1 – QB – sorry but to me this is the key position. I’m not sold on Beck but I’m hardly on the Henne bandwagon. It isn’t for a lack of arms as much as perhaps a question of well, are any of them the answer???

2 – CB/S – Allen is our best corner but nobody thinks of him as a #1 guy. The safety spot is also unsettled….will Bell be solid as before his injury? Jason Allen is a mystery as well.

3 – Offensive Line – We need a starting quality left guard. Sure we have two guys competing but we need one guy who can be a solid starter as well as a competent backup.

ILB, CB, NT(depth), all the other positions we have enough “competition” to find enough starters

be the defensive end or pass rushing linebacker. I believe the run stuffer were addressed through free aancy and the draft. But speed, other than Jason Taylor, is still to be found out. This would be paramount to the coverage we have.

This is from yesterday’s ESPN chat with KC Joyner, the guy who has the metrics and stats to find out a players true effectiveness. His best one for CB’s is YPA (yards per attempt) which calculates how many passes are thrown towards a corner and how many yards are gained per.

Mikey(Lackawanna,NY): KC, Who is the best CB in the NFL right now? Who’s # 2?

KC Joyner: The best CB of any starting CB in 2007 belonged to Nnamdi Asomugha. Second on the list was Will Allen. The full list of CB YPA will be available in ESPN's Fantasy Football Guide and in Scientific Football 2008. The Guide will hit newsstands this summer and SF 2008 will be ready in early/mid-July (and is currently available for pre-order at www.thefootballscientist.com).

Majeed: Will Allen: One of the best CBs according to Dr Z!

KC Joyner: He gave me my career break and even though I doubted him at first on the Allen selection, he hit the nail on the head!

Surprised me as well, and I don’t think it can be blamed on teams throwing away from him or running alot, because its calculated solely on passes thrown his way. So we may not (i repeat may not) be in need of a number 1 corner, but we could probably use a better 2 than Lehan or Goodman.

I do agree with needing to get younger at the NT and LB positions, particularly the OLB spot, and I think we could use a big target at WR because right now the only size we have is Wilford.

CB for sure, allen is good but #1, he would have been a nickle back with the surtain, madison tandem back in the day.
goodan and lehan could be alright but they are always breaking literally…..
S/FS yeah we have alot of depth in these positions..What? did or didnt allen do to make nick and cam cam not want to play our 1st rd pick??? who knows i bet bill does…
bell was doing a hell of a job he was the only player in our secondary that showed promise until he broke…
dont let the stats fool you either #4 in pass D was because our running d was absolutly horrible…they didnt need to pass…that equals less yardage per game…
our run D was obviously addressed in the draft, picking up some big boys…
Inside linebacker… you all know howi feel about crowder so i wont even begin, and apparently aydoleye (sp) wasn’t who we wanted they wanted carpenter instead so.. mlb is an issue as well…
olb bring it porter and taylor will be great this year porter was turning on later once capers realized he was on our team and utalized him where he is effective,
im hungry i will cont. later

I was certainly one of the first of those saying we needed to address the secondary, and the CB spot in general. I was hoping we would get it done in FA. WR was the other spot of “concern” in the offseason. And don’t necessarily think Crowder is the answer at ILB.

Four months ago, I could not envision how we could get enough done in FA and the draft to actually field a respectable team this year. I am not talking about P-P-P-Playoffs. I am talking about not being embarassed. The were many areas of major concern.

However…. taking a look at what I expect to be an outstanding D-Line this year, I wonder what happened to all of the “good pass rushes make average secondaries look good” arguments I was hearing just prior to the draft, when I was suggesting we need to draft a CB? There is definitely some truth to that, you know, and when you look back two years to when our secondary looked decent, you see it was basically unchanged from today except for the new FA acquisitions. But two years ago we had a decent D-line and good play calling (as much as I don’t like li’l Nicky, you gotta admit we made the D look good).
So taking what we have today, and assuming that you get one or two of the new guys that steps up and enhances the play of the secondary a bit, and we get some run stuffing, QB hounding front 7 work (and decent defensives schemes and play calling), all of a sudden I think we just might have a D on the table that can actually stop someone.

As for our Offense, I think conditioning was a huge problem for the team last year and contributed to injuries, but we also didn’t have a lot of depth. I don’t expect the offense to be flashy, but I DO expect we will be a very good running team this year. I see TE as currently being the biggest question mark (after of course, “who is gonna throw the ball?”). But we are developing good depth all around with quality player all around, and Special Teams will benefit from the upgrades.

So when I ask about “concerns”, I am not asking where we need to improve before we make a run at the SB. I would still like to see us get a true #1 cover corner, and a Pro Bowl WR. I think we need to find a solid pass blocking TE who can catch, and I hope he is already in the roster. And we will need to find a replacement at some point for JT.
But Parcell has already filled in more of the pieces than I could have imagined he would be able to do in Year 1 of rebuilding, so all those things can wait for Year #2. But as far as my concerns about an area of the roster being a major liability this year… naaawww… I think we are going to be pretty solid in all aspects of the game, based on what has been done so far.
Kudos Big Tuna!
:)