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Journey to Ring 3: Club Evaluation & Building Another Champion


DreamKid

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9 hours ago, diamondbull424 said:

But your acknowledgment of the fan complaints aren’t also weighing in the fact that:

1) The majority here (because I’m assuming you’re referring to myself and the other few) wanted Clowney vs Judon on the tag.

And let’s be clear as to the season Judon had and how it was worse than the season Clowney had when healthy. If Clowney stole money, so did Judon. So this decision isn’t somehow quantified as a “win”. At best it’s neutral and at worst it’s still an L.

I’m not huge into PFF but we’re talking Judon at $16.8m for a 59.4 rating vs Clowney at $15m with a 74.9 rating. Judon was absolute trash the entire 1st half of the season and got respectable to close out the year, but putting Clowney within our teams conditioning program and getting his elite run defense, wasn’t somehow a mistake. He absolutely performed to those standards with the Titans. He was simply a trash pass rusher. 

In the event that he continued to be a trash rusher but excellent run defender, the organization still trades for Yannick Ngakoue, so nothing changes on that front.

2) If we decided not to trade for Ngakoue because we had Clowney and Judon, there’s still the fact that we paid Yannick money and traded a 3&5 for him. If we have Clowney, we pay a similar amount to Ngakoue (minus the weeks prior to the trade) while saving the draft capital in such a stacked class. 
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All this to say, attacking Clowney vs Judon was not disproven. It was actually quite proven for the portions of the season where both played games. Both were useless options in rushing the passer.

And with Yannick, it’s a mixed bag. I still like the move, but there’s enough unknown there to crown a victory. Does Clowney under our superior conditioning program and with our organization from jump, still get hurt? Does his pass rush look the same in our blitz heavy scheme? What prospects will be available in the 3rd & 5th that we might miss out on now? These are ALL things needed to consider before judging neutrality vs an L. Certainly not something worthy of saying we “dodged a bullet over.”

Yeah I just vehemently disagree with all of this. 

Clowney played 8 games last year and didn’t register a sack. He hit the QB 6 times.

Judon had more than triple that (21). And he’s always been good in holding the edge - last year was no exception in that regard.

This is some of the most extreme post-hoc justification i’ve ever seen. This whole pretend thought out scenario isn’t reality. The reality is Clowney gave the Titans 8 games of pretty much nothing for $12mil. Judon played all 16 with us, was a reliable run defender and even though he isn’t a good pass rusher gave us significantly more in that department than Clowney gave the Titans before he bowed out of the season.

Ive never been a big Judon fan, but come on man. This is insane. 

Edited by Ray Reed
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5 hours ago, Ray Reed said:

Yeah I just vehemently disagree with all of this. 

Clowney played 8 games last year and didn’t register a sack. He hit the QB 6 times.

Judon had more than triple that (21). And he’s always been good in holding the edge - last year was no exception in that regard.

This is some of the most extreme post-hoc justification i’ve ever seen. This whole pretend thought out scenario isn’t reality. The reality is Clowney gave the Titans 8 games of pretty much nothing for $12mil. Judon played all 16 with us, was a reliable run defender and even though he isn’t a good pass rusher gave us significantly more in that department than Clowney gave the Titans before he bowed out of the season.

Ive never been a big Judon fan, but come on man. This is insane. 

There’s a reason for those PFF grades. Judon was not good holding up against the run for most of the season. He was trash to start the season at containment. Judon through the first 8 weeks of the season, had 2 sacks, 3 TFL, 1 PD. I don’t include QBH because it’s such a stupid stat. There’s little proof that it impacts the play, especially in Judon’s case where many come well after the fact.

Judon’s “breakout” of 4 sacks in the remaining games didn’t come until post Yannick trade when he was given #2 pass rusher duties and saw plenty of TE/RB blocking as Ngakoue drew the #1 pass rushing attention.

So no, I’m not stat board watching to conclude Judon had the superior season. Judon was trash the 1st half and was average during the second half of the season. For the whole season he was below average.

Whereas Titans fans EXPECTED that Clowney would come in and be a useful pass rushing contributor. Many here acknowledged that in our scheme, Clowney was unlikely to be much worse than what we had in Judon.

Through his first 8 games, Clowney posted 0 sacks, but had 1 additional TFL, and 4 PD. The Titans secondary for most of the season were also absolute trash and were consistently gashed. So comparing Judon 2 sacks and 1 PD as pass impacting plays vs Clowney’s 4 isn’t even something of “equal” quality.

Clowney joined the Titans late in the off-season (many cooled off the later it dragged into the season due to durability concerns) didn’t get properly worked into shape, and then got hurt. Historically he’s not a durable player, but typically he was known for providing roughly 13-15 games. So again, signing him early and getting him within our conditioning program- that is on the lower side of durability issues league wide, add in a proper snap count, and there’s reason to believe that he plays out his normal number of games.

Clowney with better corners behind him is just as capable of putting up 6 sacks in 14 games, only he’s going to give Pernell McPhee levels of run defense. 

Edited by diamondbull424
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^^^ All that to say, if Clowney is deemed healthy by our training staff/doctors, I’d definitely be on board for making another run at him.

Clowney is a robin-esq pass rusher, like Judon. Might Judon be a superior pass rusher overall, maybe. But the run defense isn’t particularly close.

Clowney coming off the season he had as a pass rusher should find himself at a much more comfortable value for the team as well. Secondary market guys like Clowney, Aldon Smith, and such could be of interest if the value gets within range.

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24 minutes ago, diamondbull424 said:

^^^ All that to say, if Clowney is deemed healthy by our training staff/doctors, I’d definitely be on board for making another run at him.

Clowney is a robin-esq pass rusher, like Judon. Might Judon be a superior pass rusher overall, maybe. But the run defense isn’t particularly close.

Clowney coming off the season he had as a pass rusher should find himself at a much more comfortable value for the team as well. Secondary market guys like Clowney, Aldon Smith, and such could be of interest if the value gets within range.

Yeah I just think we'll have to agree to disagree on Clowney vs Judon last year and who provided more to their team.

This bolded part though I can get with...after such a down season (much less valuable than Judon's 😝) coupled with the cap this year I could be down in getting him on a much cheaper deal than he would've garnered in years past and see whether he picks his play up or not in our system.

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It's so awesome that in the last year of having Lamar with a cap hit under 20 million we get to have this dog sh*t cap situation hit the league. 

Essentially removing the actual benefit of winning the 'Plus QB on Rookie Contract' lottery. 

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Zeitler isn't the same Zeitler we once knew in the AFCN. His play dropped off big from 2019-2020 and he's 31 Y/O.

Would much rather pay more to get the younger and far better option in Joe Thuney. 

With how much we've invested in the IOL recently(two 4ths: Powers & Bredeson + a 3rd: Tyre Phillips) and Patrick Mekari still bearing potential, it needs to be a clear upgrade to really move the needle imo. It's easy to see Mekari being at or surpassing Zeitler's level in 2021(At RG, think we're all over him at Center), but much harder to see him around Thuney's. There's no reason to just tread water at any of our need positions. 

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Also speaking of Mekari, I think I found one of the dumbest tweets I've ever seen-

"Both of Patrick’s parents were immigrants; his father came from Lebanon and his mother came from Iran".

^^^Just reeks of White Nationalism doesn't he? It was probably his time at famous supremacist factory Cal Berkeley that honed his ideology.  

 

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4 minutes ago, drd23 said:

Given how much trash there is on social media, I would have thought it better to ignore a random dude's tweet that hasn't got any traction instead of re-posting to get it more vision than it otherwise would have

I guess, but this likely won't be the last time it comes up. He wasn't the only person who's mentioned it, saw a couple others after searching. The punter the Pats drafted recently had a similar tattoo IIRC and that story went far and wide. Stories like these are incentivized and sought after feverishly. 

Doesn't hurt to have some level headed fans of the Ravens in here aware of misinformation that could be on the horizon either. Hope Mekari is aware of it as well. Doesn't take much to ruin a reputation nowadays, even if the claim is wholly untrue. The dope isn't so random either, he wrote for the Cowboys' Wire team and their twitter has 12k reach.

I get the general sentiment of your post though, and if you feel like the content crosses a threshold I'll delete/edit the post with no issues. You're the mod, your call.

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Some clarification on how Tee Martin and Keith Williams' roles will coincide. Which we've been curious about.

I wouldn't be surprised if their jobs evolve over time either, regardless of title. I think it was more about getting their talents in house and going from there. I'm really exited about who we'll end up drafting and delivering to these guys. I won't be as scared about drafting raw talents with them on our coaching roster, and giving them ready made talents like Rashod Bateman or Chris Olave next year could deliver us something special.

 

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42 minutes ago, DreamKid said:

Some clarification on how Tee Martin and Keith Williams' roles will coincide. Which we've been curious about.

I wouldn't be surprised if their jobs evolve over time either, regardless of title. I think it was more about getting their talents in house and going from there. I'm really exited about who we'll end up drafting and delivering to these guys. I won't be as scared about drafting raw talents with them on our coaching roster, and giving them ready made talents like Rashod Bateman or Chris Olave next year could deliver us something special.

 

Guarantee one of these guys ends up as our next OC

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Forget about future prospects I'm just excited to see what they can do with Duvernay. Get him a real role on offense. Even Brown should benefit greatly given who the team had working with him in previous seasons. Boykin... is probably a lost cause. I think Proche could be solid but more likely in a spread-style passing game. Seems unlikely the team ever goes in that direction with Lamar at the helm. 

 

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