Quote:
Originally Posted by RealSNR
You're kind of making a mountain out of a molehill with this transition. No, there aren't many interior guys in the NFL who can bounce out to DE in a 4-3 and have success. Jones is one of the few with the explosion and quickness to play the position while letting his size be an advantage. I know what the **** a 3-4 DE does, dude. Jones was a 1-gap 5-technique guy, so he saw plenty of matchups (not to mention double teams FFS) involving the OT when he played in a 3-4. Again, the textbook says this is how these positions go, but this is the modern NFL, where unreal humans like Chris Jones exist. It's a bit of a roll of the dice, but we have an entire regular season to figure out whether it will work, need more time to gel, or just get scrapped and go back to keeping Jones on the inside and rotating guys through those spots. But they're clearly keen on rolling the dice in the name of getting more of those fantastic DTs of ours on the field, and I applaud this move.
Until one of the young guys like Danna turns into a solid starting DE where it becomes a hindrance to take him off the field, we should absolutely be exploring these kinds of alignments. If it works, it has potential to really be a nightmare for OCs.
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So I do agree with your last paragraph -- that with the roster we have right now, we need to start being creative with the talent on the roster to figure out that other DE position. That's why I've been groaning for months about the DE2 position, for the record: the talent we have at DE outside of Frank Clark (
himself a troublesome situation) is less than awesome, and now it's forcing our hand to experiment with moving a Top 3 player out of position. (It's a change that Jones has been actively begging for, so that is a little encouraging, but still.)
Anyway, I don't think this is a roll of the dice. Jones has shown up to camp in a "Spags DE" bodyshape, per reports. I think we're legit putting our eggs in this basket, and I do think it's been a plan for a while, which is why we didn't make a bigtime push for a DE in the draft or free agency. I think they're banking on this working, so I don't think this is a mere molehill.
Let me ask you what I asked Chris in a previous post: what do you think we're looking at here, as we read the OTA tea leaves? My general opinion is that we're looking at Jones playing strongside DE in the base roughly 35-45% of his snaps. You?