c_hawkbob wrote:Russ is clearly physically hampered with injuries to each leg and his throwing shoulder. A very big part of the reason he is clearly hampred is the offensive line, whether it be the hits he takes due to ineffective blocking - which BTW I do agree is clearly better this year than last (boy is that a low bar) or his feeling like he has to "carry" the offensive load now in the absence of Marshawn. To "blame Wilson" is also an indictment of the O-line and by extension John and Pete. As it should be; this is a team game, our team's shortcomings are a team issue.
The sky really isn't falling though, we're still solidly in first place in our division, we're getting healthy and whether you want to acknowledge it or not the O-line really does look like they could be a decent group as the season goes on.
As for the article linked above, I hope they are correct that the current makeup of our cap distribution pie is more a function of which stars came due for their contracts first and not a team philosophy of skimping on the O-line. Looking back on how it all shook out I can accept that for now. We'll see going forward.
That's pretty much how I feel. Saying the OL is "drastically" improved over last year's unit is like bragging that your child is getting D's instead of F's. Yes, it's progress, but still clearly unsatisfactory and only reason it looks improved is because it's contrasted with the F (last year's OL).
I'm a little more skeptical about the reason for the currently out of balance salary cap distribution, though. What is curious is that we never resign any of our OL's to second contracts (Okung, Carpenter, Sweezy, McQ, Bruno), which means one of two things: Either we are very poor at identifying and developing OL talent or we don't have the commitment necessary to retain them and choose to skimp. Like North says, Britt will be a good testing of that philosophy.
And yes, the sky is not falling, at least not yet. With the possible exception of the Cowboys, of whom I'm still not completely convinced are for real, the NFC is wide open, and with a 4-2-1 record, we're not in that bad of shape all things considered.
