Packer Defensive Roster Improvements?

[Dantés]

Fans tend to only look to the new faces on the roster as sources of improvement. Player development isn't ****. And yet when you look around the league, a lot of improvement from season to season is driven by existing players making progress. Obviously free agency accounts for some of it, and the draft as well (though I would say the draft is routinely overrated in terms of year 1 results). But fans often seem to think they know who a player is after only a year or two.

Now it can't be denied that TT has given himself less of a margin by eschewing free agency for the most part on defense. There's no argument there. He's put almost all his chips on the development of previously drafted players entering their 2nd or 3rd seasons. And there are a lot of them. Kenny Clark, Dean Lowry, Kyler Fackrell, Jake Ryan, Blake Martinez, Damarious Randall, and Quinten Rollins all figure to have substantial roles and are 2nd/3rd year players. For better or worse, this is who Ted Thompson is.

So I think it's fair to say that defensive improvement lives or dies on player development. But it doesn't make any sense to argue that player development isn't a viable avenue of improvement. Clearly it is. If it fails to work, it's a failure of execution, not of strategy.

 

[Dantés]

It's even unrealistic to expect the majority of the young players on defense to significantly improve though.

Why is that? All of them-- Clark, Lowry, Fackrell, Ryan, Martinez, Randall, Rollins-- have shown some positives to this point to varying degrees. Young players tend to make their biggest steps forward in the first two offseasons. Why is it unrealistic to expect that the majority will improve? I'm not talking about a slew of all-pros, but experience, coaching, training, etc. tend to make players better, not worse.

I expect that most of them will be better this season than they were last season. The questions for me are of degree and health. Can they improve enough to make the needed impact? Can the majority stay healthy? Those are wait and see questions.

To be clear, I'm not expecting a huge leap. I think in the record prediction thread, I guessed 14th as for scoring defense this season. But going from 21st to 14th is respectable improvement, if not incredible. A middle of the road defense and a great offense can take you a long way.

 

[AmishMafia]

It's even unrealistic to expect the majority of the young players on defense to significantly improve though.

Your statement, you may recall, is that there is no reason to think the Packers will improve. Young player i improvement is a reason whether you think they will or not.

It is very likely that most of the players i listed will improve, to some degree. There are synergies that will occur with better play from each player. If Clark takes a step, that will put pressure on the QB. Maybe they slide a guard over to help, maybe the fraction of a second it takes for the guard to glance over gives Martinez a 1/4 step advantage and he is able to blitz around him to pressure the QB into an incompletion.

To expect all the young players to suddenly become JJ Watt is silly and not necessary to have defensive improvement.

 

[gopkrs]

Am looking for Kenny Clark to improve a lot. My dark horse is Kentrell Brice. I think he may play the pass much better than Burnett (who I don't think plays the pass well), and he brings the wood. Granted Burnett is probably better sized for playing closer to the line of scrimmage, but is that really the main responsibility for a safety. IMHO we need a safety more for some picks and defense of the pass. Anyway, I'll be rooting for Kentrell to do well.

 

[Deleted member 6794]

Fans tend to only look to the new faces on the roster as sources of improvement. Player development isn't ****. And yet when you look around the league, a lot of improvement from season to season is driven by existing players making progress. Obviously free agency accounts for some of it, and the draft as well (though I would say the draft is routinely overrated in terms of year 1 results). But fans often seem to think they know who a player is after only a year or two.

Now it can't be denied that TT has given himself less of a margin by eschewing free agency for the most part on defense. There's no argument there. He's put almost all his chips on the development of previously drafted players entering their 2nd or 3rd seasons. And there are a lot of them. Kenny Clark, Dean Lowry, Kyler Fackrell, Jake Ryan, Blake Martinez, Damarious Randall, and Quinten Rollins all figure to have substantial roles and are 2nd/3rd year players. For better or worse, this is who Ted Thompson is.

So I think it's fair to say that defensive improvement lives or dies on player development. But it doesn't make any sense to argue that player development isn't a viable avenue of improvement. Clearly it is. If it fails to work, it's a failure of execution, not of strategy.

Why is that? All of them-- Clark, Lowry, Fackrell, Ryan, Martinez, Randall, Rollins-- have shown some positives to this point to varying degrees. Young players tend to make their biggest steps forward in the first two offseasons. Why is it unrealistic to expect that the majority will improve? I'm not talking about a slew of all-pros, but experience, coaching, training, etc. tend to make players better, not worse.

I expect that most of them will be better this season than they were last season. The questions for me are of degree and health. Can they improve enough to make the needed impact? Can the majority stay healthy? Those are wait and see questions.

To be clear, I'm not expecting a huge leap. I think in the record prediction thread, I guessed 14th as for scoring defense this season. But going from 21st to 14th is respectable improvement, if not incredible. A middle of the road defense and a great offense can take you a long way.

I posted some information about player development in another thread but unfortunately can't find it at the moment. If I remember correctly only close to 35% of the players drafted on defense during Thompson's tenure improved significantly during their second or third season.

That makes me believe that it's completely unrealistic to expect the defense to improve solely based on the development of youngsters that were on the roster last season.

 

[Deleted member 6794]

Your statement, you may recall, is that there is no reason to think the Packers will improve. Young player i improvement is a reason whether you think they will or not.

It is very likely that most of the players i listed will improve, to some degree. There are synergies that will occur with better play from each player. If Clark takes a step, that will put pressure on the QB. Maybe they slide a guard over to help, maybe the fraction of a second it takes for the guard to glance over gives Martinez a 1/4 step advantage and he is able to blitz around him to pressure the QB into an incompletion.

Unfortunately it's not likely at all that most of the players you listed will improve to some degree.

I stand by my evaluation that I don't expect the defense to improve this season.

Am looking for Kenny Clark to improve a lot. My dark horse is Kentrell Brice. I think he may play the pass much better than Burnett (who I don't think plays the pass well), and he brings the wood. Granted Burnett is probably better sized for playing closer to the line of scrimmage, but is that really the main responsibility for a safety. IMHO we need a safety more for some picks and defense of the pass. Anyway, I'll be rooting for Kentrell to do well.

Brice might end up as the best free safety on the roster if he's capable to reduce the number of mental mistakes.

 

[Dantés]

I posted some information about player development in another thread but unfortunately can't find it at the moment. If I remember correctly only close to 35% of the players drafted on defense during Thompson's tenure improved significantly during their second or third season.

That makes me believe that it's completely unrealistic to expect the defense to improve solely based on the development of youngsters that were on the roster last season.

I'd be interested to take a look, but there's a caveat here. The players we're specifically discussing are guys who were drafted in the first four rounds and have already demonstrated a level of capability on the field, whether in sub package or starting roles. I have no expectations regarding Christian Ringo. I'm guessing that if you looked only at the first four rounds and at guys who showed a level of capability in years one and two, you'd find that the % is higher. And, to reiterate, I highly doubt that every last player from the list in question improves. That is unrealistic. But I do see reason to think that most of them will take a step forward given what we've seen. The question then remains-- is that enough?

 

[Dantés]

Looking back on teams whose defenses improved substantially last season made me really jealous of the Cowboys and their DC. Marinelli squeezes so much out of that unit. He's a great teacher, he simplifies his scheme and lets guys play fast, he gets maximum effort out of his guys. I would love a coordinator like that.

 

[Deleted member 6794]

I'd be interested to take a look, but there's a caveat here. The players we're specifically discussing are guys who were drafted in the first four rounds and have already demonstrated a level of capability on the field, whether in sub package or starting roles. I have no expectations regarding Christian Ringo. I'm guessing that if you looked only at the first four rounds and at guys who showed a level of capability in years one and two, you'd find that the % is higher. And, to reiterate, I highly doubt that every last player from the list in question improves. That is unrealistic. But I do see reason to think that most of them will take a step forward given what we've seen. The question then remains-- is that enough?

I found the post I was referring to, here's the information posted a while ago:

Let's take a look at the Packers draft picks since the new CBA and rules for offseason practices were introduced six years ago.

Here's a list of players I believe significantly progressed during their rookie deals:

2011: Cobb, House and Guy (although with another team)

2012: Perry, Hayward, Daniels

2013: Bakhtiari, Tretter, Hyde and Johnson (with another team)

2014: Clinton-Dix, Adams, Linsley

2015: Montgomery, Ryan, Ripkowski

That's a total of 16 players out of 46 picks, for a rate of 34.8%. Even by removing Sherrod and Franklin from the list it seems it is decidedly tilted towards regression.

 

[PikeBadger]

Am looking for Kenny Clark to improve a lot. My dark horse is Kentrell Brice. I think he may play the pass much better than Burnett (who I don't think plays the pass well), and he brings the wood. Granted Burnett is probably better sized for playing closer to the line of scrimmage, but is that really the main responsibility for a safety. IMHO we need a safety more for some picks and defense of the pass. Anyway, I'll be rooting for Kentrell to do well.

Imo, if Clark improves alot, we're going to be very, very tough to beat. He's the one guy I think that could make the entire defense much more successful.

 

[Deleted member 6794]

Imo, if Clark improves alot, we're going to be very, very tough to beat. He's the one guy I think that could make the entire defense much more successful.

Clark already performed at a pretty high level late last season yet the Packers defense struggled down the road. The backups at outside linebackers as well as the cornerbacks have to play way better for the team to be extremely tough to beat.

 

[Dantés]

Here's a link to the post I was referring to.

https://www.packerforum.com/threads...ers-still-lack-depth-on-defense.72622/page-3#

So as we're talking about top 4 round players on defense going back to 2011, that list would include:

Davon House, Nick Perry, Jerel Worthy, Mike Daniels, Casey Hayward, Jerron McMillian, Datone Jones, Haha Clinton-Dix, Khyri Thornton, and Carl Bradford. That's 10 guys. I'm stopping at 2014 because I don't see why we would use 2015/16 class data as those are the guys whose progress we're actually trying to predict.

In my opinion, House, Perry, Daniels, Hayward, Jones, and Clinton-Dix made measurable forward progress, while Worthy, McMillian, Thornton, and Bradford did not.

That would be 60%.

But this is still a little imperfect because we're talking about guys who have already showed something, and some of these guys (esp. Bradford) never showed anything.

In any case, I don't think your 35% number applies very well to the guys in question. We will see how the % plays out with the 15/16 classes. Hopefully there aren't any total whiffs in there like the four mentioned above. Personally, I think that Clark, Lowry, Fackrell, Ryan, Martinez, Randall, and Rollins have all already demonstrated more promise than Worthy, McMillian, Thornton, or Bradford ever did.

 

[Poppa San]

At this point I'd take players understanding the scheme and knowing the call and alignment. That would improve the defense as much or more than any player "improvement" whatever nebulous ratings you want to attach to that.

 

[Deleted member 6794]

So as we're talking about top 4 round players on defense going back to 2011, that list would include:

Davon House, Nick Perry, Jerel Worthy, Mike Daniels, Casey Hayward, Jerron McMillian, Datone Jones, Haha Clinton-Dix, Khyri Thornton, and Carl Bradford. That's 10 guys. I'm stopping at 2014 because I don't see why we would use 2015/16 class data as those are the guys whose progress we're actually trying to predict.

In my opinion, House, Perry, Daniels, Hayward, Jones, and Clinton-Dix made measurable forward progress, while Worthy, McMillian, Thornton, and Bradford did not.

That would be 60%.

But this is still a little imperfect because we're talking about guys who have already showed something, and some of these guys (esp. Bradford) never showed anything.

In my opinion it's generous to include both House and Jones in the list of players that made measureable progress though, possibly taking the number closer to a success rate of 40%.

In any case, I don't think your 35% number applies very well to the guys in question. We will see how the % plays out with the 15/16 classes. Hopefully there aren't any total whiffs in there like the four mentioned above. Personally, I think that Clark, Lowry, Fackrell, Ryan, Martinez, Randall, and Rollins have all already demonstrated more promise than Worthy, McMillian, Thornton, or Bradford ever did.

I truly hope you're right about the majority of the players you listed improving over the course of the 2017 season although I'm not convinced of it happening.

 

[Dantés]

In my opinion it's generous to include both House and Jones in the list of players that made measureable progress though, possibly taking the number closer to a success rate of 40%.

I truly hope you're right about the majority of the players you listed improving over the course of the 2017 season although I'm not convinced of it happening.

Well you included House in your own list, Cap. So I'm not sure what to make of that.

Jones was a disappointment of a 1st round pick, but he did get better as he worked through his rookie deal. So I think he qualifies. And he illustrates my point-- I'm not talking about all of these guys becoming studs. Rather, just the majority of them making some measure of progress. Some more than others, as we see when comparing some of those guys previously mentioned (e.g. Mike Daniels and Davon House both made progress, but the former far more than the latter).

If I had to guess, I would say that Clark, Lowry, Fackrell, Randall, and Ryan show some real progress from last year while Rollins/Martinez don't really move forward. If I'm correct, then the measure of their progress, the degree of health, and he help of new additions (i.e. House, RJF, and rookies) would dictate whether or not that's enough for the defense to make significant progress.

 

[Deleted member 6794]

Well you included House in your own list, Cap. So I'm not sure what to make of that.

Jones was a disappointment of a 1st round pick, but he did get better as he worked through his rookie deal. So I think he qualifies. And he illustrates my point-- I'm not talking about all of these guys becoming studs. Rather, just the majority of them making some measure of progress. Some more than others, as we see when comparing some of those guys previously mentioned (e.g. Mike Daniels and Davon House both made progress, but the former far more than the latter).

Well, I was being generous by including House in my list as well.

While it's possible that the majority of the players you mentioned improve at a Jonesesque level I'm not convinced that would be good enough for the unit to perform on a significantly higher level.

 

[Dantés]

Well, I was being generous by including House in my list as well.

While it's possible that the majority of the players you mentioned improve at a Jonesesque level I'm not convinced that would be good enough for the unit to perform on a significantly higher level.

If all any of them did was make small gains a la Jones, then I think you're right. But what I was saying is that it makes sense to expect some guys to take small steps while others make large ones.

 

[Poppa San]

I'd just take the CBs getting beat contesting the ball over them looking at each other after letting the receiver go and him catching a wide open pass. Or two DBs playing the slot guy with the outside guy uncontested.
IOW, play the scheme as designed and more importantly KNOW THE FRIGGIN' CALL, your responsibility in it, and the defensive alignment on every snap. 5 backs in man and one in zone directly led to the Ariz OT loss.

 

[Deleted member 6794]

If all any of them did was make small gains a la Jones, then I think you're right. But what I was saying is that it makes sense to expect some guys to take small steps while others make large ones.

It makes sense to expect some players not improving at all while others even regressing though.

 

[Reese2017]

Some don't see any improvements in our defense. Others, like myself, see a lot of promise in this team. So looking at position groups, are we better, worse, or the same from this time last year?



CB
Much Better

Keep Randall, Rollins, Hawkins, Gunter, Goodson
Loss Shields
Gains King, House
Can't get much worse. I liked Shields, but he wasn't a great matchup to some of the WR threats out there. The regression of our 2 first year players, Rollins and Randall, along with the career ending injury to Shields, really messed up this season. When your 4th string UFA CB is covering Julio Jones, you know things did not go as planned. Groin injuries to Rollins and Randall in training camp hopefully account for their regression after promising rookie seasons. Addition of Kevin King is a longer term investment that won't solve our problems immediately. Hopefully he is up to speed by seasons end and is starting to make some plays. Expect a few rookie mistakes along the way. House is a bigger addition this season in my mind. He played very well as a Packer, covering the opponents #1 receiver and doing a decent job. He will be helped this time around by a much improved S corps.

S
Better
Keep HHCD, Burnet, Brice
Gains Josh Jones
Our deepest most talented position. Ha Ha is continuing to develop. Burnet has maxed out. Both were hamstrung last season with an inferior CB crew. Improvements in the DBs should allow the both starters a little more freedom - and they are both smart and active. Not worrying and covering for the DBs they will be able to free lance and make more plays. The addition of Josh Jones is huge. He is a different player than we have had in a long while. He is very a very athletic tone-setter. He will be providing a lot of leadership. I am betting he sees the field as much as King as the dime DB playing some kind of mutant CB/LB/S role. Jones will have an impact and be our DROY. I think with the improvements at CB, HaHa is really going to come into his own. I am predicting he will lead the league in INTs for safeties and have a big year. A friend, who knows football, is a big Brice fan and is predicting big things. Me? I'm not sure he will see the field much, but it's a comfort to know there is some quality depth to develop.

ILB
Better
Keep Ryan, Martinez, Jones
Losses/Gains None
Ryan and Martinez are decent players. Ryan started to play well towards the end of the season and Martinez did worse. Martinez looked promising in the preseason, but did not click during the season. An offseason of preparation should do him wonders. Joe Thomas has a different set of skills and is still developing. Not really expecting much more from him though. These players are all young and all appear to be nowhere near topped out. Martinez and Ryan still have lots of unrealized upside and they appear to be trending in that direction.

OLB
Worse
Keep CM3, Perry, Elliot, Frackrell
Gains Biegel
Losses Peppers, Jones
Clay is on the decline. Perry is a concern. He cashed in big, hope he keeps up the hard work. Peppers loss is minimal, he wasn't nearly as effective this season and it is easy to forecast things will continue to decline. Jones loss isn't much of a setback either. The 'worse' rating is basex on the decline of Clay and a bit on the loss of veteran depth. Frackrel is still an unknown but should be better, he spent the off-season dedicated on getting better and it shows. I suspect last season's development was hampered still from the lingering college injury. Biegel - I am not a believer. Hope he does well, it is a nice story, but I just don't think he will help much. His foot injury certainly didn't do much to improve my opinion. Elliot, the eternal tease. This is the year to shi* or get off the pot. Currently it looks like we are in the decline, but there is certainly some youthful talent that could surprise.

DL
Better
Keep Daniels, Clark, Lowry, Ringo
Gains Ricky Jean-Francois, Adams
Losses Guion
Additions of Ricky Jean-Francois, Lowry 's 2nd year step, and drafting Adams should improve the depth. Daniels is a stud - probably plateaued as a player, but I trust him to maintain his level of play. Clark showed great promise as a rookie. I am anticipating a significant step up in his game this season. Guion may have his career on a thin string. Ringo may yet step it up. We will have more and better depth this season. A more rested line will be more effective. If Adams can come in a play a dozen snaps per game, getting his feet underneath him, he can have an impact. RJF is a solid player. Lowry is a player a lot of people are excited about. Clark began looking effective down the stretch last season as well. If both can build on their rookie year, we may have a special DL.


Overall, there are some synergies on defense that may happen. Repairing the hole at CB, will give the OLBs a fraction of a second more time to get a sack. Our safeties can range to the feel of the play, rather than cheating over the top of poor coverage. We have a lot of young talent that appears poised to step up. There are no holes at this time and significant depth at S and DL. Sure it would be nice to have some more experienced depth at CB, but we do have some interesting youngsters. If 2 or 3 of the players showed promise last season can take a step, and another surprise player can bring some impact plays, this can be a very good defense.

How do you get better getting a31 year old from the colts who didn't want him worst d line in league ringo doesn't have the *** but hey we got better do you people know anything about football

 

[AmishMafia]

How do you get better getting a31 year old from the colts who didn't want him worst d line in league ringo doesn't have the *** but hey we got better do you people know anything about football

Know more about football than you grasped third grade communication skills your posts are painful to read or understand not to mention your tact not sure who we got from the Colts not sure you are talking about have not read any of your posts in other threads because they are difficult to comprehend and when the rambling mash of text is deciphered it reveals next to nothing in value

 

[Mondio]

How do you get better getting a31 year old from the colts who didn't want him worst d line in league ringo doesn't have the *** but hey we got better do you people know anything about football

well there are 2 pages illustrating why people think we could be better. Maybe try reading them and coming up with something better? and for whatever deficiencies the Amish may have in football acumen, he makes up for with composition and grammar. But we're not allowed to talk about that