Buzz: Trying to Turn the Corner
ProFootballWeekly never known to be a fount of truthiness, noted last week that the Jets might be looking for a serious option at corner across from Darrelle Revis this offseason.
Give the Jets credit for this: They did virtually everything in their power to address their glaring deficiency at the cornerback spot opposite emerging star Darrelle Revis. In training camp, they believed that Justin Miller, an athletic dynamo coming off a serious knee injury, had rehabbed to the point that he was the answer. When they soured on him, they moved on to rookie Dwight Lowery, who looked the part early before fading in the second half of the season. They signed former first-round flameout Ahmad Carroll in hopes he could find the light in New York, and they lured back Ty Law for a half-year date. None did much to alleviate the problem, as evidenced by their 29th ranking in pass defense. In response, word we’re hearing is that team brass won’t be employing a CB-by-numbers approach in ‘09 and instead will be targeting a single top-flight corner this offseason.
There’s not a lot of ‘top flight’ corners going to be available this offseason. There’s just one big name that’s hard to type and pronounce (Nnamdi Asoumugha) that could be available followed by some good players who have trouble staying healthy. I’d have a hard time imagining that Aso will walk out the door of Oakland with no strings attached. There’s a lot of options available to Oakland management to keep him or require compensation for his going to another team.
If you want to be aggresive and bltz a lot you need another lock down corner. Lowrey will be fine as the #3 CB
How many teams have a round one on each side of their backfield. I think it would be a waste if they draft another round 1 CB. I think the ideal is to sign a good FA, not necessarily a lockdown if you have a good blitz scheme that can get home regularly. That’s a guy you can put across from your lockdown guy, Revis. But a ballhawk, that secondary really needs one.
We can’t afford Asomugha, so who is left? They have to be talking about the draft or we are using a lot of draft picks to try and get Asomugha.
BENT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
If we traded our first, 3rd round picks and a player(Coles) or another pick could we afford Asomugha? You’re the only one I know of who knows our cap that well.
The Answer: Jabari Greer
Young kid, with the skills to be a great #2 CB. And we’d be getting him from the Bills.
What about lito sheppard? Still in his prime, pro bowl caliber player. He seems to be the odd man out in philly with their plethra of CB’s. I don’t see why we can’t swing a trade for him. Despite the history with injuries, he’s been one of the more productive cb’s in the league in recent years.
JustAGreenGuy – I like your thinking about trading Coles, however I think it would be better to trade him (packaged with B. Smith) for a better #1 WR vs trading him for someone on the otherside of the ball.
If anything, trade Jesse Chatman to Oakland as Al Davis loves RB’s.
I love these trades. Does anyone really believe any GM is so dumb they will give us value for our worthless leavings? Come on guys, all the guys in the league have access to film, have been in the business for a number of years. None are as stupid as these trades would require them to be.
I for one do not mind a CB with our first round pick if the kid is as good as Revis. I also don’t mind a S of that level.
If there is an early run on the RB coming out, it might be possible someone that good in the secondary is still there at 17.
We are in a relatively good position. While our picks in the top 6 have not fared too well for us, our later first round picks have. At 17, we are likely to get a stud who is ready to start at at least one of our positions of need: CB, S, tall fast WR, QB, DE.
harlan
I’d rather get a first round safety. My trade makes sense. The Raiders need a reciever who can catch and drafts picks are like candy.
Living out here on the left coast, I have had my eye on this guy since last year. He would look great next to Revis. This guy is a ball magnet.
If Tanny is really the cap genius he is supposed to be then he will get him.
Seems like a really bad idea to me to spend that round 1 on another corner, a little unprecedented in terms of drafting – though my hisory is not so sharp on corner drafts.
One thing to think about is packaging that round 1 for a productive young receiver like Andre Johnson or Roy Williams.
I’d like a high safety draft. ut Lowery may be a more than viable safety. he’s ball hawkish right?
I know we need another conrer but our pass defense got alot worse when we stopped getting to the QB. We dont need a 1st round guy but should pick one up in rounds 2 or 3.
Get the QB….not 7 secs to find an open WR
He was supposed to be a ball hawk.
Yea, Lowery’s the kind of guy that sems to get around the ball a lot. I think honing his skills he could be special at FS with Rhodes at SS. I’d say visa versa but Rhodes has less range.
Elam’s just terrible oh m god terrible. Please cut him.
I’d rather Elam than Smith. Elam at least makes a few big plays. I just see Smith screw up.
I say trying to get Asomugha will be costly! Think a first round pick, and coles willl do, but might have to give someone else or a later round pick too. Maybe they willl take Barrett! LOL Might have to give Lowery- i would do it, definitely do B. Smith, or E. Smith.
Financially- get rid of/ cut/ not resign- favre-13mil., Barrett -5mil, coles- 6mil, Franks-2 mil., Baker up in the air- 2-3mil, Bowens- up in the air-dont know his number. But think we should have about 20-25 mil free to play around for this year, but dont know what increase in salarly our other current players will be getting over last year.
Sorry, Elam and Smith’s gotta go. I hated how Smith took that cheap shot at Boldin this year. Come on man, do that crap in the game, not in garbage time. But he’s also slow ad always out of potion.
Let’s not say that Elam makes plays. Let’s say we saw hom make 2 plays in the whole season. And they happen to be big plays, i’ll give him that. But just 2 of them. They both gotta go. Kerry needs a good backfeild mate.
Bubba Franks? Come on. Why the hell did they even sign that guy in the first place? lol. I mean sometimes the things the FO does… Theres 20 tight ends. 20 CB. 20 and 2 RB. ridiculous.
30 wrs. 0 downfeild threats. What goes on in these guys heads?
Ima draft marcus Henry and make him into a star. lol.
The ham is back there were way too many posts going on here with the collapse of the team and the firing of magnin i couldnt even read the posts.
I gotta say I would be extremely happy to take a CB in the 1st round, call me crazy but we know what these impact corners can do for a team. Vontea Davis from the Illini would be a great pick up next to revis. Revis is a great CB as it is but imagine how many more balls would be thrown his way if we had another lockdown cb? he would get twice as many ints’ plus the qb’s would have no options downfield to throw to thus creating strip sacks, ints etc.
We also need some D lineman especially at the end position, I may be going out on a limb here but if we do get Rex Ryan Im hoping and believe he can turn VG into a stud. aka T Suggs.
1st rd picks i would be happy with in order-
1- Lockdown CB (Jenkins, Davis)
2- D End
3- QB
4- MLB
one of the most underrated cornerbacks in the game is Dunta Robinson of the Houston Texans. And guess what, he is a free agent at the end of the year.
this guy gets no publicity, but he is a top 3 CB in the league.
Whoever has watched the texans like i have, would know what im talking about.
Dunta Robinson
I’ve heard of him. He would be nice.
We can’t trade Jesse Chatman as he is a free agent.
Asomugha is going to command $100m (unless he goes cut-price to a “contender”, which I doubt). He is an awesome talent though. As a general comment, is it great value having two amazing corners? After all, only one of them at a time can be thrown at! Having said that, two guys like that would free up both safeties to fly around and make plays instead of helping out in coverage. It doesn’t guarantee success though…plenty of teams with two great corners have still fallen short. The Redskins from a few years ago spring immediately to mind.
Jagg – Is it feasible they could clear enough cap room to get him? Of course…although they would probably need to backload the deal and put themselves in more of a bind for the future. You can’t rule anything out with the possibility of an uncapped year in 2010 though. However, if this were any normal year, I’d say they had no realistic chance, unless they went cheap on some of their other needs. It’s too simplistic to say “does x y and z free up enough room?” because there are so many other transactions that have to be made. We have a ton of free agents to make decisions on for example. If they can trade Coles and Favre is not back then they can probably afford to re-sign their key free agents and all their draft picks (trading the first rounder would only save a few million) and then maybe have enough money for one big free agent (if they backload the contract, which is a bigger risk than usual because they’ve already backloaded a bunch of other deals). Possible? Barely. Wise? Debateable.
Brad – see above. They’ll need to release a ton of players (or have the cap raised by an unexpectedly high amount) to get anywhere near $20-25m of spare cash. FYI cutting Bowens saves them 2.6m of cap space but cutting Barrett only saves 3.7m. Committed salaries and dead money is already about $25m over what it was for this year, despite the fact that only 40 players are under contract (but the cap will rise by (say) 10m, Favre might leave, saving 13m, Barrett 3.7m, Coles maybe is traded for 5m, there are several other cuts/restructures that will save money, but as you can see, unless they cut left, right and center (which just creates more needs), there isn’t going to be a whole lot to play with.
Also, Brad, note that he’s a free agent, so they wouldn’t have to give up a pick for him unless the Raiders franchise him (in which case a first might be insufficient).
Complicated area to summarise briefly, but food for thought hopefully.
Thanks. That was kind of how I thought it would end up.
I’ve saw Dunta play in his first year. He’s a great, smart corner, and young. I think he was the best that came out of that crop, which, I think, is the same crop that produced Deangelo hall, cory webster, and Justin miller.
Robinson is young. The Texans will probably franchise him if he’s a FA. Nice catch Ronnie.
How about Lido Shepard from Philly? They are thin at WR we could offer them LC.
Dunta is a little frail, played only 1/2 a year in 2008
This is his 4th year though right?
Does he have a history of injury? I ony really followed the first year.
first 3 years all 16 games played. Last to 9 and 11 games played each.
That’s a good guy. But I think that’s a lot of money to invest in corner. I don’t think they need another lockdown corner. Most teams don’t have 2. They need a 2nd teir guy that can work hard.
Do we even have a 3rd round pick this year??
ASOMUGHA is scheduled to make 11 million this year and 14 million next year for the raiders..AL DAVIS has already commented on using the FRANCHISE tag on him if necessary so i really dont think ASO will be an option …IF we use most of our CAP money on signing ASO that means we probably would barely have enough to sign our draft picks…BOLD move if Mike T could swing it but I dont like selling the FARM for 1 player(AKA like 12 million for FAVRE last year)..
Bent thanks for the info! To clarify- i was talking about releasing, cutting all the guys i listed- saying i believe that would free up around 20-25mil if that happened, but a lot of ifs, cutting, and trading to get that number.
On Igs point! Do we really need another true shutdown corner, wouldnt a 2nd teir guy work too. I am inline with this point of view too. Might be better to invest in our Dline- front 3! You look at the front 3 of the elite 3-4 def. teams and they just dominate. We could definitely use an upgrade on the line replacing Coleman! Did he have any sacks or pressures on the QB? Ellis isnt getting younger, but had a pretty good season- 7-8 sacks! And Jenkins did great til the last few games when he supposedly got nicked up- herniated disc and hip bruise! The key to defense is putting pressure on the QB, making him uncomfortable and throwing the ball under pressure causing mistakes. CB’s rarely put pressure on the QB. As seen with good fronts, even teams with average CB’s- if pressure is applied the CB’s hold there own and look good- AKA THE GIANTS
ridinmywave nailed it: lito shephard is still in his late 20’s has a couple of pro-bowls, played in a blitz heavy scheme, and is tucked away on philly bench right now. i wanted them to go after him right after eagles signed assante, and i don’t know why they didn’t.
I wouldn’t mind seeing coles in a package to philly for shepard. Problem is, with desean jackson on one side, would you really want coles on the other. if i were philly, i would want a big guy to complement jackson.
I have to agree that have 12 or 13 DBs on the roster obviously did not help the pass Defense. Of course it didn’t help that Assante Samul nubbed Mangiuni and went to the Eagles. He must have known something. I also thought they never gave Justin Miller a real chance to win the job.
Miller couldn’t win the job in Oakland. He could barely return kicks. Assante Samuel went for the money it would have been tough to afford him too.
Since we are talking about next year, who need- started looking at some mock drafts and player rankings, player profiles!
Round 1- Trade down- late 20’s or early 2nd round- to pick Tyson Jackson- DE- 6′5″ 290 from LSU!
Option 2- Trade down to mid 20’s and get William Moore or whatever top CB is still left( DJ Moore, Alphonso smith, Darius butler,
I am not found of the body type and speed of the LB that i see coming out except for Laurinaitis and Maualuga which wont be around when we pick!
There are not many DE that have the size to play in the 3-4 except for Tyson Jackson so he would be my priority! He is not expected to be picked til the end of the first or into the 2nd! trade down, save money, cap space and aqcuire an extra mid round pick! Next priority in round 2 is CB or Safety- The CB that are expected to go in round 2 dont seem so fast, and we have lowery for not fast CB- but later on 4th rd maybe take a chance on Domonique Johnson- has the speed and size 4.40 and 6′2″, just didnt play in a good school- Div.II i believe. So i would go with safety in round 2- Patrick Chung should be available. 3rd round- maybe take a chance on ILB- Jason Phillips- dont know much about him but ranked in the middle of the pack- 4.60 speed 235lbs 6′1″- good speedy replacement for Barton!
Round 1-2- Tyson Jackson – DE 6′5″ 290lbs 4.90speed
Round 2- Patrick Chung- S 6′0″ 210lbs 4.55 speed
Round 3- Jason Phillips- ILB 6′1″ 234lbs 4.60 speed
Round 4- Domonique Johnson – CB 6′2″ 200lbs 4.40
D’Angelo Hall was available and we got Law for more money.I really like hall.a pass rush can come from a good sceam.We need smart LBs that can cover guys and not just make takles like Barton and Vilma.Maybe Harris.Get Crabtree or draft a smart LB.I beg that we can get freemon in the 2nd round if not Sanchez in the 1st.
ian and ridinmywave,
Didn’t you guys say the same thing about Andre Dyson a few years back when Mangini got him off the street. Look at him last year (plaxico burress highlight — he spins dyson around and runs for a 50 yard touchdown) Lito Sheppard is not the solution, drafting a cornerback is not the solution!!!! Allowing Lowery to develop into a solid corner is the solution. I believe Mangini wanted a shutdown corner on one side and an intelligent football player who had a feel for ballhawking on the other side. What Mangini envisioned was the second coming of Felix Wright and Frank Minnefield of the 80s Browns.
zartan,
Hall was not a positive influence on the team nor did he fit Mangini’s mold. Acquiring Hall now will be counterproductive because we have Lowery who is about to get another shot and a team that is already built on Mangini’s values.
We have enough talent on this team we just need a meatgrinder on both sides of the ball. Jenkins needs help and also at right tackle because we can’t successfully run at the left side of the field with Ferguson. I think Murrell and Trusnik will replace Barton and Harris will be healthy again. Gholston is coming, I repeat Gholston is coming!!!! Thomas will eventually be moved inside and also on the line on certain packages.