Letting Lofton Walk Is Only Okay If:

[The Dirty Bird]

Letting Lofton walk is only okay IF we sign Mario Williams and one of the available defensive tackles: Kendall Langford, Jason Jones, Red Bryant, or Sedrick Ellis is released.

I assure you if Lofton was a 3 down linebacker that could cover the likes of Jimmy Graham, Greg Olson, and Kellen Winslow over the middle then we'd be breaking the bank to keep him. However Curtis is a thumper (a great one at that) and can't cover -- thus he is a liability in pass defense and this is the very liability that has been our undoing in the playoffs for the past few years.

We need an impact player or two on defense to truly upgrade our D. Lofton is being replaced by a competition between a hopefully healthy Lofa Tatupu and a progressing Akeem Dent (supposedly a Lofton clone). Sean Weatherspoon is emerging as a star at WLB, and Nicholas is a decent if not solid SLB. If the Raiders let loose Kamerion Wimbley I'd be clamoring for Mario and Kamerion as our 4-3 SLB. If we didn't extend DeCoud I'd say our two most pressing needs would be DE and S (LaRon Landry), but we did.

Right now if we sign Mario Williams to a big contract, and instead of a second mega contract we split that money between 4-3 DTs Kendall Langford, Red Bryant and OT Jared Gaither we will be light years ahead of where we were last year in terms of personnel abilities. Adding two 300+ lb DTs up front who can also rush the passer with Mario Williams as Abe's replacement and Kroy and Ray battling for snaps on the other side, our defensive line should be tops in the NFC.

What then do we do in the draft? Stephen Hill of course to give us some insane 3 WR sets. Explanation here:

[MattRyan2Canton]

A TOPIC SO AWESOME HE STARTED 10 times

lofton can cover just not very well.

Edited March 11, 2012 by MattRyan2Canton

[The Dirty Bird]

sorry for that, the board kept saying error last night and then when it finally went through I logged off.

Didn't realize it started 5 identical threads