Quote Originally Posted by leachisabeast View Post
I think some members on this board are drastically under valuing the additions of Michael Huff and Chris Canty. Time will tell if they will work out here, but I will say this.

Ngata at NT, and Canty at DE is a HUGE upgrade over having Kemo/Cody starting at NT. The addition of Spears was far from a flashy move, but adding decent depth players to a rotation on the Dline upgrades the overall unit. Of course the addition of Dumervil adds to the strength of the Dline. So overall, ON PAPER, the Dline has been massively upgraded no matter what anyone says, I'm not sure how you can argue with that. The Dline was probably our biggest weakness last season.

Now onto a more touchy subject. Ed Reed is not the player he used to be, and advanced metrics/film clearly shows that Huff is just at this point a better overall player than Ed Reed, so even though I may get some abuse for this, the FS position was upgraded.

What was downgraded was ILB and SS. Pollard was a good player, despite being a liability in coverage. Lets wait and see what the Ravens do in the draft to replace Pollard, unless Thompson or Ihedigbo end up starting and surprise us by being good players. ILB is a question mark, Ellerbe is a big loss even if he did get overpaid. We have the potential upside of McClain playing well here, but I think we'll bring in some guys through the draft. Even if Ellerbe was great in limited playing time last season, the overall performance of the ILB corps was below average.
agreed, all around. I actually think that the defense has improved this offseason. I surely was in teh sky is falling crowd after the moves to get rid of Pollard and Boldin, but Huff, Canty and of course Dumerville have settled me down, quite a LOT. IF this allows us to draft Hopkins in the first, I'll be quite happy with the changes, of course short of getting a LT, but it doesn't appear that was ever the plan. Oher at LT appears to have been the plan all along. Hopefully we at least secure a Brennan Williams/Chris/Faulk David Quessenberry/Luke Marquadt type for that spot down the road. Heck, at the value point those guys are at, it might be smart to grab 2...