Our run defense is much imoroved from last year. Ed Hartwell is back from injury. Brookings will move back to the weakside from the middle. Michael Boley a fifth round steal will have another year under his belt on the strong side. Jimmy Williams and Lawyer Milloy are upgrades in the secondary against the run. Plus we might add Grady Jackson at the nose. The D looks better than the O on paper.
Yeah ... but the first he muscled out of the Falcons and the second he got from the Redskins makes up for it ... if the players pan out.
Hey, at least he made the mistake in Round 3 and not one of the first two rounds. Also, I can't really complain about Schlegal. Between him and Cocong, it's cutting hairs to an extent...
If the Falcons have to rotate John Abraham at the money he's being paid, they have already lost in the trade.
The only bright spot about this whole Gocong thing is that we avoid the 20 or so threads saying how much of a reach Gocong was, that you don't take a guy from a small school that no one's heard anything about like that in the 3rd, and that he would have been available in the 5th or 6th round (NFL Prospect profiles has him as a 7th round/Priority FA) because that's where some people had him ranked. I don't think it's that big a deal really. Tangini isn't stupid enough to completely ignore the possibility of their guy being gone 5 spots down. They clearly had Gocong as the #1 guy, but probably had Schlegel very close behind to where they felt they could gamble and not get burned. Luck wasn't on their side, but they still got a guy they wanted, and made out with an extra pick. Also, I've mentioned it before, but Schlegel might be the better pick. He is at least the safer one. Gocong does come from a small school, has admittedly NEVER dropped into coverage, and if you watch his highlight videos a vast majority of his sacks come off of stunts up the middle or just flying off the edge, and in both cases, he is never blocked. It's not hard to get a bunch of sacks when you have a straight line to the QB untouched. Not saying he isn't a player I wanted, or that he won't be a good NFL player, but I just don't think it's as big a deal as some have made it out to be. Tangini knows what they're doing. I trust them with that. If they want to take a chance on losing a guy for a 7th rounder, I trust that they have a guy almost equally ranked behind him in case they miss out.
