Consider what’s changed...
McVay has a valuable year of playcalling experience and lessons learned under his belt.
Goff also has that invaluable year to use as a springboard to his further development. OTA reports indicate that he’s vastly improved over last year.
I don’t think Cooks’ improvement over Watkins for this O can be overstated. Cooks will be a beast in this O.
I’m predicting that Everett will experience the usual 2nd year TE bump. Early OTA reports are encouraging.
Suh added to the DL. Gotta be a big improvement, don’t you think? Duh...
Peters and Talib replace TruJo and Webster. No disrespect intended for the former starters, but these two guys are substantial upgrades.
Which brings us to the LB’s. Dare I say it? Ogletree, Quinn, and Barwin were not great fits in this Wade D. We don’t know exactly who will be the new starters, but we do know that all candidates were approved by Wade and that he considers them good fits
for his particular D. Man, that’s good enough for me.
There will be 6 new starters on D this year and at LEAST 3 of them will be significant upgrades. And, frankly, I wouldn’t rule out the possibility that Ebu, Longacre, and Littleton might actually be better performers in this scheme than their predecessors. Some might say that that’s heresy, but that’s the way I feel, anyway.
Finally, all the players that I haven’t mentioned above should reasonably be expected to have at least a slight improvement by virtue of their being in the 2nd year of using McVay’s O or Wade’s D, respectively.
Add all of the above up and what should one conclude? For me it adds up to a significantly improved O and a dramatically improved D.
And if I’m correct? Then I think 12 wins is our floor. We will deserve to be in the SB conversation this season.
Hot Damn!
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/01/2018 02:59PM by Rams43.
