Icness wrote:1. The OP was made in September. I'm assuming he's changed his feelings on Barkley. In fact, I'd be stunned if he hadn't.
I have warmed to Barkley but I still don't see anything special. Not top 10 special anyways. And a lot of people told him that when he was pondering to come out or not even after he tore it up late in the year.
2. Julio Jones had some issues coming out, mainly his brain and his hands. Blackmon isn't the freak athlete that Julio is, but he's a much more sound WR coming out.
Well said, and thanks for channeling me
I vastly prefer Blackmon to Jones. Did then and still do now.
One of the things I really found amusing last draft season was the rapid ascent of Julio Jones in workout season. He was certainly top 10 preseason 2010, maybe even top 5, but played his way down to the 20-30 range with a barrage of minor injuries, key drops, and mental mistakes. All that went out the window when he blazed a speed at the Combine that he never even came close to approaching on the field. It amazes me that Tom Dimitroff was the biggest sucker because other than that I think he's done a phenomenal job in ATL, yet his infatuation with 4.3 seconds in February has probably doomed the Falcons to being lucky to be one-and-done in any of the next three years.
The sad thing is that I don't think Dimitroff had a chance to really do anything with that Falcons team. Matt Ryan is just distressingly not special in any way, but he doesn't suck and Falcon fans are married to him because he's not Mike Vick so he can't really move on. Making it even worse is the fact that their OC sucked (Is Jacksonville going to be tanking the next few years OOC?)
The only hope that he had was really to put so many weapons on the field that Mularkey had to do something other than run for 3 yards on first and second down and then throw an out route short of the first down. It didn't happen. Turner's been run into the ground, Mularkey's the HC of Jacksonville
and the picks were, if not wasted, then not used nearly as effectively.
They'll say that they felt they needed to keep up with the Packers and Saints, but in reality the issue wasn't that they didn't have the right parts in the garage, it was the fact that their head engineer was an idiot and they're driver while not terrible, isn't good enough to keep up with Jimmy Johnson and Jeff Gordon. Julio is a nice part, how nice can be debated, but he certainly isn't going to make up for the short comings of Ryan and Mularkey.
From what I've heard in interviews and read in "The War Rooom" (interesting book btw) the Julio trade was the Bucks equivalent of the Joe Alexander pick. They fell in love with him in interviews, he looked great in workouts, he had potential out the ears and they talked themselves into him. They saw what the Lions were doing with Megatron (lol at Julio having 10% of the football skill that CJ has but whatever) and they saw what teams (mainly the Packers) were doing by spreading defenses out with multiple WRs so they were going for the best of both worlds, and then combining it with the Falcons identity of power running.
The logic was keep the Safeties back, force teams into Nickel and Dime Defenses and then pound them with Turner. But nobody respected Ryan's ability to hurt them deep and they kept guys in the box regardless of White and Julio. Turner was worn down because he's a RB who's had a crazy number of carries recently and he had a very poor year, their offensive line got worse with IDR the guy's name, going to the Rams. All of which lead to a very dissapointing year and Mularkey getting (fired) promoted to Jacksonville's HC
At least that's my understanding of the situation.
