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LMU93
One thing I DID like was the attention paid to special teams. I've said this a lot but we should remember how poor ST was last year. A bottom 3 unit. They found their kicker thankfully but the 4 coverage and return units were poor. Jones, Rochell, Harris, Funk, etc. can all come in to cut their teeth on special teams and help get that unit back into shape.
I agree with a lot of what you say in that post. In terms of special teams, it goes beyond even what you mention. IMO for example Skowronek was a pure special teams pick. A Matthew Slater type, who nominally may be a receiver but is really a special teamer.
Addressing special teams was a big issue in this draft, so much so that both Snead and McVay brought it up a few times in their 5/1 press conference.
Their actual words drive the point home:
SNEAD
* Jacob Harris really played wide receiver at Central Florida and was probably
our number one ranked special teamer, in terms of coverage, but he’s a fast guy that we project could go to tight end and just an interesting weapon based on the special teams and things like that
*Jake Funk, another guy that we had
highly rated as a coverage player, for special teams he can return and so that’s a good thing.
* big (WR) Ben (Skowronek) … could project him being basically one of our better blockers on our team and
a special teams projected.
* But
what we did know is we had identified some guys with our personnel staff and Joe DeCamillis, our new special teams coach, the guys that could come in and hey, like a Jacob Harris, like Mr. Funk and some of those guys and ‘Big Ben’ and things like that that
could help on teams too.
* Robert Rochell, it’s okay, if he’s our fourth corner this year, (Defensive Coordinator Raheem) Coach Morris was jacked to get ahold of him. … But
Coach DeCamillis was also thumbs up on him as well because if you’re a fourth corner, what’s not a projection is him going down and maybe being a gunner and things like that.
MCVAY
* There’s a couple of guys that we felt like
their value to our special teams unit was a really big asset.
