Quote Originally Posted by Kevlar View Post
I still don't understand the reasoning of letting Pashos, Mule, and Vincent walk and bringing in a bunch of scrub rookies as starters.
Letting Mule walk and starting Jason Brown was smart, Brown is a very good guard and much better all round than Mulitalo is right now.

Pashos, well that's one I wouldn't have let walk, he came round big time last year and was one of the very best RTs in the league last year. However you can't keep everyone and clearly the FO feel that Yanda or Gaither can replace him amply over the course of their contract, though it is tough to endure that step down this year.

As for Vincent, Vincent was terrible. I analyse games for a friend's website but he doesn't let me do Ravens games (understandably, would affect the credibility/impartiality of the analysis) but from what he's seen he tells me Grubbs has been poor (analysed a couple of his early season starts), again it's a tough initial step down to take but he should be a big upgrade on Vincent in fairly short order.

With these kids on the line it's a step you have to take sooner or later, I don't question any of the moves in isolation, Mulitalo we had to move on soon and his injury aided the switch to Brown, and it's one that I think will work well for us. Vincent is one that will work out in short order if it hasn't already been on a par already. Pashos is the one you can question as you can't be too careful with protecting your QB against the best athletes off the edge.

The thing you can question is the misfortune/bad management (which it could be construed as) in these changes happening at once. Ideally you'd blood them individually so that the kids got experience settling in next to veterans helping them out in real situations rather than having a collection of three, four (sometimes five) kids on the line all having to learn on the job with a second year starter (Brown, only just about at 16 starts now I think) as the most veteran presence to look to on the offensive line. It's clearly hurting us in the short term, but hopefully we'll start to see some chemistry starting to form and them working out playing as a unit. I just wish we had a better offensive line coach (still not at all sold on Foerster or Forrester, whatever his name is) to aid this process.