[barrett]

To spur offseason discussion.

I am including age, productivity, salary, and projecting to 2015 and beyond.

1. Watt
2. Hopkins - breakout year
3. Brown - shaky start but great 2nd half, amongst best in the league
4. Foster - cap figure an issue, but so versatile and BOB takes advantage
5. Crick - awesome December, cheap, young, obviously coachable
6. K Jackson - above average starter in prime, assumes he doesn't break bank
7. Myers - still above average but starting to decline
8. Brooks - solid
9. Newton - much improved, could be very good
10. Mallett - question marks is better than I thought when we got him
11. AJ - should not be on this roster at his age and salary, but so little at WR
12. Joseph - hopefully he'll restructure, looked good/healthy in 2nd half of season
13. Mercilous - showed real talent this year
14. Swearinger - toned down, actually went for ball instead of kill shot and made a play today
15. Jones - an awesome 7th OL or a mediocre 5th one
16. Blue - very versatile (catches, runs, ST) and obviously trusted by coaches
17. Bouye - super handsy but if he can learn how to better get away with it he could be very good
18. Reed - meh
19. Pickett - helped this year but old
20. Cushing - can only hope a year removed helps
21. Powe - ok late in year
22. Clowney - guy who won't work faces grueling rehab
23. Su'a-Filo - a few series last week made me hope he is not a total loss
24. Lewis - meh
25. John Simon - intrigued me, hope he gets a spot as 3rd OLB
26. Nix - ?
27. Morris - flashes
28. Prosch - I didn't notice him much but we ran it well all year
29. Posey - wish he'd see the field
30. Bullock - He no longer makes me wait for disaster


Other (could all be replaced if circumstance/price/replacement made it possible: Fiedorowicz, Griffin, Graham, rest of backup OL, Grimes, Martin, Johnson, Fitz, Savage, Pagan, Jamison, Mohamed, Tuggle, Dent, Lechler, and others I didn't mention)

Overall we face a huge talent deficit and it goes way beyond QB. Every team has holes in the NFL, and the cap is an exercise in picking where your holes are and where you think you can get away with them. But I can't come up with 10 guys under 30 I can say are players. That is bad. That is a sign of the draft issues we've all bemoaned (along with injury issues like Cushing).

It just goes to show how close the talent is in the NFL from team to team and how much luck/schedule/coaching goes into winning. The good news is I believe we have a great coach and we have such a newly assembled staff that we are unlikely to lose a single assistant. That alone should allow for a measure of improvement. Now we need about 3 drafts in a row that produce multiple plus level starters each and a QB somewhere along the line. I am ok if we use a carpet bomb strategy at QB and just keep investing in new pro and college guys each year hoping to get lucky (like Seattle did with the Flynn/Wilson combo 3 years ago).