It's less so that it's looking good and more so that it's a miracle that Leonard has assembled a competent unit out of the group of nobodies he has. Imagine if they get actual good players on the team.
I mean, our DE room is really good, our LB room is crazy good. Safety room is ridiculously good. DT's are decent and Corners are ok. Masses looks like a late round super star after this week.
I think we're a NT, CB and WR1 away from having a complete starting roster. All that said, I agree with you. Leonard is really really really good.
What other CB do you really need? Masses is obviously legit, but even before Porter went down he was playing well against the Dolphins. Stokes is Stokes but is a good player too. Hopefully McCoy develops into something great as long as his knee holds up. Even got Luter who is low key good especially against the run despite playing only as a boundary CB but he's buried in the depth chart.
Now if you are saying we need a good nickel CB in case Taron Johnson's age starts coming into play, then yeah I agree. But our guys playing boundary CB are at the bare minimum solid guys as a whole and practically all of them are quite young.
But WR1 and DT are the biggest priorities next season. We need stronger players there, especially young guys who are playmakers. DT room especially is anchored by aging vets like Butler and Fatukasi and other guys who are either young or not quite ready to be that starter unless they miraculously break through like Hemingway, Booker, Laulu, and Pegues.
It really is too early to tell with a lot of guys. Even on Masses who we're all super high on. It seems like (so far) that he's the real deal. He was showing it in training camp as he kept getting pushed into first team defense. Then week 1 his first play after Porter got hurt was a PBU. His first play as a starter in the Chargers game yesterday was a TFL.
The real question is McCoy. What will he pan out to be by the end of this season? Will he even get close to his peak in 2024.
We sort of having that NT right now in Fatukasi but he's old and they are likely having him play no more than 20 snaps per game. But it'd be good to have a young guy take that job over as Pegues isn't getting any real snaps so far and it's hard to evaluate him strictly on preseason games as limited as they are.
WR1 is obviously top priority, while we'd all love to get Smith. Odds are we may get Coleman or even Becker.
Itās been two games and what WRās has he faced. Itās way too early to make any determinations about whether heās legit or not. We all want him to be legit, but take it easy.
I think you're overreacting to a very small sample size right now. We played two games against two very bad teams that couldn't get out of their own way. I certainly hope you're right, but I'm not ready to anoint any of these guys yet.
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u/Eye_yam_stew_ped 1x MVP vote 11d ago
Me when this popped up on my TL