WOW! Dannell Ellerbe reaches agreement with Miami

you showed me Philbins light when I was blind...lol..I admit, I was confused remember, but you made some points where I started seeing some things differently..I still don't know but I feel more confident that he is the right guy.

 

He had another one as a rookie against Oakland.

 

Really not all that unusual though for Edwards to be out at a pro day running things, especially as it's a Florida team and Edwards is a pro coach in Florida.

I see people reading between the lines on that one and I don't think it's called for.

 

In terms of Edwards at the UF pro day? No, I agree, not unusual at all. Wasn't he an assistant with the Gators briefly as well? If you mean it in terms of Koa Misi playing "inside", could you elaborate? Or do you simply think he's more suited for that pseudo-SAM role he played last year?

 

The one concern with Ellerbe IMO is durability. He has yet to play an entire 16 game season. 13 games two times, 9 games once and 11 games once. Granted not all of the missed games were necessarily injuries, but he played through 2-3 this past season. He had casts on his hands when he made that int against Brady. He has only 14 starts in 4 seasons too.

 

I remember Dannell Ellerbe had my attention heading into Shrine week and I came out of the game pretty sure that he was going to make it as a pro, one way or another. Of course, there were other guys I thought would make it as pros and they didn't. But Ellerbe did stand out to me...enough to where I remember I keyed on him a few times as one of "my" guys in the preseason to see his progress. I kind of lost track of him after that, around 2011 and 2012.

Catching up a little bit on Ellerbe now I have to say the thing that impresses me most about him is his range. I don't know what he ran coming out, I'm not sure I care. I do know the man can run on the football field. He showed excellent range and it really hurt offenses because it was a big play limiter. He had this play against the Texans where Arian Foster made a cut back and ran all the way out to the back side sidelines and Ellerbe cleared probably 2/3rds of the field to get out to him and limit the thing to an 8 yard gain or some such. It was impressive. On several scrambles in the Super Bowl there was a "cap" on Kaepernick in the form of Dannell Ellerbe's pure range forcing Colin to make the choice to go out of bounds and bank his gains instead of trying to hurt the Ravens the way he killed the Green Bay Packers. And on the most important drive of the game, when San Francisco was trying to get the go-ahead touchdown, Ellerbe was kind of the hero of that drive. San Fran blocked up the defense really well on a run of Frank Gore around left end, and Ellerbe got off the block and booked it as hard as he could to try and limit what could easily have been a game-winning 40 yard touchdown run, into a 33 yard gain which set up the kind of impressive goal line stand that makes for Super Bowl legends. That goal line stand doesn't even happen if Ellerbe didn't have such range.

On the other plays in that drive, Ellerbe did pretty well, but he contributed his best with a blitz where he found the unblocked gap and booked in on Kaepernick so fast he had to get rid of the football way earlier than he wanted to, pass fell incomplete.

As a blitzer which is what everyone seems to be talking about, he gets by with his explosiveness and quickness, but I'm not sure there's anything special there. Good timing and execution of the blitzes but we've seen that. He's a small guy so when anyone really gets hold of him he's usually done. He gets blocked successfully by backs out of the backfield. He's crafty though, he'll usually spin out after he's been blocked up at the line of scrimmage and then back pedal to make sure he's not allowing a big scramble or some such.

In coverage there were several things I liked and several things I didn't like. For one thing like I said he's got range so when the play is ahead of him and he needs to speed out to the flat for instance, he can do that and really limit opportunities there. Also he's shown himself to be remarkably physical when it comes to covering guys over the middle. He did some great work on guys like Arian Foster, Owen Daniels and even Andre Johnson. His coverage was mostly not the issue with Vernon Davis or Delanie Walker against the 49ers in the Super Bowl. But that doesn't mean there aren't things I don't like. He still seems pretty raw in the zones, a little late in recognizing or anticipating things. I've heard he's only got 14 starts, that could be why. Biggest problem is when he's forced to flip his hips and turn and run in man coverage down the field in the seam on a tight end. Consistently too slow in doing that. Needs to work on that.

Against the run he's like you see out of guys like NaVorrow Bowman and Daryl Washington. He's a fast little coconut that loves to blast his way into the interior and prevent blocks from taking shape. He gets off blocks. He tackles well. Like I said though he's kind of small so that's one thing to watch for, good zone teams getting big bodied offensive linemen out on him in space, he can be engulfed at times.

And of course the big downside is the durability issue. The injury report on him is pretty extensive.

 

IIRC the problem with Ellerbe coming out was he had gotten into legal problems

It does strike me that he is not the prototype, he seems a bit short for what Ireland normally goes for in a Lb.

 

Do you see him taking Dansby's spot? There was a tweet earlier suggesting he isn't.

 

He could. It appears the Dolphins wouldn't like him to, though. I think perhaps in this defense they might like him to take Burnett's spot and that might be viewed as less likely to see him have to deal with too many big bodied OLs getting on him. That could be why they're thinking of having Koa Misi play the inside.

 

There could also be another starting LB acquisition.

 

Or a draft pick. Not referring to anyone specifically, but I think it's an area they might look at.

 

Good ****. Keep impressing me Ireland. Think we just totally upgraded our LB Corps and added a top WR.

 

FWIW, here's his workout numbers: 35 inch vertical, 7 second three cone, 4.23 short shuttle.
Didn’t run in Indy, ran a 4.63 at Georgia’s pro day.

 

I notice the 4.63 isn't recorded in the usual place though for pro day numbers. He didn't run the 40 at the Combine and there aren't any pro day results. It makes me curious as to how accurate the 4.63 number is.

 

I think it's become clear that the "prototype" was more Parcells' than Ireland. While I'm sure Ireland prefers bigger players to smaller ones (all else being equal)(who doesn't?), he's not a carbon copy of what Parcells was. Ireland admitted that Parcells took players off his board. My guess is that those were most likely players that didn't fit Parcells' prototype. Obviously those would be players that Ireland did like. I'm sure this will fall on deaf ears, but we should probably stop referring to the prototype as if it means something in terms of what we'll draft. We should also stop listening to any posts that claim to know what Ireland will do based on picks made while Parcells was here.

 

Very wise words. hopefully most will heed them.

 

He can do it all...well almost. After watching some of his game film he's shown me that he can cover the TEs, rush the passer and can hit the hole to the RB in the back field. He has a nose for the ball carrier. He's a good tackler. He's more quick than fast but he's not strong. On some occassions he'll get pushed back 5 yards if a blocker has squared up on him. He's not strong enough to hold his ground and shed the block. Most of the time he relies on his quickness to dodge a blocker to get to the RB.

He is a good all round type of guy who is needed because the game is getting fast and he can be used in Coyle's system to stop these offenses.