Boldin is great, but too expensive if he is even obtainable. The Cards won their division for the first time in like 50 frigging years. I would not be so confident that they would be willing to shake up that receiving core or that Boldin is as determined to be traded as he was in the beginning of the year.
Now cincy's wr hoshi-whatever? doesn't he enter FA this off season. That seems like a more viable option if we can sweet talk him here. He would only cost money and not draft picks. Just because we went 11-5 does not mean we are a complete enough team to give up draft picks. We are not one or two pieces away from being a complete team.
Yeah we had what looks to be a solid off season last year. We need a few more of them to get caught up from a decade of bad ones. The thing is this too. Each good draft that we have makes the next one harder to repeat. Last year we had high draft position and for the most part BPA in the draft was a position of need for us, which makes the decision process easier. This draft they are going to have some more difficult decisions to think about.
I don't feel like this team has reached that pinnacle of having the luxury of sacrificing first day picks for players with good reputations yet, especially multiple picks. Maybe if its just a single pick for a guy that you know who is going to come in and immediately break into the starting line up, but not multiple picks.
Honestly too I think allot of you are giving up on Ginn becoming a true #1 a little bit too soon. I have concerns about him as well but I think we have to wait and see with him. It is not our first priority of needs on this team. Remember he is young. He is only in his second year in the NFL. This is the first year he has had a good QB throwing to him. He came out of college his junior year. He has shown reasonable progress every season, so far. Lets see what he does next year before we decide he isn't ever going to be more then he is now.
NT I think is this teams biggest need this year and I hope Parcells already has that position picked out for us. Developmental or immediate impact, we need a long term solution at that position. D-Line hopefully will improve if they got that big push up the middle and our rookies have another year under their belt.
O-Line same concern, we need a better center. RT needs improvement too. RG is really hard to say considering we have no idea how good or bad Thomas is or isn't. He was hurt so what can you say other then we need depth on our line because we don't really have good substitutes in any of our line positions. That goes for defense too. LG position, I like Smiley but think that position could be upgraded as well. It isn't a priority type need but if the opportunity is available and it didn't come at the cost of sacrificing another position of need I would upgrade there too, and keep smiley and create good depth there. LG = Long, nothing more needs to be said about that. That pick was a definite hit for us.
Our LB's I have mixed feelings on. I think the ones we have are good but are situational. I think we need depth so we can rotate our packages better. I think Crowder is and Roth are both good on run packages and might even consider moving Roth to ILB position along side Crowder. Squeaky is a good pass rusher and OK at stopping runs when he doesn't rush, but he is a little one dimensional and slowing down. Aokelyle(however the hell you spell his name/) drops back in pass coverage nicely but has no help. He needs another back that can mirror his skills on pass packages, which we don't have. Point I'm getting at is we need 4 more linebackers to add depth and versatility to that area of the field.
This brings me to my favorite goats on our defense. Our secondary. Man have I been tough on them this year, well the first half of it anyhow. I give credit where it is due and they deserve kudos for stepping up their game the second half of the season. They still are not that great but they are greatly improved. Some of their struggles are from being over worked because of the problems we have up front. They still need to improve however. I don't see this area being addressed this off season unless there is some gem out there that is just too good to pass up on. I think this is something that we will address in the following off season, not this one. JMO.
One last thing I want to address, going back to our offense. I think if we can can get our O-Line really stabilized by doing what I mentioned above. It will greatly improve our ability to run the ball. This is a huge thing for us. This will improve our passing game immensely and keep us out of those 3rd n 8 positions that we really struggled with and force defense to keep people in the box to stop it. This will play right into Chads strength. Chad spreads the ball around nicely using all of his weapons but this season he really had to work to do it, because our run game was very average. Ronnie's numbers should of been much higher then they were but had no holes. same goes for Ricky. Ricky would sweep but never had any holes to cut back into for yards which is his style of running. Ronnie like to punch it up the middle between the tackles and he had no tackles that could open him a hole. This is why the wildcat worked best for us. Not only did it provide the unbalanced line shift to throw defenses off a bit it also gave Ronnie a split second longer to choose a hole. Ronnie has very good vision in that respect. He just needs that extra moment to pick his hole. That is why he gets hammered for hesitate because he is looking for a spot to hit. Problem is our line is not giving him any spots.
So I guess I am saying what allot of other people around here have been saying all year. Our area of need is our Lines first, Linebackers second, One good receiver third, Corner backs 4th, safeties 5th. That is the order of needs that I think this team is going to be looking to continue its rebuild process in.