Of course all of these rankings are based on the departures of Landry, Suh, and Pouncey. What they don't understand is that getting rid of Pouncey was an upgrade. Straight up. No twisting logic or anything. Pouncey hasn't been good in years, and each year he got hurt, our line play actually improved with his replacement (Remember Go vs Go-Go in the Philbin era? That was for Pouncey because he was too much of an idiot to understand the plays as called, so he had to be reminded of the protection at the snap. As soon as he got hurt that year, we stopped doing it). Suh was a good player, but drastically underperformed relative to his contract. He is better than anyone currently on the roster at DT, but not by enough to justify his cost. He had to go to fix the Dolphins' cap issues. There will be a dropoff in the middle of the defensive line, but whether that dropoff is enough to make the difference in one game is to be determined. Landry was a loss as well, but in this business you can't pay a slot receiver $15 million/year and fit a decent squad under the cap. While he caught a ton of volume, he had less than 1,000 yards receiving on over 100 catches. The volume can easily be replaced between Amendola, Wilson, and Gesicki. Hopefully at a great YPC rate while we are at it (though the prominence of screen passes against CAR has me slightly less optimistic on that front). His greed landed him in career purgatory with the Browns, where he is already getting unsportsmanlike penalties and heat for playing dirty. It's what we should have done to Ajayi. Speaking of, our backfield should be much improved. Drake, Ballage, Perry, and Gore are a good combination of youth/experience and speed/power. Everyone assumes losing Ajayi midway last season decimated our backfield, but once Williams got hurt and Drake became the featured back he led the league in rushing for the period he started. It was only 4 or 5 games, but it's enough to say that the backfield won't be a weakness of the team.
