I’m a huge Ravens fan, and it was a huge offseason for us. Reports out of camp are that David Ojabo looks great and is giving our O line some troubles in practice.
He’d be my answer as our edge presence desperately needs “that guy” and Ojabo has all the tools. Hopefully his injury didn’t limit his explosiveness to much, still young and still motivated!
Now you guys go!
Kyle Dugger has already been pretty good, and has earned some reputation as a very good box safety, but I think this year he’s going to really take off. We’re a stupid number of bodies deep at hybrid safety now, and all but Mapu (who has reportedly been picking up a lot and looking really natural in the LB role, at least) have good experience in the defense now. While losing McCourty hurts (though his decline was also a concern before officially returning), it means that we can play a lot more games in the middle of the field. You don’t know whether Dugger or Peppers is going to drop out, and you have enough options that you don’t have to saddle Dugger with manning up on the tight end with regularity. You can let him run wild and play instinctually and make it really annoying to attack the middle of the field.
Kyle Dugger is about to go off, the Defense on this pats team is no joke, even if Jack Jones doesn’t play. Also super excited to see Christian Gonzalez. So many things to watch on the d this year.
I think it’s still a damn good defense, but I think you’re going to play a lot more Jaylen Mills CB2 snaps than we’d like. The idea of him playing box safety to man up tight ends in certain looks to let other guys do other shit was really appealing, and while the fact that he’s not a disaster outside is a definite value add, I think he’s always looked like a better safety (especially shorter) than outside corner and he’s spent his whole time playing out of position because they needed him to.
He even posted this offseason when nonsense rumblings about “safety depth” were happening that he considers himself a safety, and they’ve made a point of trying to get him in the middle when they projected to have other options outside.
Yeah very true Mills is definitely more of a safety than a CB (I’m sure the plan was to use him as such), and he is for sure going to be playing a lot of CB with out Jack Jones. Idk who we’re going to put on TEs over the middle like you said, Marcus Jones is too small, it’ll be interesting to see what they do. But that’s why I’m so excited to see Gonzalez. If he has a solid year all we need is a CB2 next year and we’ll be cooking with gas, which shouldn’t be too hard to find.
A couple friends/whoever asked who I wanted going into the draft, and my answer was “pipe dream, but Christian Gonzalez. Since that’s not possible, I guess…” I was going nuts when they traded out with him on the board.
I guess they had a good idea what the next guys were going to do, but I just thought the difference between him and anyone else on the board was way too big to take even a small risk with it. Since they got the guy, I’m obviously extremely happy with the outcome, but they had me real nervous.
I think he’s the real deal. There might be growing pains like Gilmore because they’ll just throw so much at him, especially because they seem to like the brain and think he can handle it, but he’s just such a blend of traits with fucking great hips and movement skills.