Watching the ATL game replay, I made a point of rewinding each play to see what Raji was doing.
I did not take a snap count, but I'd guess he was out there for about 40 of ATL's 59 snaps. I believe he played every base snap, at RDE about 75% of the time, LDE for a few snaps and one snap at NT. He was in the nickel pass rush rotation with a fair number of snaps there. Here are my observations:
In about 2/3 of his snaps in a combination of base and nickel, run and pass, Raji was one-on-one with ATL's LG #63, Justin Blaylock, a decent player but no Pro Bowler. Raji was beaten on every one of those snaps, and Blaylock did not look like he was working that hard at it. In the first possession alone, Blaylock spun him around on a 4 yard gain and knocked him on his keester for an 8 yard gain on runs right at him. In the subsequent possession, Blalock put him on his knees where he was able to clog the hole so Jolly could make the tackle from the backside. I believe that was Raji's one assist. If one wanted to make the case that Raji got the better of Blaylock at least once, that's the closest play you'll find.
Raji was so ineffective in the passing game, by the 4th. quarter Blalock twice passed him off to the center to move out and double team Matthews off the edge. The center had no problem with him either. In case anybody's wondering, it looked like Daniels was the D-Line guy ATL targeted most often for double teams in the pass game.
As for this drawing double teams / clogging holes stuff we hear so much about, ATL certainly did not find it necessary and they were right. I saw only one clear run double team, that being in the 4th quarter where Raji had flipped sides to the LDE working against a familiar name, Konz at RG (evidently playing out of his regular position) together with the RT.
That's it...one run double team. I counted 2 pass double teams in the second half. It is unclear why ATL bothered.
Other than those 3 plays the closest things to double teams were (1) a pass rush where the center chipped in to help Blalock who didn't need it; the C was just looking for work, (2) two linemen might have been diving at Raji's feet on the goal line play action TD pass, but who can tell without the end zone shot (besides, that's what's done on the goal line regardless of who's in there) and (3) a play where Blalock passed Raji off to the RT away from the play to get out in front of a screen on the opposite side (calling that a double team would be stretch, but at least ATL had enough respect to put the OT on him to shut off Raji's back side pursuit).
Raji made one play in this game...he beat the RG, possible Konz but I did not catch the number, with an inside rush move to get a hit on Ryan resulting in an incompletion.
That's it.
In fact, Raji was not on the field in the final series of ATL's second to last possession where we stopped them, resulting in the missed 52 yarder. Raji was not on the field for the final two plays of ATL's final possession.
As far as I'm concerned, this is typical Raji play since the 2nd. half of the Bears game and, quite frankly, for a good part of the last 3 seasons.
I wouldn't pay him anything. You can't give him a typical $8 million/year deal because he's clearly nowhere near worth it. You can't give him a number significantly below that, because even if he took it (which he won't), he'll be both underachieving and pissed off.
Mark this down...Raji will not be on this team in 2014. Somebody will pay him more than he's worth and it won't be us.
