Pair him with Chase/Pitts/Smith/Waddle and the WR corps is completely made over. Get a solid RB (or 2) and the offense should be truly dynamic
Fill out the line before you fill in the running back. Helps your run game and your QB pass protection. Just my opinion.
Fill out the line before you fill in the running back. Helps your run game and your QB pass protection. Just my opinion. And just about anyone who has been watching football knows the O-line is the engine room of the offensive. Without it, a team just drifts around doing basically nothing but punting and watching.
Good OL is important, but a good RB can make the OL better. It’s a symbiotic relationship...anyone who has been watching football knows that
I’ve only seen one RB who can make it happen in spite of how bad their OL is and that’s Barry Sanders. I don’t care whether it’s a RB or QB, they need a good OL to perform. We saw what happened to KC when they couldn’t protect Mahomes in the super bowl.
Right. Barry could take a horrible OL and make it work, but there are plenty of examples of a good RB helping a decent OL play well. A good RB can set up blocks for his OL. Pick up a blitzer for pass protection. Actually cause the defense to account for them rather than just pinning their ears back and going after the QB. Sure there will be examples where a OL that loses starters and gets shuffled around gets destroyed by a really good DL, but you aren’t going to have 10 absolute studs in the OL rotation to be a brick wall all the time.
Eh but that's not really a cautionary tale. They lost so many dudes to opt-outs and injuries - it wasn't a lack of talent or deliberate ignoring of the position vs. just bad luck. That said, I think we all agree we need a solid OL. But you definitely also need solid skill players. Look at how Diggs helped Allen in Buffalo for instance. We could certainly use a Sewell and/or Humphrey, but running out Gaskin, Parker, Williams and Grant again as our skill guys? No way, that just cannot happen again. If we do go something like Sewell/Harris in round 1, I would definitely look at dudes like Terrance Marshall and Rondale Moore in round 2. Moore has a huge ceiling as a playmaker, but he's a bit risky with the size and injuries. Ideally, I would add a Corey Davis/Curtis Samuel to start with Parker so a rook isn't coming out of the gate with #1 pressure and expectation. If we go Moore, I'd also target a guy like Nico Collins, whereas if we go Marshall I would look at Eskridge/Atwell.
A good OL can make a middling running back look better. Of course there's a symbiotic relationship between positions, it's a team sport. The benefit of having a solid OL, on top of the aforementioned, is allowing your quarterback more time in the pocket and allowing your receivers to run deeper routes. I'm not saying you have to have all-pros at each spot but having incompetence or severe sub-average play vs. a marginally talented interior defensive lineman or edge rusher can wreck your entire gameplan. The only time losing a running back is going to effect your gameplan is if you have someone with a rare skillset or you're a one dimensional team.