I like all the moves made yesterday. Paulsen is a sneaky good pick up at TE, Sitton improves our line, and as much as I love Robbie Gould his time had come. We got better yesterday.
Probably should post this on the Sitton thread but more than his ability to start at center or LG, it's the flexibility he gives them in the event of any injury.
If Bob Massie goes down, for example, they could slide Long over to RT, Sitton to RG, Larsen to C and Whitehair to LG.
If Sitton goes down Whitehair could fill LG and we'd be back at Sept 3.
If Larsen goes down Whitehair or Sitton could slide over to C/LG
Truthfully, it's the depth that makes this move. Someone on that line will miss time this year and being able to smoothly accept that and plow forward should help a ton. When Grasu gets back, we'll have excellent depth and OL will (barring more ACL tears and back issues) be a strength.
The one question mark is still the swing tackle. If Leno goes down who goes there? We really going to trust Muke Adams or are they going to move Long over and have Sitton play RG?
I like all the moves made yesterday. Paulsen is a sneaky good pick up at TE, Sitton improves our line, and as much as I love Robbie Gould his time had come. We got better yesterday.
This ^^^^
And If Long can play at 85% - 90% with his labrum issue, we may have a really solid interior running game.
So this is where I am looking to see some coaching magic. I want to see how they reshuffle the line. There is no doubt that Sitton is a good guard. The question is.... is Long hurt and so do they just make the easy decision to put him at Longs position? If not, that's where it gets interesting. We have good Guards right now. So unless Long is hurt, you don't throw 10M at someone just to have a third good G. They plan on moving the line around to cover C. Question is... do we really have a good C in the bunch. In other words, 10M on a C right now would have been great for a probowl C. Instead we got a Probowl G. How do we strengthen the line by making the right decisions? What will the line look like? Any guesses? The wild card is Long. Is he going to play or not?
Fox has said all along that Long will play and had he been allowed to speak for himself I'm sure he would say the same. He's not the kind of guy whose gonna sit unless they make him sit and if they can fit him with a sling and he can deal with some pain he'll play. That's his mentality.
My guess is that Sitton goes to LG and Whitehair keeps taking snaps at LG and OC but Larsen will start for now. How this effects LA Kush (Couldn't resist giving him that nickname) I don't know. It's obvious Pace and Fox are pulling out all the stops as far as trying to upgrade the OL so all we can do is sit back now and see how they play it.
They aren't paying Sitton $10 mil guaranteed to be a backup to anyone so he's gonna start somewhere soon and the logical place would be LG. Larsen looks like he can handle OC for now but later in the season Whitehair may be ready to take over. The nice thing is that we now have a more experienced OL and the luxury of working Whitehair at multiple positions in practice getting him acclimated to all of them.
Soul, Biggs tweeted that Bears plan on Sitton at LG and Larsen/WH competing for C. I would guess Larsen would start at C initially and WH would ride the bench until he gets some practice time in. That's good by me--Larsen is a better C than a G IMO and I'm sure they want a vet who knows the line calls in the middle with the season only a week away.
Question is: who gets cut to make room for JS? Is it Silatolu? Proszinski?
I like all the moves made yesterday. Paulsen is a sneaky good pick up at TE, Sitton improves our line, and as much as I love Robbie Gould his time had come. We got better yesterday.
The only thing I find a little strange about the TE sitch is that (Paulsen is mostly a blocker, right?) Miller is the only receiver of the bunch. Thought they'd want 2 pass catchers and one blocker.
I like all the moves made yesterday. Paulsen is a sneaky good pick up at TE, Sitton improves our line, and as much as I love Robbie Gould his time had come. We got better yesterday.
The only thing I find a little strange about the TE sitch is that (Paulsen is mostly a blocker, right?) Miller is the only receiver of the bunch. Thought they'd want 2 pass catchers and one blocker.
Thats the rep he's gotten...but I think thats more due the fact that Jordan Reed was the "pass catching" TE in washington, but coming out Paulsen had a scouting report as solid pass catching TE who could also block. Think of him as a poor mans Black Unicorn. He ran a 4.7 coming out of UCLA.
I like all the moves made yesterday. Paulsen is a sneaky good pick up at TE, Sitton improves our line, and as much as I love Robbie Gould his time had come. We got better yesterday.
The first two I'll give you but I will be very surprised if we find that Connor Barth is the equal of Robbie Gould this year. I think we made two steps forward at TE and OG but one step back at PK.
I like all the moves made yesterday. Paulsen is a sneaky good pick up at TE, Sitton improves our line, and as much as I love Robbie Gould his time had come. We got better yesterday.
The only thing I find a little strange about the TE sitch is that (Paulsen is mostly a blocker, right?) Miller is the only receiver of the bunch. Thought they'd want 2 pass catchers and one blocker.
Thats the rep he's gotten...but I think thats more due the fact that Jordan Reed was the "pass catching" TE in washington, but coming out Paulsen had a scouting report as solid pass catching TE who could also block. Think of him as a poor mans Black Unicorn. He ran a 4.7 coming out of UCLA.
That's good to hear, thanks. Now all we need is poor-mans-black-uni and glass-Miller to stay reasonably healthy.
I like all the moves made yesterday. Paulsen is a sneaky good pick up at TE, Sitton improves our line, and as much as I love Robbie Gould his time had come. We got better yesterday.
The only thing I find a little strange about the TE sitch is that (Paulsen is mostly a blocker, right?) Miller is the only receiver of the bunch. Thought they'd want 2 pass catchers and one blocker.
Look for them to possibly bring back Moeaki or Housler after week one.
