Moneyball says CB makes sense early...

CBs are always one of the higher paid FA positions. Especially if you want a true shutdown CB. If you need a starting CB it is cheaper to find one in the draft than it is on the FA market.

So moneyball says draft your CB early and pick up your interior OL/safety starters in FA where they are cheaper than finding a starting CB and/or find them in the 2nd and 3rd rnd of the draft where value can be found.

So Moneyball says Levitre and Moore in FA and then draft Milliner in the 1st and pick up DT/OL in the 2nd and 3rd.

Gives 5 new starters and in the long run saves the most money.

If it were to work out how you want then cool by me.

You don't need a shutdown corner to have a great defense. Can anyone tell me a top ten corner on a Super Bowl winning team in the last decade? Ronde Barber?

If you have a great corner all an offense has to do is throw away from him if the rest of the defense is average. Take a look at Nnamdi Asamougha and his play in Oakland and then in Philly. No one challenged him in Oakland because the rest of the defense was terrible, including the other corner. In Philly it was pick your poison with Nnamdi, DRC and Samuel. Dude got challenged a lot.

A strong front seven covers up a lot of holes in the back end.

Nnamdi in Philly is a scheme thing, along with getting older. In his Oakland days, his game was pressing and his disrupting the route. He was never good at making a play on the ball. Forcing him to sit back, cover an area, and making a play on the ball is a total waste of his talents.

Oakland's pass defense rankings when Nnamdi became a starter:
18
32
25
23
26
31

Having a great corner does nothing if you don't have guys around him. Unless you're drafting the next Deion Sanders I wouldn't take a CB in the top ten. A guy who can make an impact on special teams as a returner and be a shutdown CB.

Nnamdi in Oakland was the Scottie Pippen of football, he was so good he was able to freelance and put his man on lockdown.

You sure you're not looking at rush defense? Stats I'm looking at has Oakland's pass defense ranked at:

2010 - 2nd
2009 - 7th
2008 - 10th

^ edit* after cross referencing, it would appear you looked at the rankings backwards.

I don't know what happened in Philly, he looked so lost and blew so many coverages, maybe the scheme sucked, maybe he lost a step, maybe he was so used to playing man all the time that he forgot how to play zone, maybe all 3.


But I do agree about the defensive line though and corners leading their defense to a Superbowl, I think it's better to have an Albert Haynesworth than a Nnamdi if I had to choose one.

And honestly, how many true shutdown corners are there today anyway? A couple of years ago, there was Nnamdi, Revis and Champ Bailey...and that was about it. Only a few teams in the league are gonna have one, one would be nice obviously, but I'm not really worried about getting one.

I'd love to land drc & levitre. Star in the 1st. Kentucky guard in the 2nd. Safety in the 3rd.

A shutdown man corner effects the rest of the team. Rolling coverage and taking the best WR out of the game. This however doesn't really coexist with Grey. We are primarily a soft zone D. Ugly scheme.

And it's a lot harder to find a shut down corner than it is to help the secondary by getting pressure... Milliner? Is he truely shut down? Cuz that's the only way I take him at 10.

From what I've seen, Milliner was fantastic at blitzing and sniffing out reverses and screens. He is also fantastic at making plays on the ball when it is in the air. He is not a guy that is going to be step for step with the receiver comebacks and out routes and things like that.

Of course, Alabama is so talented that it makes sense to have him play soft on those kind of plays.

I don't want a CB at #10. I want an impact lineman be it defense or offense.

I was pointing out that from a cap/money stand point taking a CB at #10 would make sense.

one nice thing about FA is that safety is the deepest position in FA. On the Walter football site it says that their are 7 3.5star rated safeties available. OT is the next deepest with 6 and then most positions only have 2-3 3.5 star FAs. So I think we will certainly take advantage of the depth in the FA safety market.