Bosa?

[Steve]

The top pass rushers in the league look a lot better because they get a lot more help. If Von Miller had to take on extra blockers on every play, and had to get to the QB in 2 seconds or less, his sack numbers drop in half, even if he is playing at the same level. But no team in football has enough blockers and can afford to throw quickly against the denver secondary.

As far as drafting a number one pick ona pass rusher, fine, but you will PROBABLY have to wait 3 to 4 year to get that guy up to 10 sacks. That is a fact. Yes, every few years a guy comes into the league like Bosa and has a lot of success initally. Miller and Kerrigan even did it in the same year. But to think you can draft successful pass rushers and have them come in every year is just utter fantasy.

Ingram may have developed slowly, but that is the norm for pass rushers. It takes that long. You don't want to pay him, fine, but where else do you get them? With all the top 3 picks we have? How about all the franchise FA pass rushers? I'm not thrilled with giving him that much money either. But the fact is, not paying pass rushers huge money means not having pass rushers.

Look at the difference having Bosa and Ingram has made to our pass rush. You HAVE to have multiple guys. A single pass rusher will still look good on the individual stats sheet, but Houston had no one else rishing the QB besides Watt for several years, and their D got reemed.

I agree with the fact that Ingram is not a great pass rusher. If you go back to when he got drafted, I don't recall ever thinking he was going to be a great pass rusher. But we aren't paying him great pass rusher money ($100 million/Von Miller type). We are paying him in line with what other similar pass rushers get. We can probably get a deal on Ingram in the sense that we probably won't have to shell out kerrigan type bonus, although that might take more money overall. We would come out ahead on being able to cut him sooner if he folds. But the idea that you don't pay that much for a guy because he took a while to develop as a pass rusher means we let him go and have no pass rush next year. Teams will doouble team Bosa on every play, and we will be stuck with a rush from Emmanuel and Attaochu.

And then, if you want to win the division, we still need to find more help, because a big part of the sucess of all the other AFC West teams has been having multiple rush guys. Denver has Miller, Shaq Barrett, Ware and Shane Ray outside and Wolfe and Crick inside. KC has Dee Ford, Houston, Hali outside, Poe and Jones inside. Oakland is as bad as us with Irvin and Ware, and a good but inconsistent cast of many along the DL and LB.

I am all for going after the cheaper FA types, but in addition to Ingram, not as replacements. I still say Ingram is playing out of position at OLB. He is good, but his best spot might be MLB. He is also the kind of guy I think adds a lot by getting moved around, but right now, we have to play him outside to draw attention away from our best pass rusher, Bosa. I think the best way to free up both would be to get someone like Sheard as a RDE/ROLB type, and then Ingram and Bosa can terrorize the same side, inside out, outside in, moving around.

[Boltjolt]

Well, I don't think it is a fact. Even Shaun Philips had a lot more sacks and tackles than Ingram has in his first five years.
Others who didn't take five years to get 10 sacks.....Ware, Merriman, Houston, Jared Allen, Dummervil the shrimp.....and Miller wasn't there with him then, Terrel Suggs, Freeney, Jason Taylor,..I mean I could go on and on so it's really not a fact. Phillips, Dummervil and Allen were 4th round picks.

And yes, agree, like I said, I didn't like Ingram coming out as a pass rusher and he just might be miscast. There are some good pass rusher in this draft and like I said, we could sign Sheard as well. Money saved but it's not about saving money. It's about not over paying for Ingram and his lack of plays. We have a lot of other holes like on the OL . Telesco absolutely has to get that fixed next season. Time is a wasting for Rivers.

[Steve]

How many rookie pass rushers get more than a handful of sacks? Every couple of years one will come into the league and do it, but that is one per year, and there are dozens of rookie DL and OLB. You are full of shit if you think it is the norm to be poroductive. Hell, not that many vet pass rushers get that many sacks.

Shaun Phillips was a very successful rookie pass rusher. He got 4 sack his rookie year, 7 the next, and didn't break 11.5 till his 3rd. And he had a lot more help than ingram got, since he had Foley his rookie year, and Merriman and Castillo his 2nd year. By the standard that they have to be productive right away, would any of them besides Merriman have gotten a big contract? And he is the guy who we now know was getting some chemical help and was out of football first.

You can find pass rushers to develop, I'm not saying you can't. What is bullshit is to think they come in and are always going to be productive right away. Jason Taylor got 5 sacks his rookie year. JJ Watt got 5.5. Go ahead and look. TT has said it in inverviews, and so has every Chargers coach and GM I have ever heard discuss young pass rushers. It takes time to develop as a pass rusher. Ingram is a little behind where he should be, there is no question. But he is not behind by that much.

The guys who come in and get 10 as a rookie are rare. It takes a top pick (usually) and it doesn't happen every season. So, to think we can get a guy who is going to come in and rush the passer well as a rookie is an unrealistic expectation. The list you put up is a bunch of the best pass rushers of the last 2 decades. For every one of them, there are a dozen or two dozen who were drafted who didn't pan out at all. And of the ones who do, they are often top players, so we can't be in a position to draft top players as edge rushers every couple of years. Eventually, we need to use top picks on OL, WR, CB, QB........

If they aren't a 1st round pick, you are right in exactly the same situation we are with Ingram. Not very productive intially, but then once they do develop you hit year 4, and it is time to give them a new contract and you are at the $60 mill for 5 year stage again. That is the norm, not the exception.

And how do you pay guys like Suggs and Dumervil? Their sack numbers are up and down. Pass rushers are like that. But other teams are going to pay pass rushers, because they know how often they come around and how rarely they become free agents. IF we don't pay ingram, somene else will. Vernon Oliver got a 5 year $85 mill contract for 3.5 sacks his rookie year, followed by 11.5, 6.5 and 7.5. He also has had Cameron Wake for his entire career, as well as Suh for his last year in Miami.

Yeah, time is wasting for Rivers, so you want to let one of the better players we have on D go, make us way more short of impact players on D, and then draft a rookie who is going to likely to take several years to develop? Not to mention, where is the help we so desperately need at other positions going to come from? You are making holes that need to be filled. Not to mention, it is far safer to spend the money on our own FA then it is to bring outside guys in and give them big money. There is a decent chance of another Donald Butler or Flowers, but the chance is a lot less than for big money to bring in an outside FA.

Singing Sheard is an option, but he is not anywhere near as good a pass rusher. Plus he had not done anything under Pettine, so he was basically written off, which is why he only cost $5.5 mill per year (8.5, 7, 5.5, 2 sacks in Cleveland). He is going to get a lot more now, in fact he is probably in the 5 year $60mill class himself (probably a bit under, but he might get someone to pay).

[Boltjolt]

I didn't say it was the norm, I'm saying I don't agree it is a fact that it takes 3-4 years for most to reach the 10 sack level. There are plenty of them that did it year one or two and still got close to ten if they didn't reach it. Sheard had 8 as a rookie.

Sheard has more sacks and if playing in a 4-3 . When in Cleveland he was more productive in their 3-4. I'm not claiming he is a stud, but his production isn't much from Ingram's and he is cheaper. I doubt he gets near 60 million. He splits snaps in NE with Trey Flowers.

Someone can over pay Ingram if they want. We have over paid players before because we felt we needed to and it didn't work out. Ingram may be one of the better players on defense in your eyes, I think he is a underachiever.
We need to dump Flowers salary if you want to resign Ingram, and I'm ok losing him.

[TTK]

There are a lot of big salaries they could and should dump next year: Flowers, Barksdale, Franklin, Gates, S Johnson). And redoing Fluker's last year in his deal.

You could easily re-sign Ingram with part of that savings.

[6025]

No way should they sign Ingram for $60M.

[Boltjolt]

There are a lot of big salaries they could and should dump next year: Flowers, Barksdale, Franklin, Gates, S Johnson). And redoing Fluker's last year in his deal.

You could easily re-sign Ingram with part of that savings.

Yes but they would still be over paying him. Then his salary will be one to dump a couple years later when he doesn't live up to it.

[Steve]

Then you can live in denial. The norm is a couple of years. As you point out there are exceptions, but you want to count of that. Plus, as I poointed out, it puts you right back into the situation where you owe someone between $60-$100 million for a pass rusher every couple of years.

The biggest issue to me is we don't have a couple of years to wait. bosa needs someone to rush from the other edge now. He is getting doubled team constantly now. He would draw even more attention. As bad as our record is, what would it have been if we didn't have that strong pass rush when the secondary got decidmated with injuries mid season? We have a game like we did against TB, where the QB just sits back (or scambles) and tears us apart. We didn't pressure Winston much, and he destroyed us, and that despite the fact that we actually played reasonably well overall on D. We stopped their running game, and we covered their receivers and stopped them on a lot of short routes. But every time TB needed a play, they called a deep drop, ran the longer developing stuff, and Winston threw downfield on those 3rd and longs and we couldn't get them off the field.

We need more pass rushers, because while our pass rush is better than it has been, it is not that good overall. We have no depth. We don't have anyone rushing up the middle. Brown will help our blitz package when he comes back, but we need to continue to upgrade the front 7 with pass rushers.

[Coachmarkos]

I don't know if you guys like Michael Lombardi of Fox NFL. Formerly of the Patriots, Browns, Raiders and other front office jobs.

He likes Melvin Ingram. He's mentioned it several times this season. Doesn't call him a superstar, but thinks he's a good player.
Thinks San Diego has a pretty good football team, and thinks the injuries (no surprise) have played a big part in the team's struggles.

He is on Bill Simmons podcast every friday, and has his own called "Make Me Smarter" which comes out on Tuesdays.

I have really enjoyed listening to him.

[bonehead]

I like like Lombardi too, he has NFL executive experience

I'll have to check that out

I agree we have to sign Ingram if we don't our first pick in the draft HAS to be pass rusher we don't have anyone else

[Formula 21]

Having a pass rush DE and two pass rush OLB on the field all the time would be killer. Then you can blitz one of our fast ILBs or a safety... So keeping Ingram AND getting a quality OLB in the top 10 in the draft is pretty enticing too.

[richpjr]

Having a pass rush DE and two pass rush OLB on the field all the time would be killer. Then you can blitz one of our fast ILBs or a safety... So keeping Ingram AND getting a quality OLB in the top 10 in the draft is pretty enticing too.

I agree that we need to keep Ingram and add more pass rushing. Not sure if I wouldn't rather spend our top pick on the oline though...