Titans sign Taylor Lewan 5 year, 80 mil

[jrry32]

40 minutes ago, TitanLegend said:

I've seen all sorts of players put up great stat lines against the Titans over the years, I dunno if that's the best argument. **** LeBeau just isn't/wasn't what he used to be and got severely outcoached by McVay. I mean Gurley is obviously talented and put in work to achieve those numbers, but those numbers were far more schemed than they were just individual effort by Gurley I feel.

There's so much talent at RB coming in so often that you don't need to pay them a ton of money.

LeVeon Bell was a 2nd round pick, and I would also note his rookie season was pretty bad, and he didn't take off until the next year when Munchak took over coaching the Steelers o-line and turned it from **** to gold.

David Johnson's a 3rd round pick.

Kamara is a 3rd round pick.

Kareem Hunt is a 3rd round pick.

McCoy is a 2nd round pick.

Howard is a 5th round pick.

Freeman is a 4th round pick.There's just talent on top of talent on top of talent at the RB position without putting extremely valuable resources in to them. Are all of them as good as Gurley? No. Are they still very good backs capable of leading a rushing offense? I'd say so, yeah. And with competent coaching or supporting cast(and my opinion is QB, OLine and defense are far and away the 3 most important aspects of a football team) that's more than enough.

You named seven HBs. Freeman isn't in that class. Howard isn't in that class unless he develops more in the passing game. Hunt and Kamara are likely in that class, but we'll see what they do next year and in the future. Reality is that over the past decade or so, there hasn't been a lot of high-end HB talent. The NFL went through a dry spell. And that let people convince themselves that HBs aren't valuable and are easily replaceable. Unsurprisingly, that creates a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy with regard to the draft. The same thing happened at Center and Guard for good awhile. We're seeing that change too to some extent.

The irony to me in pushing the OL is the OL is more a sum of its parts than anything. It's vitally important, but if you have great coaches and no liabilities, you can have a really good OL without having a stud at any OL position. On the other hand, while it is easy to find competent HBs, it's quite hard to find true game-changers. When you find a true game-changer, he's worth paying. Gurley is very much that. David Johnson is that. Kamara can be that. Hunt can be that. Bell is that (although, I can't say the Steelers are taking the wrong approach; it's probably too late to pay Bell). A complete HB who is a game-changer. Because of how often they touch the ball and how much they contribute to the passing game, they are worth their weight in gold. The fact that you can sign them for much cheaper than a top WR only makes them an even bigger bargain.

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It's not a knock on Gurley either, he's obviously a great player. But with the amount of talent that seems to come out so often at running back, sinking 14 million a year in to one just seems asinine to me.

There's been a complete lack of talent at HB in the NFL over the past decade or so. Due to the influx of young talent, we might just see the position return to prominence. With all these talented youngsters, it's going to be interesting. I think we'll see a lot of opinions changing on the value of HBs. 

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It's even more asinine when you consider Aaron Donald, the best player on your football team, still hasn't been paid. I can't for the life of me figure out paying Cooks all that money(I don't think Cooks is worth even close to what he got, regardless of my opinion on the worth of WRs. I can at least agree Gurley is a great football player. Cooks is an adequate #1 but I don't think he's special). Sinking 30 million a year in to Cooks and Gurley instead of paying Donald is a interesting strategy to say the least.

The Rams already set aside Donald's money. This is invalid argument. They're attempting to pay all three. If you want to criticize the Gurley and Cooks signings, that's fine. But criticizing them as taking money from Donald is not accurate.

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I feel like the Rams might be going down the wrong road in terms of how they're dishing out contracts. I feel like super bowl teams have showed you need to pay far more respect to your defense than you do your offense. The Colts are a prime example. One of the best QBs to ever play the game, two HOF receivers, usually a pretty good 3rd receiver, a top line TE and largely neglecting the defense got them all of 1 ring when having one of the maybe 3 or 4 best QBs to ever play. I don't think it's just luck that the one year they did get a ring with Peyton, their defense turned it on in the playoffs and carried him to it.

On the other hand, Seattle also only got one Super Bowl with their super defense and a franchise QB.

[TitanLegend]

1 minute ago, jrry32 said:

You named seven HBs. Freeman isn't in that class. Howard isn't in that class unless he develops more in the passing game. Hunt and Kamara are likely in that class, but we'll see what they do next year and in the future. Reality is that over the past decade or so, there hasn't been a lot of high-end HB talent. The NFL went through a dry spell. And that let people convince themselves that HBs aren't valuable and are easily replaceable. Unsurprisingly, that creates a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy with regard to the draft. The same thing happened at Center and Guard for good awhile. We're seeing that change too to some extent.

The irony to me in pushing the OL is the OL is more a sum of its parts than anything. It's vitally important, but if you have great coaches and no liabilities, you can have a really good OL without having a stud at any OL position. On the other hand, while it is easy to find competent HBs, it's quite hard to find true game-changers. When you find a true game-changer, he's worth paying. Gurley is very much that. David Johnson is that. Kamara can be that. Hunt can be that. Bell is that (although, I can't say the Steelers are taking the wrong approach; it's probably too late to pay Bell). A complete HB who is a game-changer. Because of how often they touch the ball and how much they contribute to the passing game, they are worth their weight in gold. The fact that you can sign them for much cheaper than a top WR only makes them an even bigger bargain.

There's been a complete lack of talent at HB in the NFL over the past decade or so. Due to the influx of young talent, we might just see the position return to prominence. With all these talented youngsters, it's going to be interesting. I think we'll see a lot of opinions changing on the value of HBs. 

The Rams already set aside Donald's money. This is invalid argument. They're attempting to pay all three. If you want to criticize the Gurley and Cooks signings, that's fine. But criticizing them as taking money from Donald is not accurate.

On the other hand, Seattle also only got one Super Bowl with their super defense and a franchise QB.

I wasn't trying to claim Freeman or Howard were in an elite class. I was simply listing really good running backs that were found in the middle of the draft. I dunno about a dry spell, honestly. Before this "era" of running backs we had(not listing this in any kind of order of greatness, just what comes off the top of my head) Jamaal Charles, Adrian Peterson, Chris Johnson, LeSean McCoy(he started in 09, but he's still good now so including him in both? dunno if that's fair or not), Michael Turner, MJD, LT, Matt Forte, DeAngelo Williams, Jonathan Stewart, Ray Rice, Thomas Jones, among others. These guys were all found at various levels of the draft and there's some variance in skill level, but the talent was there in the late 00s/early 10s(some of these guys like LT were at the end of their run, but still had productive years around this time), these are all guys that could successfully carry a rushing offense.

Balance is required at OL, and I'm not even necessarily pushing paying loads of money for every offensive lineman, I'm saying you have to invest in just having a good offensive line, however you come to that result. That includes good coaching(your team probably isn't going to be very good or do very much in the post season at least), and you obviously can't pay everyone on your o-line top tier money, so you find guys who fit the system well and roll with that. Titans I think are showing a good method to building a solid o-line. Just paid a ton of money to Lewan, and probably will do so for Conklin too in the future, but assuming this coaching staff works out, I assume a ZBS will be our long standing preference as a blocking scheme, and our interior will be guys like Josh Kline who we just signed to a 4 year deal who isn't the greatest guard in history by any means, nor is he being paid a ton(he's the 22nd highest paid guard in the NFL now), but his skill set fits the ZBS extremely well. We signed Ben Jones a couple years ago(17th highest paid center right now) who is another good fit due to his athleticism in a ZBS, and LG is currently a work in process but will likely either be Spain or Pamphile, both good fits in the ZBS who are being paid little(LG is undoubtedly the weak point of the o-line though, I feel). So there's balance there, the tackles are(well, only Lewan right now, but Conklin will be eventually) extremely well paid, interior is working mostly off of just decent guys who are made better by being placed in a system that fits their skill sets well.

I think bringing up Bell as a game changer is interesting. I linked a tweet in the Steelers forum that showed he actually doesn't really matter to their offensive production.

I quote that realizing that yes, they do have a hall of fame QB and great o-line and some really good weapons at receiver, but I think it's just another point kinda hammering home the whole if you build your offense correctly, the difference in an elite running back and the next guy up might not be as large as you might think it is.

I brought up the Cowboys too, and while you did note that Dak did struggle without Zeke(as well as with him at times too), their rushing output was still at a respectable level. And that's with the next guys up being Alfred Morris and Rod Smith. And that team didn't have an Antonio Bryant or JuJu on the outside or a Big Ben at QB. They had Dak Prescott, a past his prime Dez, a past his prime Witten and..uh..Terrance Williams? as the other weapons. And as another poster noted, they didn't even have Tyron Smith at full strength(or in 2 cases not at all) without Zeke at all times either. Yeah their offense wasn't great for a couple of reasons but in terms of running the ball, the fall off wasn't much.

And that's fair regarding Donald, but I still think sinking 30 million in to two relatively worthless positions and in 1 case a guy that I don't even think is all that incredible in Cooks before paying Donald the deal he's earned is just a really weird way of going about things. Especially considering Donald is sitting out camp now(not that it's going to keep him from dominating I'm sure, I just don't know why you wouldn't want the deal done already). But again, still extremely early and if the Rams pay Donald anyway it's all a moot point. Though another thing to consider is after paying Gurley, Cooks and Donald, who I imagine we can assume will become the highest paid defensive player in football(which I think is Von Miller at around 19 mil a year?), you're gonna have 50 million in 3 players, none of which are your QB. I thought maybe the Rams were looking at the next year or two as their super bowl window. Goff on his rookie deal, you pay Donald, Gurley on his rookie deal, let Cooks play out his contract, etc. But it seems there's an attempt being made to set up this team long term. And after you're sitting with 50 million in 3 players and probably looking at 75-80 million in 4 players after Goff gets paid(that would be 42-45% of the cap space in to 4 players using this year's cap space), assuming his improvement continues, QB contracts keep going up, etc, I'm not sure what route you take the team building in.

It's fascinating to me. Can't say the Rams are going the wrong route because obviously we don't know yet, but I think history states putting this much in to skill positions on offense doesn't generally lend well to super bowl titles..but who knows.

Also yeah the Hawks only won 1 ring. They also had a garbage o-line and a great running back, funny enough. With that said though they probably have two rings if they just gave it to said running back, they also probably have two rings if they have to face anyone other than Mr. 4th quarter himself and Bill Belichick for the 2nd ring.

[jrry32]

9 minutes ago, TitanLegend said:

I wasn't trying to claim Freeman or Howard were in an elite class. I was simply listing really good running backs that were found in the middle of the draft. I dunno about a dry spell, honestly. Before this "era" of running backs we had(not listing this in any kind of order of greatness, just what comes off the top of my head) Jamaal Charles, Adrian Peterson, Chris Johnson, LeSean McCoy(he started in 09, but he's still good now so including him in both? dunno if that's fair or not), Michael Turner, MJD, LT, Matt Forte, DeAngelo Williams, Jonathan Stewart, Ray Rice, Thomas Jones, among others. These guys were all found at various levels of the draft and there's some variance in skill level, but the talent was there in the late 00s/early 10s(some of these guys like LT were at the end of their run, but still had productive years around this time), these are all guys that could successfully carry a rushing offense.

It was essentially Adrian Peterson and Jamaal Charles for that decade. When you compare that to the mid-to-late 90s and early-to-mid 2000s, it's simply not close. You had Marshall Faulk, Emmitt Smith, Barry Sanders, and LaDainian Tomlinson as your headliners (obviously, Barry and LT didn't overlap). And then the next tiers down were absolutely stacked with guys like Fred Taylor, Corey Dillon, Priest Holmes, Jamal Lewis, Edgerrin James, Terrell Davis, Clinton Portis, Shaun Alexander, Tiki Barber, Curtis Martin, Jerome Bettis, Eddie George, Ricky Williams, Ahman Green, Stephen Davis, Robert Smith, Warrick Dunn,  etc. The HB talent in the NFL was simply much better.

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I think bringing up Bell as a game changer is interesting. I linked a tweet in the Steelers forum that showed he actually doesn't really matter to their offensive production.

I quote that realizing that yes, they do have a hall of fame QB and great o-line and some really good weapons at receiver, but I think it's just another point kinda hammering home the whole if you build your offense correctly, the difference in an elite running back and the next guy up might not be as large as you might think it is.

I'd be more interested in seeing 2014 on. Also, 0.12 points per drive isn't insignificant.

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I brought up the Cowboys too, and while you did note that Dak did struggle without Zeke(as well as with him at times too), their rushing output was still at a respectable level. And that's with the next guys up being Alfred Morris and Rod Smith. And that team didn't have an Antonio Bryant or JuJu on the outside or a Big Ben at QB. They had Dak Prescott, a past his prime Dez, a past his prime Witten and..uh..Terrance Williams? as the other weapons. And as another poster noted, they didn't even have Tyron Smith at full strength(or in 2 cases not at all) without Zeke at all times either. Yeah their offense wasn't great for a couple of reasons but in terms of running the ball, the fall off wasn't much.

That's not saying much, though. Dak went from great to terrible. My bet is that if you look at how teams defended Dallas during the first 8 weeks and how they defended them during the 6 games that Zeke missed, you'll see a significant change. Zeke's value isn't just the stats he puts out. How a defense accounts for him and defends that offense is just as significant. As you know, they aren't playing fantasy football out there. It's a game of strategy. Without Zeke, what's your focus when you play Dallas?

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And that's fair regarding Donald, but I still think sinking 30 million in to two relatively worthless positions and in 1 case a guy that I don't even think is all that incredible in Cooks before paying Donald the deal he's earned is just a really weird way of going about things. Especially considering Donald is sitting out camp now(not that it's going to keep him from dominating I'm sure, I just don't know why you wouldn't want the deal done already). But again, still extremely early and if the Rams pay Donald anyway it's all a moot point. Though another thing to consider is after paying Gurley, Cooks and Donald, who I imagine we can assume will become the highest paid defensive player in football(which I think is Von Miller at around 19 mil a year?), you're gonna have 50 million in 3 players, none of which are your QB. I thought maybe the Rams were looking at the next year or two as their super bowl window. Goff on his rookie deal, you pay Donald, Gurley on his rookie deal, let Cooks play out his contract, etc. But it seems there's an attempt being made to set up this team long term. And after you're sitting with 50 million in 3 players and probably looking at 75-80 million in 4 players after Goff gets paid(that would be 42-45% of the cap space in to 4 players using this year's cap space), assuming his improvement continues, QB contracts keep going up, etc, I'm not sure what route you take the team building in.

I think the big mistake people make is generalizing. Team building isn't one size fits all. And I don't buy into there being "relatively worthless positions," at least with regard to full-time positions. Why there isn't a deal with Donald is the same reason there isn't a deal with Khalil Mack. Both guys want to set the market. When you're setting the market, there is no market value. That makes it a lot more difficult to come up with a number. And with those two guys both wanting to set the market, it's a game of chicken at this point. My guess is that one will re-sign shortly followed by the other re-signing for slightly more.

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It's fascinating to me. Can't say the Rams are going the wrong route because obviously we don't know yet, but I think history states putting this much in to skill positions on offense doesn't generally lend well to super bowl titles..but who knows.

Also yeah the Hawks only won 1 ring. They also had a garbage o-line and a great running back, funny enough. With that said though they probably have two rings if they just gave it to said running back, they also probably have two rings if they have to face anyone other than Mr. 4th quarter himself and Bill Belichick for the 2nd ring.

 

Of course, that great HB kept that garbage OL afloat. But with the realities of the salary cap, you can't have All Pros at every position. You gotta sacrifice somewhere. The Hawks chose to sacrifice on the OL because their QB and HB both were outstanding at making something out of nothing. That's a good example of why team building isn't one size fits all. 

[JaguarCrazy2832]

6 hours ago, TitanLegend said:

They averaged 121.3 ypg(which would rank 9th in the NFL last year) rushing in the 6 game stretch without Elliot, and an overall of 4.2 YPC(would have tied for 11th in the NFL last year) without Elliot. Elliot made them better, sure, but they did okay without him too. And they probably would have done even better had Dak not fallen off the face of the earth at times(which he did both with and without Elliot so not sure you can place all the blame on Elliot being gone for his slump).

Some of those rushing numbers are because of Dak though too. Dak's worst 2 games were when Zeke was out but even when Zeke came back it was like Dak lost his confidence. Idk maybe Dez called him a snake or something being such a great teammate Dez is known for

[ILoveTheVikings]

On 7/27/2018 at 8:31 AM, RuskieTitan said:

Love it. Locked up that blind side.

Going from Michael Roos to Taylor Lewan must be how Packer fans felt going from Brett Favre to Aaron Rodgers. 

Just like going from Moss to Williamson.

Oh wait...

[JaguarCrazy2832]

2 hours ago, ILoveTheVikings said:

Just like going from Moss to Williamson.

Oh wait...

The way he flamed out is still so hard to fathom. Like he separated with ease, ran good enough routes but damn he couldn’t catch a pass even if he had ODB gloves

[Roninho]

On ‎27‎-‎7‎-‎2018 at 5:30 PM, RuskieTitan said:

But the guy has proven, on the field and in the locker room, to be worth keeping around. If the Titans didn't pay him, some other team would have in free agency.

Really? I seem to remember that he was kind of a **** at Michigan and got in some troubles bullying/fighting smaller guys in bars.

Anyway i watched all of his games at Michigan and didnt think he would translate into anything more then a backup OT, boy was i wrong.