An example of how quickly things could turn around.....

[mngolf19]

But if you could only fix one line at a time, do you fix O, or D?

To me, it doesn't matter. They are equally important. So who is available? That's who I take. And you keep building on that with depth as well. If you get very good and deep on one side, then you can put more FA money and/or draft picks on the other side.

[Terry]

Whatever, only THREE drafts were exclusively his.

Which was three drafts too many.

Sigh. Not at all. Sherman made some serious mistakes drafting, certainly. He also made some very good picks. He didn't have much luck with some, but some might have developed better under better position coaching.

Mostly people's big problem with Sherman's drafts is that he didn't value his picks enough to hang onto them. Well, sure, there's some validity in that. But people should remember that he was assigned a different task, a different job description than Thompson and for Sherman, some trading up made perfect sense, in principle, if not always in practice. He'll probably be hung in effigy forever for Sander and maybe justly. But Walker, on the other hand, was a brilliant pick, which practically no one recognized on the day he made it. The trade for Harris was also very, very good - given what he was trying to achieve.

People's hindsight on Sherman is nothing short of remarkable. I doubt if he would be viewed quite so critically if he was still here. It's a basic principle of psychology that people most heavily rag on those who aren't part of the organisation. And he certainly wouldn't be ragged on so heavily if memories weren't quite so deceptive to perspective.

I'm not a Sherman apologist. I've come down quite heavily on his coaching failures. But all in all, he made some mistakes, he had some bad luck, and he couldn't quite get it done. That's all there was to it. He wasn't half so good a coach as people like to think (though he might still have been every bit as good as Holmgren), and he wasn't half so bad as GM as popular opinion has it.

[Rastak]

As far as dumping a large portion of cap into your offensive line, I found this in an article in a Chicago paper today.....

"The Bears are one of 15 teams spending more than $20 million on the offensive line, and they rank second behind the Vikings with an offensive-line payroll just over $25 million. The Super Bowl champion Pittsburgh Steelers are next with about a million less than the Bears"

I think it's a good place to spend money. Green Bay was a helluva team when they had a dominant OL. I know Seattle was dumping good money into their OL.

New England are spending $10 million on their O-Line.

And they are not favored this year either.

[BallHawk]

Draft Calvin Johnson the next great WR aka the next head case. The future T.O

Ok, I'm not for drafting Calvin Johnson. I think WR in the top 5 are risky and uneccesary. However, Calvin Johnson is the anti-TO. Over the summer he went to Bolivia to help the needy and he is going back again in the spring, I've also heard he is a great lockeroom presence.

[The Shadow]

Whatever lumps we take this year, keep in mind :
That young offensive line -next year - will have a season of playing together under their belts.
The defense will have a full year of adapting to the scheme.
The promising linebacker corp will have profited by this year's struggles.
Rodgers, Jennings, Hawk, Hodge, Poppinga, Underwood, Blackmon, Colledge, Spitz, Moll, Wells, Jolly - all of our new yound talent - will have another year's seasoning.
It's better to be on the way up than desperately trying to plug holes in a sinking ship - what we had been doing during Sherman's tenure.
Hail to the future!

[Rastak]

Whatever lumps we take this year, keep in mind :
That young offensive line -next year - will have a season of playing together under their belts.
The defense will have a full year of adapting to the scheme.
The promising linebacker corp will have profited by this year's struggles.
Rodgers, Jennings, Hawk, Hodge, Poppinga, Underwood, Blackmon, Colledge, Spitz, Moll, Wells, Jolly - all of our new yound talent - will have another year's seasoning.
It's better to be on the way up than desperately trying to plug holes in a sinking ship - what we had been doing during Sherman's tenure.
Hail to the future!

I thought the defensive scheme was the same as last year?


I agree that a years seasoning will help if the guys are good, but if they aren't that great it ain't gonna help.


Are they great or good? I don't know, I'm just a fan.

[The Shadow]

Well, we will find out how good they are - and how keen a talent evaluator Thompson is - as time goes by.
The job isn't going to be completed overnight, and some of the pieces will need to be adjusted/replaced. Next year's draft and free agency period will again be a huge factor.
But I'm confident that the team is on the right track. Hawk, Jennings, Collins, Rodgers, Hodge, etc. are a great start to building a contender.

[Bretsky]

I'd agree TT has a nice start with finding some rookie talent; it should be interesting to see how he handles Nick Barnett, one of our top defensive players. If his goal is to completely tear down the ship and make this into a four year project letting Barnett go and figuring Hodge can step in may be the next step. It'd be insane IMO to let this happen; but it wouldn't surprise me the least either. I suppose it'd make Wist happy if nothing else.

[esoxx]

Whatever, only THREE drafts were exclusively his.

Which was three drafts too many.

Sigh. Not at all.

Yeah, if only we could have had two or three or four more drafts with Sherman, this team would be something. You certainly sound like a Sherman apologist. That's fine, btw, just don't defend his horrible GM stint and then claim you're not.