By the end of the year, the better teams were beginning to out-scheme our scheme. They'd found ways to pick up those blitzes. Ogbah had one sack in the last 6 games-- he completely disappeared. As good as he was in the first half of the season, teams found a way to neutralize him later on.
By the time we hit Buffalo, they had our scheme, and better players... and it got ugly. Now don't get me wrong, I spent the offseason SCREAMING that we needed more pass rush and Phillips may be enough... maybe, but we're awfully shallow. If Ogbah or Phillips miss a game, there is absolutely zero behind them. Strowbridge is a run-stopper, Render and Ledbetter are back of the roster UDFA types, Butler and Seiler are tackles, no matter where they line up... pass rush is NOT their game.
I get that people like AVG and think he'll replace all of KVN's production, but on many downs, BOTH were in the game at the same time, and while AVG should replace KVN, no one was brought in to replace AVG... so, net loss.
IF Phillips contends for DROY, and IF Ogbah and AVG both take huge leaps... and IF all three stay healthy... then maybe, but I look at all those IFs and I see a house of cards. I still remember the year where Wake got injured and our pass rush just disappeared along with him.
Now... I've argued this strenuously, but I do realize that you can't fix everything in one year... and I did bring this up in a thread dedicated to 'what could go wrong', rather than "what WILL go wrong", or "how we screwed up". I'm still hopeful, but I've got a stand up, pass-rushing SSLB in the first round of 2022 on my card, I just have not penciled in a name yet.