What we had last year was a mixture of some really good players and a lot of great guys with practice squad level talent. On offense, we had a couple of really good players like Joel Bitonio and Kevin Zeitler. Those guys are not backups in any league. David Njoku didn't start last year, but he likely will this year. On Defense, Myles Garrett would start on any team in the league and Emmanuel Ogbah and Jamie Collins would start on most. Larry Ogunjobi is an incredibly promising prospect that in my opinion would start on most 4-3 defenses. None of those guys are backups in any sense of the word. And there were others who performed well such as Christian Kirksey, Joe Schobert and J.C. Tretter and would likely start on most NFL teams.
As I have said before, Sashi didn't leave the team devoid of talent. He drafted well, generally, and he certainly left the team with more good young talent than the over-the-hill gang he inherited. The problem with Sashi was that he got rid of a number of the over-the-hill gang members associated with prior regimes prematurely and replaced them with available talent (which was largely practice squad level) to fill in around the relatively good players he either inherited or acquired. And then finally, as if to drive home a point, he forced the starting of a rookie quarterback who was simply not ready to start by limiting the QB room to Kizer, Kessler and Hogan. It was a prescription for disaster despite his good work in acquiring and drafting some relatively good talent.
Dorsey has largely reversed the problem already with the acquisition and drafting of additional good young players and some good depth that essentially fills out the team and will essentially rid us of most of the practice squad level talent. Most of our starters this year are easily penciled in. A number of others will be determined in training camp. The result will be a significant upgrade in the both the remaining starters and the depth.
I think we have a chance of being pretty good this year.
