I think they had him second because of his athleticism, and the fact that he does have a variety of pass rush moves. Considering his off-field issues, but even more importantly that he rarely started at Alabama, and had problems with more complex defenses, I can't even begin to imagine why they had him rated #2. It doesn't matter how many moves he knows, how he uses those moves, or how athletic he is, if he can't get on the field due to lack of intelligence or being suspended due to off-field issues.
I'm still skeptical of Bowles..although I really loved what they did in the draft...It's pretty obvious MAc/Bowles were on the same page & had a sound plan. Even Bowles press conferences have gotten alittle better.. To your point..the passing D is the biggest enigma on the whole team EXCEPT for self inflicted wounds of all kinds..be it turnovers,penalties,misalignment, dropped passes, fumbles, missed loose ball opportunities on D,etc Pass rush aside,the 2 main issues from the pass D were communication & speed. It remains to be seen if the rookies can get on the field as well as contribute early..But if that does occur...both Maye & Adams are fantastic communicators...and both are upgrades in speed over both Pryor & Gilchrist. If we can at the very least eliminate the catastrophic big plays...we could see a sizable difference. No better way to see drastic improvement on pass D than a solid steady back end. These guys long term project to be much more than just steady.
23-30 Loss 20-26 Win 22-17 Loss 41-3 Loss- you my friend have referenced what we call in statistics an outlier. The other 3 games are all 1 score games, we've played them well and hell the two losses we had leads and just fell short.
Too bad they can't play at the same level of intensity and execution against all the other teams. The have no problem getting up for the Pats, and actually play above their abilities. But then they sink back to normal against the other teams and that's not good enough. I think that the artificially elevated performance -- guys playing above their historical performance metrics - against N.E. gives them a false indicator of their ability, and so they don't make the changes they really need to make. But this past season might have been the wake up call they needed, and while I'm not happy with all the changes they've made so far, at least they're trying to make changes. Hopefully, most of them will work out.
