Vince Williams

He's filled in nicely and spelled nicely time and time again... He has good tape. The good thing is, unless he found the magic mushroom that increases speed and coverage ability, is that our current gripes shouldn't tick up much. Hell shazier is elite speed but you wouldn't know come time to blanket folks over the middle... Is what it is at this point. They lost Lawrence and Father Time sux!
They have a solid backup who is a thumper, and who could very well replace the tackles some are expecting us to lose. If they are expecting him to shore up the middle pass wise, then I presume, they will fall short in those expectations. He's a first and 2nd round thumper as was Timmons. Hopefully they tool the secondary to cover the short comings in this era of hybrid D's.

Not too piss anyone off, but our ILBs in situational play over the decades have continued to award 1st downs... Part of the plan and alignment, and regardless who's been tabbed to play hero over the middle, we usually yell about folks moving the chains. Nothing new here. Next man up lets goooooooo

 

LJ Fort and Matakevich, plus a draft pick at ILB.

 

Exactly. As it stands we have absolutely nothing behind Shazier at ILB. I have plenty of reservations about VW as a starter as well. If we go without a signing at the position in FA at the position, I'd be floored if we didn't draft a ILB in the first two rounds. Maybe 3. We are just super thin at the position and are starting a question mark as it is.

 

Yep let Williams be a run stuffer on 1st and 2nd downs, maybe they can find someone quicker in the draft to come in on 3rd downs.

 

I am not saying he can't play, I just have a few reservations about him as a full time 3 down starter. It's nothing crazy, just I think he could prove to be a liability in coverage (especially man) and teams would target him like they did Timmons last season. Surely we could sub him out in some nickel situations and we'd be fine.

I certainly do not question his ability in the box as a run stuffer. That is one spot I know he will do well. Hopefully he keeps improving his game and is capable of being an every down backer bc we don't have much behind him that I'm overly excited about at this moment.

I guess we will see what the Steelers think of him as a starter based on when we pick an ILB in the draft... we already tried to sign a player to start in front of him.

 

butlers johnson.

 

for what it's worth, to me vince looked faster last year. if thats a result of his working out with JH then great. to me he looked faster than ever before. i will also say fort can cover. he's pretty good at it. he's in year 3 of this defense, we will see. matakevich is in year two but that kid can play. when he went in at the end of the miami game that kid was in on every tackle. i'm mean every tackle. year two should let him play much faster.

i am also of the thinking of at least one of if not two of these big fast safeties this year to help this new age situation. obi or/and josh jones as draft picks. big for safeties 6-4 and 6-2 around 225 and running 4.4 flats. i'd be all for trying to use these guys in passing situations near the LOS for coverage. they shouldn't be outran by anyone. they can tackle and have coverage skills. that ain't much smaller in size than shazier. speed alone can keep linemen off of them. many ways to go and we have to get out of the traditional thinking on defense as the league changes or we will be left behind.

 

Johnson is just a special teams player.

 

we only have 53 spots.