He isn't very good in pass protection.
There just isn't any proof of that.
There are supposedly hundreds of reports that he was bad in training camp practices, but in the games where we have quality video to see for ourselves, he's been good.
He played reasonably well in 2 games at LT in 2012. He was better at LT than Free was in 2011. He split series in 4 games a RT with Free and played at the same level as Free.
I'm not making any guarantees that he would be better against starters than Free, but I find it less than smart that people want to cut players based on some "reports" by media that have proven to be wrong often. "Reports" are for the off-season when we don't have access to see the players. It's preseason now and we can see for ourselves what happens on the field.
It's the false narratives by media and fans that bug me more than an issue about this specific player.
It's like Fuzzy was saying about the defense in another thread. The narrative is that they're completely hopeless, but they actually didn't give up TDs at a high rate and did get turnovers. They just don't dominate or play the style that people want to see played.
This is also similar to the Hitchens or Fred draft pick issue where fans/media proclaimed them a "reach" because the draft media had them ranked lower than where they were picked. Somehow the narrative is that draft media are exactly correct on all rankings which I think you know can't be possible.
I'm sure that you've experienced the casual Cowboy fan narrative where all losses are blamed on Romo. It's the same concept. Everybody's got a super strong opinion despite not spending any time gaining knowledge to support their opinion. They can always find some national media guy that agrees with them so it must be true.
The narrative can go the other way also. Ben Bass was going to be a Star according to many. He still might turn out to be a good player with the Pats, but there was far less evidence that he could perform as an NFL player than what I've seen with Parnell. Crawford has been hyped by the Cowboys and their media dept. and I'm hopeful that it comes true, but we really haven't seen any proof at this point. Minter was an overnight Star after the Ravens game despite being abysmal against the run.
With all of the hyperbole that goes around, I just enjoy trying to grind through some real analysis as an alternative to the hype. Jermey Parnell just happens to be a player that fit my criteria of a player that's has talent but where the hype is that he's terrible. He's not the only player that I've taken this approach with. This off-season people predicted that Justin Durant would be cut and I said that he was better than advertised. I even posted an analysis of him here. In 2012 I said that Bernadeau had potential to get better while everybody else was calling for his head to be chopped off. I posted some analysis of Bernadeau that off-season after the 2012 season. I said in the 2012 preseason that Ron Leary had excellent potential because he had the physical ability of a good NFL player but just needed time to learn. People wanted to cut the RB Randle last season. I said we didn't we didn't really see enough of him to know one way or the other.
I'm not saying that I'm always right. I did think that AOA would be a good NFL player and I wasn't sure that it was worth keeping Beasley as a niche player that can't play special teams. I thought Bruce Carter was going to be good. I thought Drew Henson had potential. I even tried watched him in NFL Europe.
Summary: Whether I'm right or wrong, my point is to actually watch the players and not buy the fan/media narratives.
