What if I told you it was actually the behavior of a team who spent the most money on a free agent WR this year and also gave decent deals to a mediocre ILB and backup OG, while they also re-signed their CB-turned-FS with one year of starting experience to a pretty good deal and traded a 5th rounder for Ben Grubbs and gave him an extension to save money in the short term? All of this while they knew what the market was for Rodney Hudson and still chose not to fork over the cash for either him or someone like Stefan Wisniewski.

What do you think that says about what they think of Eric Kush?

If you are going to do a positional conversion, I'd rather have John Miller or Shaq Mason.

Both play with great leverage and strength and hold the point of attack much better than Erving.

Erving is not going to hold up against NFL defensive tackles. He's just not. He doesn't have the leg strength to handle those guys. He can't lock his lower half and anchor. Miller and Mason probably do that better than anybody in this draft. And they come up quicker than Erving, who also had two high level guards next to him.

You want a RT? They you draft Erving. He's long, athletic and has nice feet. You don't draft Erving and expect that you are going to get a functional NFL center. You won't.

Like the other former All-American LT turned C, Barrett Jones, Erving is not near as good at the same point and Jones was going to be able to play center at the NFL level because he had the strength and mass to anchor.

My opinion is that if you want to take a center high, you do it in round 2 with Hroniss Grasu, who has been consistently top notch at the position for years now. 52 consecutive games at Center.

I think that it's far more likely that we will take a defensive lineman compared to an offensive lineman because of the following reasons:

1. DeVito is old and likely in his last season. Howard is a decent rotational DE in a contract year.
2. Catapano is a complete unknown.
3. We just paid Bailey considerable money and still need to pay Poe, which means they likely will let Howard walk if/when a team overpays for him next spring. A rookie DE would fit well in the budget for the position.
4. Our DL was overused last season and it hurt our run defense. We could really use another player there IMO.

Looks like you aren't alone Direck:

Where the **** does it say that he wants them to upgrade it through the draft?

I guess they are drawing the conclusion that, since there are no more quality linemen left in FA, the only other way to upgrade now would be to draft one.

And I'm of the assumption that we already have. That's not to say that we should pass on an offensive lineman if he's BPA at that point but we've improved this offensive line already in my mind.

I think that really depends on how big of a step down it is from Hudson to Kush as well as how much improvement we could expect from Fisher and whoever will be starting at RG and RT for us.

Well let's take a look at each position.

LT - Can it get worse? Sure....but I don't think anyone thinks that it will. Fisher should have a full offseason to get better.

LG - Grubbs is immensly better than McGlynn last year. Vastly improved.

C - Kush as of right now is a downgrade from Hudson. We don't know how much of a downgrade it truly is at this point. Could be huge....could be small.

RG - Fulton should get better with an entire offseason. Fanaika is better depth than we had last year.

RT - The truly unknown spot. Which Stephenson will show up? Will Allen succeed at RT?

here's more of the quote... still doesn't exactly say draft.

I think even though RT is an unknown, there are some posters who equate "unknown" with "dumpster fire." And that's stupid, because we have to be even 50/50 on getting worse at RT to legitimately consider that the offensive line as a whole could get worse, provided that Kush is the worst thing since Rudy Niswanger

It is overwhelmingly likely that between Stephenson and Allen there is a player who is better than Ryan Harris as our starting RT, and that's just without an extra OT at some point in the draft. The chances increase if we do.

I absolutely agree.

However, when looking at the offensive line, the right side from the center over is a question mark.

Kush is a completely unknown. As many have said, including myself, if he was good enough to allow the Chiefs to let Hudson walk and become our starting center, then he should have been good enough to have manned either guard position last year rather than the dumpster fires that the team continued to roll out there every week. If he's good enough to start at C, he's definitely good enough to start at guard and you get him reps so he becomes a better player. Huge question mark and I think that the team got caught with their pants down regarding Hudson. They should have signed him to a long term earlier versus letting him hit the free agent market. I'm sure that they never envisioned him getting that much money, but here we are.

Fulton at right guard was nearly as bad as McGlynn/Linkenbach at left guard. There were times during the season that he was a turnstile. Hell, at least a turnstile has those metal arms and can get in your way. Fulton often did not. You can point to him as being a rookie and the arrow only points up at this juncture, but he's slow of foot (was noted as such during his entire time at Tennessee) and lack lateral agility.

Right tackle was an abortion. Sure, I'd be the first to believe that between Stephenson, Allen and Sherrod, all very talented and skilled tackles when they came out of college, that there is no way in hell that they don't find a guy who will perform at a level that is markedly better than what we saw last year from Harris. However, there are questions. Can Stephenson play at this level without the aid of PED's? Can Allen even play at the NFL level effectively? He hasn't yet. Can Sherrod get his head back into the game of football after his broken leg? Despite his enormous upside, he hasn't yet.

Now, my opinion is that we are going to be just fine. Hudson was basically playing the three interior line positions by himself last season. Grubbs is an enormous upgrade at LG. Fisher will be better. Fulton will be better and if he's not, Allen can play RG at a 60% level, which should be good enough. And between Stephenson and Sherrod, they'll have a decent RT - maybe even something special if either finally gets it to click.

That being said, I think that the team would be foolish not to look at potentially upgrading the C, RG and RT positions in the draft in the event that none of these guys "get it." With ten picks available, there is ample opportunity to fill the holes and build the depth at WR, DB and LB while also addressing the potential hot spots on the offensive line.

This should be a "core" draft class for Dorsey. The team is on the verge right now and this should be a draft class that allows them to get over the playoff hump and stay there for a while.

Let's just all agree that it isn't a good thing that this OL has been in flux the entire time that Reid and Dorsey have been here, especially when you consider the fact that Reid's schemes tend to be more complex than the majority of other coaches and much of what he does requires a really well-coordinated effort up front.