Blount to Detroit Lions, 1yr/2mil

[Eagles23]

It was fun screaming "Nobody wants to hit that BLOUNT" every big run he had. =')

[808]

33 minutes ago, Eagles23 said:

It was fun screaming "Nobody wants to hit that BLOUNT" every big run he had. =')

 

[BLick12]

2 hours ago, Jroc04 said:

When we lost Sproles, had we not been able to lean on Blount, it may have turned out pretty bad. I'd say that's critical. It would have been Smallwood carrying the ball 20 times. No thanks. There was no Ajayi until November. And even then they were a top ranked rush offense. How optimal would you like them to be? They won a super bowl and were ranked 5th in rushing before the trade. 

Yes, I did say as a power back, some of his value would be RZ and goal line. Especially when our RZ was so bad the previous year. Giving him scoring 18 (?) the year previous, one would assume he'd get 8-10 possibly. You saying he was bad just because he only had 2 is not telling the whole story. Wentz was automatic in the RZ. We barely needed the run game close to the end zone. They were already unstoppable there. They were the 2nd best RZ team in conversion rate. And I'm sure at least some of that had to do with the threat or play actions to Blount. If anywhere, defenses need to be aware of him on short yardage situations. 

While I agree that a combination of Ajayi and Clement this year is far more exciting,  neither could have been counted on going into last year. There was no Ajayi option at the time and Clement rushed up the depth chart after the Sproles injury and Smallwood falling out of favor. The idea of them in hindsight validates your point. But unless you had a crystal ball, theres no way you could have predicted that. In reality, not signing Blount would have left us extremely thin. And given that he performed well was just more proof that it was a good move. 

Yeah, that part is definitely fair, although we were a top ranked rushing offense in large part because we had a QB that ran the ball a good amount.  And part of why I didn't like the signing in the first place was because I thought Smallwood was ready for a bigger role, but we see how that turned out in hindsight as well.  I still feel that there are a lot of other backs that could've easily surpassed Blount's level of production, but all things considered, he did what we needed him to.