I’ve been trying to see why our defense has not been able to be a force and shutdown people. When you have a marquee player like DeMarcus Ware, your defense gets instanst credibility to some extent, but that’s where it ends in Dallas.
I’ve come to the conclusion that our draft picks, mainly from the Parcells era, have been busts, or just marginal at best. We’ll look at the players Parcells drafted who still remain on the team:
2003:
CB Terence Newman - probably one of the better players drafted, but may have peaked already, age and injuries are becoming more frequent. Still a good starter, not the shutdown player he was a few yrs ago.
LB Bradie James - let’s face it, he’s just ok, he’s not a playmaker. He’s had an up and down career, but not much of a force to be honest. He’s not going to get better.
2004:
This was the worst draft class, no one remains on the team, Bruce Thornton was a bust, Nate Jones and Jacques Reeves were horrible, and Patrick Crayton remains the only player from that draft class, and his status on the team is not too high right now. No defensive players remain from 2004.
2005:
Here’s where we get into the meat of our defense. The rule is 3yrs later, and guess what, we missed on most of these guys.
LB DeMarcus Ware - by far the best player on the team, and top 3 defensive player in the NFL without a doubt, ’nuff said.
DE Marcus Spears - ok, here we go…Spears is a starter on this defense and he’s a bust, he’s the training camp sweetheart, countless compliments and all this crap, then when the season gets here, its the same old story, he just disappears, he’s an official bust.
LB Kevin Burnett - a 2nd rounder, a bust. Too many injuries, dating back to before he signed his contract, how lame was that? and not much impact on the team, he’ll be gone after this season.
DE Chris Canty - 4th rounder, thought to have been a steal on draft day…3yrs later, he’s a bust too. He’s not blowing people up with his size? lame. He’s not making plays or pressuring the QB. He’s playing to his draft status, he’s a 4th rounder alright, his steal status has been retracted.
NT Jay Ratliff - 7th rounder, who’s playing like a 1st rounder. Besides Ware, Ratliff is the other guy on defense you can count on every game. So, that’s it…two good players on defense right now, this year, 2008…
2006:
This was the class of defensive backups. We didn’t pull any defensive starters from Parcells’ last draft class.
LB Bobby Carpenter - who knows what the heck happened here? He was great at Ohio, but did Parcells stunt his growth and damage him forever? We’ll never know. What we do know is that he can’t beat out marginal players like James and Ayodele last year, so what does that say?
DE Jason Hatcher - I still have love for Hatcher, he’s my player, and he does make plays when he’s in there. To this day, I don’t know why they don’t start Hatcher over Spears…who cares if Spears was a first rounder, get over it, he’s a bust, take the mistake like a man, and start Hatcher. For now, Hatcher is a backup, but he could start on many teams in this league.
DB Pat Watkins - a supposed 5th round steal..not anymore, he’s just a minimal 5th rounder type of player. Our hopes of him being a ballhawk with his size never manifested into anything. He’s a backup too.
Wade’s draft classes are on pace to being just as useless as Parcells’
2007:
Looks like the kicker, Nick Folk, will be the highlight of this draft class, how pathetic is that?
LB Anthony Spencer - he’s still at a TBD stage, but if his injuries keep coming up, he’ll be another Kevin Burnett and we don’t need another one of those roster spots down the drain. Has potential, but not making plays as of yet.
The rest of this draft class is a colassal mess, we already dropped a 3rd rounder on James Marten, Isaiah Stanback is a complete waste of a roster spot, Deon Anderson is not big enough to be a fullback, we should have drafted Owen Schmitt, but we didn’t, and now we’re here with a solid special teamer, but just an average FB.
DBs Courtney Brown and Allen Ball are Nate Jones and Jacques Reeves clones, and that’s just not going to get us anywhere except for more deep passes their ways for easy TDs. No good
2008:
TBD, we won’t know into another season or two.
As you can tell, the core of our defense is made up of marginal players. Forget their draft status, alot of these guys simply do not have the playmaking pedigree that Ware and Ratliff posess. Its weak stuff man, I think when we look at the coaching coupled with the players we have starting on defense, the recipe for a Super Bowl defense is not there, it just is not going to be there. We’ve had the two best 3-4 gurus in the NFL take on this defense and they were unable to muster any sort of dominant play. The reason is the players. We missed on alot of defensive players.
This will be the same format as last week. Expect the Giants to come after Brad Johnson, and probably moreso. The Giants defense is way better than the Bucs, and Steve Spagnolo gets the most out of his players. To me, this is somewhat of a measuring stick for our defense. If Wade is indeed making the calls as we all think, then we should see a repeat performance and better gameplanning.
