Only positions I see being worse next year are WR and TE. Losing Patterson, Bailey and Derrick will be tough to replace along with Rader and Kuhn.
I'm 50-50 on the TE position. This is a huge sore spot with me and I blame the "O" coordinator here. We have 5 or 6 250 plus TE's and could use these guys to get open over the middle for 4-12 yards and save about 75% of the sacks lost/getting our QB's killed. Hell the only time 86 sees the ball is on a 3rd and short handoff. Goes back to needing a TB big and strong enough to get the short yards. How many team do you know that brings in a TE for a handoff
I felt the same way Red, but not after watching Ruiz and Webb for 2-years. Monty uses the TE (or larger back to block) and spring open the RB for a pass ...which is why he recruited #20. You can see the obvious benefit here ... dual threat formation. 3+ years ago, coach Shane used the TE as an XXback. It worked rather well at times, but nothing like having a real RB pair back there ...and besides, we are not going to get a 6'-5"+ QB recruit that has the talent needed to get over MVFC Dlines ...those guys could all go P5, or at least MAC. This year our line depth and lack of a true TB hurt us. Go, the running QB vs drop-back QB issue was settled last year (I understand it was heated for a short time), but after we had 3 QBs go down, I think we will stay with more of a drop-back style, like #12 and #7. It does require a special breed of QB recruit, which is why I only trust coach M to recruit that position.