Throwing them into the run-contain didn’t help, and Moss went out early and had to rehab for a year, only to be confronted with the Slowik ‘thing.’ It should be noted that we were guessing that Harris was a bust around this time last year. Rumors had the staff as very disappointed and looking to find a trade partner. He never had a chance — of course — because of his injury, but it sounded plausible.

The difference with Harris is that he plays in a scheme that’s been in place for a long time and he had veteran players and coaches to help his transition.

I expect that there will be some further confusion this year but the infusion of all the veterans will help greatly. And Nolan isn’t going away for a long time (IMO) so we’re going to get the chance to let the DLs develop in a stable environment — for once. It should be noted that run-contain was abandoned during 2007 and we briefly abandoned Slowik’s scheme for a trial run with the 3-4 for a while. We had more than two new schemes in the last two years! Just having a new coaching staff should help them. And the nucleus of (many) young players could catch fire at some point. A little success could go a long ways towards changing their outlook and confidence.

A better, and graphic, way of demonstrating how much we could improve is to look at last year’s lineup alongside this year’s. Which would you prefer, knowing what you know now about Webster, McCree, etc.?

BTW — I was writing about WRs and saw where Colbert ranked at the end of 2008. It wasn’t pretty. Does anyone think we couldn’t be better at evaluating talent this year? Recall that the Colberts of our FA class were bargain basement players that nobody wanted (Wiegmann wasn’t wanted either but fit our ZB well). The previous experiment with high price Travis Henrys didn’t work much better. I see a distinctly different profile now.

He’s listed at LT.

Tyler played LT in college, as well as for us last year, so I left him there. He’s another of my alums so I’m also aware of where he played in college. They’ll probably move him over if necessary, and that’s a distinct possibility given the low number of OLs on the active list, but both Kuper and Olsen can play RT so that’s a likely substitution, too.

Polumbus was active for all the games last year, which could be because he’s backing up the most important position. I believe the issues on OL backups are competence (familiarity, skill), handedness (surprisingly), and the number players dislodged (moving three OLs to fill one position may be disruptive). I’ve looked this issue a lot and paid attention to how they handled it last year.

BTW — I didn’t try to resolve positional issues. My main point was to illustrate how many younger players we have. And I wanted to show that the veterans form an armature around which we can develop.

I think the fear of rebuilding led to our avoidance of the process. The Brownco experiment looks absurd now because we failed to rebuild. We addressed this last year in a topic (I focused on team building). I wouldn’t say the FAs were the problem since the draft drought played a bigger role, but the “just a few pieces away from a championship” rhetoric looks nuts now. And to think that the pundits thought THIS draft crop was bad!

The developmental metaphor is nice because it changes the context from a “he didn’t have the talent” situation to “you didn’t train him very well” context. I recall reading about the difference between bad franchises: where coaches & schemes frequently change and young players never get the proper development, and the good franchises: where players are carefully scrutinized for their fit to a certain role and then groomed over a period of time.

Coincidentally, the complaints about not taking the BPA at certain junctures in the draft has unwittingly adopted the bad franchise model as the ‘best’ way of doing business!

Implicit in the developmental metaphor is the idea that environment counts. And moreover, that coaching counts. I saw flashes early on with Moss and Crowder and then they disappeared. It’s not a question of drinking the Kool-aid, they simply went through a horrible period to learn NFL football. And that’s why I don’t like the “take the BPA in the draft and see if you’ve struck gold” theory of drafting. It ignores the coaches’ influence on the players’ development.

I used the Crowder example because there’s almost no explanation as to why he hasn’t developed. Nobody can say they “knew it all along.” He simply hasn’t had a chance, and who could thrive in the Bates and Slowik schemes anyways? Dumervil was an exception, fortunately or unfortunately.

It’s weird but true. And I consider him a developing talent. Usually, we’d be looking at a player of his age as having missed the boat, but I see him as untapped talent who might still develop with coaching.

I went through the same thought process. I considered Dumervil as belonging in the Young Talent group but I wanted to make a cutoff somewhere meaningful. I also wanted to show that we were fairly well covered with veteran talent, too.

I originally included Orton and Simms in the Young Talent group, too.

I was trying to illustrate several ideas graphically. There’s an upside to having youth. I was also trying show that youth could be a negative unless balanced by experience, both in terms of having seen playing time and in terms of veteran FAs. Some players were both young and experienced. There’s also an upside to having a nucleus of players who develop alongside each other. We have much of the team ‘blanketed’ with youth.

The real question from my viewpoint is whether the vets, i.e., Fields, Reid, Davis, etc., can play well enough to stabilize this defense. One fact that shouldn’t not be ignored is that these are leaders who don’t fit the cheap FA category of last year. These are the kind of conditions in which the defense could easily surpass our expectations of late.

Comparing this year’s and last year’s roster side by side is an illuminating experience. This is a much more talented team, and maybe we need to account for the dysfunctional nature of the last few years and not buy into the “we have no talent” MSM meme. I don’t think we’re untalented, in spite of recent results. Pundits have ‘inferred’ a dearth of talent, but the recent results were partly because of poor coaching & other circumstances. We’ve boughten into the ‘we have no talent’ narrative, although it may not be readily apparent to us that we have, and we need to readjust our thinking now to account for this overlooked level of talent.