Wednesday, December 17, 2008

What to do with the surplus of defensive backs?

When practices restart Thursday they will serve two purposes. The primary is bowl preparation. The secondary is preparing for next season. One of the questions for the offseason is what to do with all the defensive backs. BC has a very deep, young and talented group of defensive backs. The drawback of having a deep position is that they cannot all be on the field at the same time. With that in mind, and based on pure speculation, I am going to look at the group and see who might be moved to another position of need.

Assumptions:
1. I am not focusing on safety vs cornerback. Some recent guys have played both (Anam most recently) and some of the current probably could also play both (Gause, Fox)
2. We will probably bring in at least two more DBs (bringing the potential total to 17 on the roster).



Not going anywhere
The following guys are unlikely to move since they’ve established themselves as good contributors and don’t have another position that would make as much sense.
-- Donnie Fletcher
-- DeLeon Gause
-- Roderick Rollins

Linebacker?
The Akins experiment moved him to corner for his senior year. Over his career he showed the advantage of having a fast, coverage LB in Spaz’s scheme. Could these guys also moonlight with McGovern's guys?
-- Dan Mulrooney
-- Wes Davis
-- Stephen Atkinson
-- Marcellus Bowman
-- Okechukwu Okoroha
-- Dominick LeGrande
-- Chris Hayden-Martin

How are his hands?
Although we are deep in the secondary, we are probably going to need some pass catchers shortly. These guys could be good in open space.
-- Donte Elliott
-- Ugo Okpara
-- Chris Fox
-- Isaac Johnson

Running Back?
Running Back might be a tough position sell since many would see Harris and Haden on the depth chart and wonder if they’d ever see the field. Mulrooney and Smith have already had a go around in the backfield and may be used their again.
-- Dan Mulrooney
-- Razzie Smith (assuming he returns for a fifth year)
-- Isaac Johnson

This is all just spitballin' so feel free to leave your own ideas in the comments section.

1 comment:

lizz said...

Are we talking about the same Roderick? He has had approximately four good plays this season, but any time there is an utter breakdown in the defense, or it gives up a huge passing play, you can be guaranteed its Roderick's fault. Have we already forgotten his botched punt return coverage in Tampa?