I remember hearing that Taylor was pimp-slapping Wade Smith every other play in mini-camp. The optimism regarding Wade Smith was almost purely coach-driven, and came straight from the top in Dave Wannstedt.
There are many things Wannstedt shouldn't necessarily be blamed for, but he deserves every bit of the blame for the Wade Smith experiment at LT. That man never showed anything positive at the position yet DW kept apologizing for him and talking about how good he's going to be etc etc. If there's one thing on the message board that I can take pride in, it is my CONSISTENT stance regarding Wade Smith...specifically that he's not as good as everyone hopes/thinks. I saw him play one preseason game against Jacksonville...did a big writeup actually (if anyone wants to search for it)...and I couldn't believe how everyone seemed to take a blind eye to the mistakes he was making against Hugh Douglass. People looked at the bottom line, which was that Hugh didn't get any sacks on Smith...but an in-depth look showed that he didn't get any sacks because we mixed up running plays and bootlegs and 3-step drops, with hardly any opportunities whatsoever for deep throws, and plus we had double teams on Douglass. But I saw Smith on numerous occasions get beaten by Douglass. It was a sign of things to come, as Smith would allow something like 14 sacks that season including really important ones.
Then everyone expected Smith to make this herculean leap to being good all the sudden, in one offseason, just because he added a little bulk. To me, leaving the keys to the LT position to Smith was a glaring risk.
How awful is it, in retrospect, that in 2004 we returned only ONE starter to the offensive line, and that starter was WADE SMITH. The sole returner to the lineup SHOULD have been Todd Wade. You know, sometimes we get caught up in these explanations and rationalizations, and we stop looking at the big picture. I know hindsight is 20/20, but we really should have seen last year's dismal failure coming...
