There was a lot of talk, during the draft, when we took Jaylon. I'm not sure you can go back and review those and what's more, I'm not sure it would be a good use of your time. However, suffice to say that there were a lot of fans that really wanted to draft him and liked him. There were also those who didn't love him. I watched him at ND and I didn't love him. He was a run and chase LB. He was not a pressure OLB, although physically, he could have been but he really wasn't. He only had like 7 Sacks in three seasons at ND. His best asset was to go sideline to sideline and to basically chase down guys. That's what he was always good at. What he wasn't good at was taking on OLs and getting off blocks. His speed allowed him to run around blocks or get by the blocks before OLs could get angles to get a block on him but in the Pros, that changed. In the Pros, guys get blocks so you gotta be able to stack and shed and if you can't do that, then you can't be an effective all around LB. This team doesn't have that guy on the roster. We have too many LBs who run and chase. LVE isn't really that guy either because of his physical limitations. Lee can do that but he's too long in the tooth to do that over an entire season.
For the record, Smith is a good dude, I believe. He's a good guy but he doesn't fit. I've thought that from the time I saw him at ND and I've seen nothing, at all, to change that initial evaluation. This is why drafting is so important. You can't fall in love with physical capabilities and just ignore all else that goes into the position. One of the very best players I ever saw was Lawrence Taylor. Not only was he a generational athlete but he had the mentality to do all the things you needed to, to be a great, great player at his position. Without both, he's not a HOF player.
We tend to fall in love with certain attributes and overlook the intangibles. We seem to not have a clear direction in how we build a team. A lot of this, on the Defensive side of the ball seems to me, to be a lack of vision or perhaps importance attached to the Defense. Our team doesn't view the Defense as the difference maker. We look to the Offense to be the focal point. We take the attitude that if we can score X points, we just need the Defense to be average or allow only average play. You don't hear our team say things like, we expect our Defense to be top 10 or top 5 or lead the league. We are always, just give us an average result and we will win it with the Offense. It's a lack of focus, a lack of importance attached to the Defense and I feel like it lends itself to our draft process as well. We don't have a clear vision of who or what we want to be as a Defense. We try to piece together something that will just be average. Well, that's not the way you build a defense. The most important thing about building any unit in Football is understand who and what you want to be. It's not the athletes. It's about knowing what you want to be and what kind of players you need to fill specific roles within that philosophy. You have to build depth and you have to have players with the right attributes to fill roles, not just the physical but the mental and yes, the will to be that guy. Not every player will be that 240/250 pound guy who is willing to take on a 310 pound Guard in the whole and turn the back in. Not every guy is that guy who will meet that pulling Guard, scrap and make the tackle. Some guys will try to run around that block and as result, disrupt the scheme. You can't have that and we draft too many of those guys. We might have done something similar along the OL with our interior lineman but we will need to see how that plays out.
Smith is a good guy I think but he doesn't seem to fit and that's not his fault. That's the teams fault because it was all there on tape, before we ever drafted him.
