By Kip Earlywine
The next few days, I'll take a closer look at some of Seattle's draft picks. Kam Chancellor, Walter Thurmond and Anthony McCoy are the "big names" from day 3, but who's the sleeper? My vote goes for Dexter Davis. His production in college was on par with Daniel Te'o Nesheim, and while Davis is limited by only being 6'1" and is extremely unlikely to be an NFL superstar, I think he could stick for a relatively long time as a situational pass rusher.
I may not know much about Davis, but I bet Pete Carroll could write the book on him. Davis was a thorn in Carroll's side for 4 years at Arizona State University.
5 comments:
I'm one of the few who thinks Clemons can be reasonably productive in Carroll's defense. But he's at the age where he'll be slowing down, so I was hoping to get some help for he and Reed in the draft. I love the Tate pick, but I was also concerned that the potential "elephant" DE/OLB prospects had been snagged by the beginning of round 4 except for Ricky Sapp, Griffen (who I thought was a no go, if Carroll couldn't motivate him before, why would it start now), Danny Batten, and Davis. I'm pleasantly surprised that we got one of them in the 7th round. Yeah, the height is an issue, but Davis has a chance.
How often do you think the elephant will be on the field? We might have a hard time justifying keeping Clemons, Reed, AND davis if they are only on the field 1/3rd of the time. If the percentage is higher, then perhaps we'll keep them all...
I looked up Tully Banta-Cain, who plays elephant for the Patriots, and he played 2/3 of the snaps last year. He started the season playing about 50% and then playing time increased, either because he was better than expected against the run, or the guys he was rotating with weren't any better. I'd expect elephant to play 50% of the snaps on the Seahawks, since they won't be playing from ahead as much.
Judging by the moves the Seahawks have made, it looks like we'll have an elephant on the field 100% of the time. The Seahawks simply do not possess a single prototypical 4-3 RDE right now, vs. a bajillion elephant LB.
Ok, not 100%, because you'll have obvious running downs where we'll have two LDE types on the field, but other than goal-line and 3rd and short, it'll be an elephant LB out there.
Post a Comment