Thanks for the clarification. At least the Texans might be more willing than usual to explore trading a 2013 mid round pick to move up in this year's draft, knowing they've got that 3rd/4th round compensatory pick in their back pocket.
Jackie Butler may have helped us get Scola, but he can't play in the NFL better than Winston. Losing Brisiel and Winston hurts. We had one of the best offensive lines last year, and we lost 40% of it. I think Rashad Butler can do fine, and possibly Caldwell can, but as a group, the line will not be as good as last year. We already showed last year that we can have a great defense without Mario. Keeping him would have been really nice, though. We only have a small sample size of him in Wade's defense, but the results were amazing. Casey is not as good of a blocker as Vickers. I really wish we could get Leach back somehow. The fullback has a huge responsibility in Kubiak's offense. I totally forgot about Dreessen, but he was a huge part of the team last year. Replacing him will be tough. I assume we'll use our first round pick on a WR or an OLB. It doesn't make sense to insert some of the later picks into the starting lineup. We need some of the young guys to really step up to have a shot at the superbowl.
Just because a player is selected in the later rounds doesn't mean he can't immediately contribute. Some really good players have been picked up in the later rounds or been undrafted and are starters in their teams.
If the Texans pick up a steal in the later rounds of the draft that can start from day 1, that would be great. What I meant was that they can't pick up a player in the later rounds expecting them to start from day 1. Expecting your 5th round pick to solve the offensive line problem would be a little too much to ask for on draft day.
I doubt the texans use him for more than goal line / guaranteed run situations. To say he is a liability in coverage is a gigantic understatement. There's a reason the "girls" let him go instead of resigning on the cheap.
What if Dont'a Hightower is still available in the first round? Does signing Bradie James means, we're not going to consider Dont'a in the first round if he is the BPA ?
Huh? The fullback isn't even on the field for most of Kubiak's plays. This time last year, everyone was claiming the sky was falling because Leach was gone. What happened? We go on to have the best season in franchise history. Vickers won't be missed.
Again, for me, the big worry is that when you lost both Dressen & Vickers you lost offensive flexibility and depth.
Vickers was a non-factor and probably the least versatile skill player we had. Casey is Mr. Flexibility. Dressen will be missed, but we didn't draft Garrett Graham to sit on the bench forever. I'm optimistic about the chances of these two guys.
Yeah, Vickers can only play 1 position, but you have him out there and you can play Casey at TE, which is nice since Dressen is gone. Maybe Graham can play, I have no clue. I like things that are certain as opposed to the unknown when in immediate contention mode, but that's just me.
He has a really bad habit of doing that. I don't think anything or anyone is off the table. There's at least 2 LB spots to fill right now. James is depth, at best. He's on the wrong side of 30 and his production dropped way off last season, causing him to lose his starting gig. As long as Sharpton recovers and is in camp on time, the job is still his to lose. Hightower can play inside and outside and would be a quality pick if they chose to go that way.
I loved Dressen, but he's too good to be Daniel's backup. And TE isn't exactly a position we have to worry about depth. I'm actually happy for him that he will get a chance to be the man in Denver. Vickers is the opposite of flexible. We picked him up off the scrap heap last year. No reason we won't be able to do the same thing for the FB position this year and still have the offense run on all cylinders (assuming everyone stays healthy.....).
Check out foster's stats with casey starting and with vickers starting. I think you'll find a difference there. Vickers couldn't do much, but he could block. We need to pick up someone who can do that effectively.
Burden of proof is on you, so how about you link us? We do know that the Texans use a fullback about 30% of the time. So it's not a crucial part of the offense by any means. Also, you do know that Foster was hurt for the majority of Casey's starts, right? Arian came back in week 4, Casey got hurt in week 5. Here's what I could find from Casey's first 4 starts: Week 1 - 4.5 YPC Week 2 - 4.1 YPC (mind you, this was the game where we ran the ball super effectively like 10 times straight in the 4th quarter to ice the game @ the #3 rushing defense) Week 3 - 4.2 YPC (this was the New Orleans game, so it was mostly through the air... Casey had a huge game catching the ball) Week 4 - 5.4 YPC (the first week Casey and Foster started tandem, against #1 defense in the NFL Pittsburgh) Week 5 - 2.9 YPC (Casey played about half the game... this was the Vickers epic fail drop game) So, I'm not exactly seeing this huge dropoff with Casey vs. Vickers you're talking about. Is Vickers a better blocker? Yes, we all thought that all along. Is he significantly better? No. Especially not when you take into account all the other things Casey can do. And even if Casey doesn't work out as a full-time starter for whatever reason, I'm confident there's another Lawrence Vickers journeyman type out there waiting to be picked up anyway. The most important part of our running game has always been the health of Matt Schaub. When he's upright and on fire, we rape monkey butthole. When he got hurt, our YPC went WAY down.
Excellent post (as usual), Donny. But I think it all comes down to this: This is why I don't understand all the hand-wringing about letting Vickers go. Who cares who plays fullback when he's only on the field 30% of the plays? Just pick up a warm body on the cheap before training camp starts and you're good to go.
Not trying to start the apocalypse here, just throwing something out -- what % of the time do the Texans use a fullback in the redzone? Its higher than 30%. We were a piss poor redzone team for a long time, I wont forget that.
just thinking off the top of my head, but having an elite running back remedies the redzone issues. the times we were piss poor were when we had the likes of steve slaton/chris brown. ever since Foster has emerged, have we not been much improved in the RZ?
