Rodriquez (or however its spelt) is an interesting player, much more athletic than Lane and seemed to play well for the bears... Could well make the team
Oops on the spelling... should have been a g, not a q.
Agree, he is indeed interesting in as far as his athleticism and decent blocking skill, and I'm wondering, with his bump up to number 1 recently, is this not only a challenge and see how he reacts, but what he can bring to the offense scheme wise?
What I'd very much like to see happen is... and this is purely from increasing the dynamism of this offence...
You have Keller and Sims who can play the more traditional inline Y spot. With Clay and RodriGuez playing the hybrid H Back role. All 4 can split out, either in the slot or out wide. And this is where I'll put my old coaching hat on [where's WV where you need him] this would be a match up nightmare for teams... it's potentially the next evolution of the 2 TE formation the Pats have exploited recently and yes... I'd even consider a situational 14 Package and get crazy with creative shifts from tight alignments to split wide sets... force LB's out side the hashes to cover the likes of Keller/Clay etc.
The other one is Egnew, and as much as he gets bashed on here, for me, I'm trying to be patient in his development as some players do take a few years. Heck, look at Cameron Wake. This coaching staff like his talent and he is another match up challenge. Id like to see what he can do in the RZ, perhaps they are keeping that for the regular season, but there is a possibility they keep 5 TE type bods.
I for one am glad they didn't go with Vonta Leach... he would have have changed the dynamic of the offense and I wouldn't be surprised if Ireland wanted him but Philbin called it off because of the fit of player to scheme.
When it comes to numbers, it's anyones guess - but one interesting point of late has been the injury to Pat Devlin. It's been widely reported that Philbin is a fan of Devlin.. so, could he end up on the PUP/IR list [cant recall the right lists], and go with RT and Moore for the season... to allow an extra spot for TE or WR, while keeping Devlin in the fold for futher development/maturation.
Sherman commented that we've seen about 40% of the offense in preseason so far... I doubt we see more than 50% when it's all said and done.
So it's back to the reason why, when the had already resigned Hartline and then signed Wallace... they felt it important/need to sign Gibson... then went after Keller, but still further added to the TE spot by picking up Sims in the draft and bringing in Rodriguez. I'm real curious as to where they are going with this and I'd love to see a make up of the following for the 53.
QB x 2
OL x 9
WR x 6
TE x 5
RB x 4
= 26
3 for ST, leaves 24. Which could be made up of
DL = 9 [OV & Jordan can line up at Backer]
LB = 6
S = 4
CB = 5
slight tangent, my bad