Let's talk Earl Mitchell

[Steve]

Yes, our NTs only play 25-30 snaps per game. Good NTs play anywhere from a little more to a lot more than that. I want Soliai in there to stop the run on first and second downs so we can get to third and long with greater regularity. I understand that he is not likely to play more than about 55% of our defensive snaps, but he is well worth the price if he provides the regular run stopping presence that our team lacks. Lissemore can hold his own for most of the rest of the snaps at NT. Pass rushers can come in on third and long situations.

Royal is a slot receiver. Guys like Herron should be out there in round 4 of the draft and would give us everything that Royal gives us. I would also give Jacoby Jones a look in FA and kill two birds with one stone (replace Floyd if necessary and serve as kick returner supreme).

At OG, I am fine with Troutman starting. I think his pass protection will improve whereas Clary's run blocking will not. We just re-signed Rinehart. I would love for us to re-sign Ohrnberger or even Schwartz if the money is right. And there is the draft as well. I think a second round OG has a good chance of being better than Clary right now as it is, but am not concerned if we pass on OG in the draft until later. Clary is not good and he had injuries for the first time last year. Frequently, players are more injury prone as they age, so I don't think Clary is some kind of ironman or anything.

Soliai WAS a good NT. Now he is a tube of goo. He spent the 2nd half of most games last year leaning on guys. He is washed up.

And the chargers are still committed to Liuget and Reyes. You think any NT we can get is going to push one of them to the sideline in our nickle? Please, it isn't going to happen.

Royal adds depth outside and was terrific in the slot, despite playing through turf toe all season. How many 4th round picks come into the league and score 8 or 9 TD? How many can run the bunch releases that get our guys open on the goalline. Playing WR is one of the tougher position. The best slot WR in football, Wes Welker, was not even part of the Dolphins 3 WR set until his last year with them, before going on. Jacoby Jones is not a slot guy, and not nearly as good as Royal was in the slot. Better outside, but not inside

If Schwartzs is as great as PFF thinks, how come no NFL team thinks anything of him? PFF has had a hardon for him for years, yet he is still considered a scrub by NFL teams. And while Clary gets knocked, if you understood the zone running game, or the fact that coaches like to keep good players, you would understand why Clary is probably going to be our starting RG.

[Stinky Wizzleteats+]

Draft Donald to back develope behind him complete the meltdown!!!

[Beerman]

You can't really compare players strictly on grades via PFF when they have such a discrepancy in snaps. Franklin played 340. Mitchell played 553. That in and of itself just shows the difference in players and the value each player has for his respective team. Clearly a player that is able to almost double the amount of snaps is worth more to the team.

I don't really know how they want to use Mitchell because he's not a typical space occupying NT. We could be switching schemes, who knows. I do know he gives us some versatility at the position with his ability to play DE as well or DT in our 4 man fronts.

[Boltjolt]

Let me start off by saying that Telesco has made some very good moves this offseason in terms of re-signing players and restructuring certain contracts.

That said, it could be disastrous for us to sign Mitchell. He gives us nothing and would stand to take away valuable resources that we desperately need to use for players that would actually help us. Worse yet, adding him might convince Telesco not to draft Nix if he is available at #25 or even Justin Ellis later in the draft (i.e., something resembling an actual NT).

Even before anyone mentioned Mitchell on this board, I looked at Polian's grades and concluded that he must have been temporarily insane to give an A to Mitchell and deem him a top 6 FA overall. He has some other crazy grades as well. By contrast, PFF graded Mitchell negatively and worse than Cam Thomas last year. Soliai was ranked positively in double digits. CBSSports ranks Mitchell 97th among FAs with Soliai ranking 33rd. Yahoo ranks Mitchell 43rd out of 48 named free agent DL players. Soliai is ranked 16th.

Worse yet, Soliai's value would be better for us and Mitchell's value less for us. Mitchell is a 4-3 DT that played out of position as a NT last year. Soliai is a true 3-4 NT. But that's just scheme. It's even more of an issue when one considers that we have no real run stoppers on our DL save an undersized Lissemore (if he is going to be asked to play NT). I definitely would play Lissemore over Mitchell. The absolute last thing we need to do is to bring in another player that might struggle to hold the point of attack and that will not command any double teams. Mitchell makes us even softer than we were with Thomas.

Please, please, please pass on Mitchell.

LOL, ...who knows more about football players? Tom Telesco or Yuba? Im going with Telesco who made the horrible Pick of Keenan Allen.

[thelightningwill]

LOL, ...who knows more about football players? Tom Telesco or Yuba? Im going with Telesco who made the horrible Pick of Keenan Allen.

A lot of people think they know more than AJ Smith. I'm sure a few think they know more than Telesco.

[Yubaking]

Soliai WAS a good NT. Now he is a tube of goo. He spent the 2nd half of most games last year leaning on guys. He is washed up.

And the chargers are still committed to Liuget and Reyes. You think any NT we can get is going to push one of them to the sideline in our nickle? Please, it isn't going to happen.

Royal adds depth outside and was terrific in the slot, despite playing through turf toe all season. How many 4th round picks come into the league and score 8 or 9 TD? How many can run the bunch releases that get our guys open on the goalline. Playing WR is one of the tougher position. The best slot WR in football, Wes Welker, was not even part of the Dolphins 3 WR set until his last year with them, before going on. Jacoby Jones is not a slot guy, and not nearly as good as Royal was in the slot. Better outside, but not inside

If Schwartzs is as great as PFF thinks, how come no NFL team thinks anything of him? PFF has had a hardon for him for years, yet he is still considered a scrub by NFL teams. And while Clary gets knocked, if you understood the zone running game, or the fact that coaches like to keep good players, you would understand why Clary is probably going to be our starting RG.

Soliai is good to very good as a NT. You and Bill Polian can think whatever you want. Soliai is widely considered as an upper echelon free agent among all free agents. That's not going to happen if a guy is washed up tub of goo that spends whole halves just leaning on people. Your anti-Soliai bias is unbelievable.

If we had Dontari Poe, I wouldn't play Reyes at all except to give rest to Liuget or Lissemore and on some third and long situations. I think a good NT could potentially eat into some of Reyes' 4-3 DT snaps. Reyes is not exactly the be all end all of pass rushers, so I would be happy to sacrifice a (very) little pass rush to prevent disguised running plays from turning 2nd and long into third and short. At third and long, then I think it would be okay for Reyes to play.

Royal is miscast as an outside WR. His catch radius is very small. He is a pure slot guy. And I never said that Jacoby Jones was a slot guy. That's just dumb. I said Jones would serve as a potential Floyd replacement, which obviously means an outside WR. I said that I would advocate drafting a guy like Herron, who is a slot guy, to replace Royal. I think our system made Royal, not the other way around, so I disagree with the notion that Royal is not very replaceable. I think he is very replaceable.

I also think Brown can play some in the slot, but understand that Brown has had separation issues no matter where he plays. If Floyd returns, we would have 6 if we re-signed Ajirotutu. If Floyd does not return, we can draft a guy like L'Damian Washington in round 6-7 of the draft and develop him. We would have Allen, Jones, Herron, Brown and Ajirotutu in front of him.

Multiple sources (not just PFF) have Schwartz as a top or one of the top FA guards available. Again, you are by yourself in yet another player evaluation. Schwartz is better than Clary right now by a mile. Clary is very arguably our worst starter on either side of the ball with Reyes being a close second. The difference is that Reyes has shown flashes of great play and there is hope for significant additional development. The same cannot be said for Clary. Unfortunately, the issue is not that nobody sees that Schwartz has emerged as a very good player, but rather that everybody now sees it (except you), which may elevate Schwartz's price range higher than I had first imagined.

Finally, have you noticed that we have struggled to run to the right despite having Fluker over there? Who's the other guy over there? Oh yeah, Clary. Nothing surprises me with respect to Clary's status. The guy has 9 lives. He should never have received his current contract and should have been gone long ago. Hopefully, it is one more year at most. But I still think he is the easiest cut on the entire roster. Bad player, lots of money, yuck.

[Stinky Wizzleteats+]

Draft Aaron Donald, sign Mitchell! Complete the meltdown!!!

[Yubaking]

LOL, ...who knows more about football players? Tom Telesco or Yuba? Im going with Telesco who made the horrible Pick of Keenan Allen.

Telesco has not yet proven that he can fix the defense like he did the offense. I give him all the credit in the world for assembling great offensive coaches and a good HC and for getting the players we needed, especially on the OL, to make us better offensively.

But his defensive moves have been the polar opposite so far. Cox flamed out. Freeney has not panned out so far (and that's a generous description). That's a ton of money for no return. We dumped our defensive depth. We got worse, a lot worse, defensively. I won't even get into thoughts of what might have been with D. Williams (a pass defending reserve ILB) defending on the 3rd and long instead of Bird on the play that killed us in the playoffs.

You can be in the minority if you want, but I am pretty sure everyone except Steve and Bill Polian thinks that Soliai is way better than Mitchell in any defense, but the gap widens if the defense happens to be a 3-4 defense. I am pretty sure that Soliai's 30+ year old contract is going to be much larger than Mitchell's prime of his career contract, so that should give some indication as to how the players are valued by the league.

I have said it before and will say it again--our defense will not be good without a stout NT that can defend the run and draw double teams. Why would anyone double team Mitchell?

Now, if Telesco wants to pick up Mitchell and start him instead of Reyes at DE and then get a legitimate starting NT such that Lissemore and Mitchell could rotate in for a few snaps at NT and play mostly DE, I would not have a problem with that.

[Yubaking]

Draft Aaron Donald, sign Mitchell! Complete the meltdown!!!

You're killing me, Stinky!

[Beerman]

A lot worse? 12th scoring defense? We didn't get blown out once. I don't even think we lost a game by double digits. We weren't a dominant defense for sure, but we sure as hell weren't terrible, let alone worse than in 2012.

[Beerman]

Telesco has not yet proven that he can fix the defense like he did the offense. I give him all the credit in the world for assembling great offensive coaches and a good HC and for getting the players we needed, especially on the OL, to make us better offensively.

But his defensive moves have been the polar opposite so far. Cox flamed out. Freeney has not panned out so far (and that's a generous description). That's a ton of money for no return. We dumped our defensive depth. We got worse, a lot worse, defensively. I won't even get into thoughts of what might have been with D. Williams (a pass defending reserve ILB) defending on the 3rd and long instead of Bird on the play that killed us in the playoffs.

You can be in the minority if you want, but I am pretty sure everyone except Steve and Bill Polian thinks that Soliai is way better than Mitchell in any defense, but the gap widens if the defense happens to be a 3-4 defense. I am pretty sure that Soliai's 30+ year old contract is going to be much larger than Mitchell's prime of his career contract, so that should give some indication as to how the players are valued by the league.

I have said it before and will say it again--our defense will not be good without a stout NT that can defend the run and draw double teams. Why would anyone double team Mitchell?

Now, if Telesco wants to pick up Mitchell and start him instead of Reyes at DE and then get a legitimate starting NT such that Lissemore and Mitchell could rotate in for a few snaps at NT and play mostly DE, I would not have a problem with that.

So you want to bench our young highly drafted DE in Reyes. Clearly you don't get the process in developing players.

[blahblahblah]

At this point Mitchell is pretty much guaranteed to be a dominant force for years.