Three first round picks, pro bowler FA’s, mid and late round draft picks and UdFA’s.
I was talking about our reaction to the current OL problem at the last logical time to invest, the past offseason. Not about the last decades decisions. Hope that clarifies. But let's do your analysis just for completeness.
Three first rounders ... hmmm. Let's see, I'm guessing you mean Jake Long who was a great player early but became ravaged by injuries and is now retired ... so that depends on how long back you're going I guess. Then Mike Pouncey, who was the highest drafted center of all time ... that definitely fits your description. Then Ju'Wuan James ... that definitely fits the description too.
But, Pouncey was a reach, over-drafted because of need, over-hyped, then re-signed and over-paid, and who has a real durability issue coupled with difficulty at the point of attack ... at the time I called that a reach, and I stand by that assessment. Ju'Wuan James was a bad pick. I said as much then, and believe as much now. Sure, we wanted Zack Martin, who would have been a phenomenal pick, All-Pro routinely, and an anchor for a dominant run game in Dallas. He has been a fantastic pick ... but we didn't pick him. He was gone, so we reached for James, who isn't even worth signing to his 5th year option. I wouldn't call him a bust per se, but he's been very bad.
FA's, we signed Branden Albert to a big contract, but got rid of him before paying the biggest part ... eating significant dead cap in the process. Bad decision IMHO. At the time, I said we overpaid ... and I stand behind that. But the worst part of it was that our overpayment meant we got rid of him when we still needed him and ate the cap. He LIVED in Miami and was dead-set on playing LT ... and had no other competitive bidders really, so we were just dumb to overpay. We created that problem with a bad investment.
And what did we do this year? Oh yeah, we failed to invest much in the OL and it showed ... as I mentioned. Well, Larsen was a CHEAP pickup, and might have been OK if he could stay healthy. But he was our only real investment. We didn't sign any other financial investment FA's and our draft pick, Asiata, whom I like, was a 5th round pick ... which is definitely not a heavy investment regardless of position. The rest, like Eric Smith, weren't even drafted.
So yeah, this year we failed to invest much into the OL.
In the long term, you have a point that we invested in the position, but that view of the long term included Parcells and Sparano drafing the now-retired Jake Long, and Philbin pushing to overpay for Branden Albert, the previous regime's selection of Mike Pouncey and even Dennis Hickey's selection of Ju'Wuan James (which may have been Tannenbaum so that's worth considering). I'm not sure I'm really prepared to blame the current coaching staff and front office for all of those mistakes.
I was discussing this past offseason, because that's when Gase & Co. knew of the problems and had the time and resources to address them. They chose to sign guys like Branch and Timmons to inflated contracts and leave pocket change for the OL while eating Albert's dead cap. IMHO, those were all bad moves. The fact that we had OL woes for the umpteenth season in a row was ... not surprising. That's all I'm saying.
