- Dan Pompei at The National Football Post pointed out this interesting factoid:
“The Browns’ draft board was arranged alphabetically, which is very unorthodox and can make it difficult to make decisions on the fly. Front office men around the league were buzzing about the unusual board last week. Also noteworthy is that the Browns did not allow the majority of their scouts in the draft room. But they are not the only team that locks out scouts.”
I never heard of this board arrangement. I’ll be interested to see if the purpose behind it ever comes out.
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Pro Football Focus published a list of the top 101 players of 2012. I’m sure it works out this way statistically but I can tell you this. In the real world I’d take a Calvin Johnson at 12 and Brandon Marshall at 30 over an awful lot of the players ahead of them. Lance Briggs didn’t make the list.
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Neil Hornsby at Pro Football Focus thinks the Packers are shuffling their line so they can get better at running to the left. This would make quarterback Aaron Rogers more effective on roll outs to the right.
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Pompei points out the importance of the guard position on the Bears new, revamped offensive line:
“‘We feel protection starts from the inside out,’ said offensive coordinator Aaron Kromer, who came to the Bears in the offseason from the Saints, for whom he was the offensive line coach. ‘With the Saints we really felt we needed to keep the interior part of the defensive line at the line of scrimmage in protection, so we put a big emphasis on our guard position to do that. We feel that same way here.'”
“Interior protection probably was more important for the Saints than it will be for the Bears because of the quarterbacks involved. Drew Brees, at 6 feet, is a good 3 inches shorter than Jay Cutler. Shorter quarterbacks have more vision issues when defenders are pushing the pocket.”
Cutler is also considerably more mobile that Brees. By emphasizing the interior, the Bears are likely to let make it easier for teams to keep him in the pocket. This puts a big onus on the receivers to get open because Cutler won’t be scrambling as much to give them more time.
On the other hand, a clean pocket could help Cutler an awful lot. We could see a more systematic and reliable offense this year, if fewer improvisations on the fly from the quarterback.
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Brad Biggs, also at the Chicago Tribune, list 5 players who need to make an impression this offseason. He may not fit into this category quite as Biggs wrote it but I’d say Shea McClellin needs to have the offseason of his life if he’s going to play to his potential next year.
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Kyle Long will play right guard ]because it will match him up against Ndamukong Suh](http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/football/bears/chi-chicago-bears-rookie-minicamp-20130512,0,5177275.story?track=rss) when the Bears play the Lions.
“I am still trying to find the best five and where they fit best,” said offensive coordinator Aaron Kromer, who is also the line coach. “Suh plays over the right guard and we have to win the division first. Obviously, at Green Bay they flip their tackles, so they could have B.J. Raji on both sides. We want to make sure that we have good matchups in these games. We drafted these guys to win the division first.”
- John Mullin at CSNChicago.com quotes Long on his move to right tackle for a set of reps over the weekend:
“We were just short on guys today a little bit so they needed some versatility. Jordan Mills went inside. That’s another guy that can move around a little bit. We’ve got a lot of those.”