot control, but that doesn't mean they aren't anticipating them.
The Ravens in general have a plan A, a plan B, a plan C, and a plan Z. Nothing that has happened has surprised them. While they didn't know that Miami was going to back up the Brinks truck for Ellerbe, they knew that it was a possibility. And they knew what their various options were going to be if that happened.
People are characterizing this Dumervil signing as a freak stroke of luck. But the fact is that Oz was well aware that Dumervil was in a situation like Boldin. There was no way he was going to play for Denver under his cap number. Therefore, until they executed a new contract, Dumervil was in play. It could very well have gone down like Boldin did, where wouldn't renegotiate and they were forced to trade or release him. The way it actually went down was of course very unusual, but the bottom line is the contract is not in place until it's in place, and Oz knew exactly what he was ready to offer Dumervil if he had the chance to do it.
And to me, the beauty of watching this front office in action is that after the dust settles, when you look back on it, you can see what the plan was. It all makes sense. It has been a contrast to watching the O's operate over the past decade, where you look back on what they did and still can't make any sense of it."Chin up, chest out."
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03-26-2013, 11:31 AM #103
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Re: Ozzie isn't rebuilding this team, he's upgrading the defense.
Ozzie Newsome has spoke, in the past, about monitoring the player and cap situations of other teams. He and his staff do so, well in advance of Free Agency. He spoke about this when the team acquired Lee Evans. That was a situation they monitored for months.
They had to be aware that Peyton Manning's cap figure would cause some damage to Denver and that they would have to take steps to prepare for that, especially if they wanted to win within the next year or two. So, what do they do? In a market where there are at least two pass rushing veteran DEs available, they asked Dumervil to take a pay cut, feeling that they could cut him next year and still get production from his spot. They were fully prepared to release him this year.
I don't think this was as much as surprise to Ozzie as some may believe."Please take with you this final sword, The Excellector. I am praying that your journey will be guided by the light", Leon Shore
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Re: Ozzie isn't rebuilding this team, he's upgrading the defense.
We've seen the likes of Harrison, Dumervil, etc. all be released without their team gaining anything.
Ozzie got us a 6th rd pick for Q, even though people knew Q could be released. Obviously you have to have a trade partner, but as far as I can tell Ozzie is the only GM to get a pick out of a player everyone knew was going to be cut. Everyone just cut them and got nothing.
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03-26-2013, 11:41 AM #105Veteran Poster
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Re: Ozzie isn't rebuilding this team, he's upgrading the defense.
Don't really disagree with any of this but if Boldin accepts our offer and Ellerbe signs here for reasonable amount, we likely don't get Dumervil at all. Maybe even if one of those two things happen, we don't get him.
My issue was with the insinuation that we went into the offseason looking to "overhaul" our defense. I personally think 'overhaul' has a different and larger meaning than 'upgrade.' It implies purposeful tearing down and rebuilding.
I think of the 6 guys on defense who left, 3 were going no matter what our strategy was (overhaul or stand pat and upgrade in small places), Kruger, Cary, Ray. And one of the 6 we wanted to stay (not a purposeful tearing down), Ellerbe. Pollard we overhauled and fits the criteria. Ed Reed is an arguable case between being an Ellerbe or a Pollard. We at least pretended to want him back, but that may have been all we did (because we wanted to overhaul him).
In short, I am not so sure you can sit back and see what the plan was. At least if you are talking about the preferred plan. If we hadn't offered Boldin a chance to stay, or Ellerbe a fair contract, or Reed a contract, then one could easily argue that we intended for this exact kind of end result. But we did, so we had other end results in mind at some point, some of which signficantly change the theme of the plan, imo.
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