NFL Draft Aftermath: IDP Winners and Losers from the AFC North
With the draft in the rearview mirror, it’s time to start looking ahead and getting an idea of what is going to happen in 2018. The first step of that is analyzing the overall defensive makeup of every team in the league. Who’s moving up and who’s moving down?
Today I’m looking at the AFC North.
Baltimore Ravens
Winners
Patrick Onwuasor and C.J. Mosley. The Ravens selected Kenny Young in the fourth round but given how the team like to develop defensive talent fairly slowly, it looks like Onwuasor did enough last year to keep hold of his starting job. At the same time, that means Mosley will keep his role from last year rather than have to switch around as happened in 2016 when Zach Orr had the plum job.
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Mosley remains a top five LB in my estimation and is locked in as an every-week starter.
Onwuasor wasn’t fantastic last season but should be useful. He’s an LB4 fighting to be an LB3. Here’s a quick look at how the distribution of playing time worked in 2017.
Loser
Brandon Carr is a corner aged 31 on big money and the team has now selected Alabama corners Marlon Humphrey (16th overall) and Anthony Averett (118th) in consecutive drafts. Jimmy Smith is locked in as the top corner on the team, but the rest of the depth chart is in turmoil. Averett is a talented layer and could well earn significant playing time. Carr’s chances of keeping hold of his $4.5m per year contract appear to be shrinking.
Cincinnati Bengals
Winner
Carl Lawson played 480 defensive snaps as a rookie in 2017. That seems low but it’s actually the most any Bengals defensive rookie has played in the past five seasons. The team selected Sam Hubbard in the third round but he’ll very likely play limited snaps in 2018. Lawson is all set to have another excellent season. To put his volume into context here’s the top-playing defensive rookies on the Bengals since 2013.
Loser
George Iloka. With Shawn Williams missing five games through injury last year, Iloka led the team in safety snaps. But I don’t think he was impressive and he certainly hasn’t been productive over his long run in the team. A lot of that is scheme-based but it seems to me that Iloka is going to be fighting for his job this year.
Cleveland Browns
Winner
Jabrill Peppers has had a fantastic off-season this year. To be honest 2017 went as badly as it possibly could have for him but with Damarious Randall brought in top play deep safety Peppers has a straight fight with Derrick Kindred for the strong safety job. I think Peppers will win that fight pretty easily and have a good season. We’re dealing with Gregg Williams so nothing is certain but he’s well worth trying to buy from disgruntled owners.
Loser
Joe Schobert. The Browns have already shown that they’re willing to play linebackers who earn it. Joe Schobert surprised many when won the starting job last season and e was an extremely productive IDP but he was not nearly as good in NFL terms. I certainly don’t think he cemented himself as a long-term starter. So drafting Genard Avery in the fifth round is intriguing. Avery needs work as he split time between playing inside LB and being a pass rusher but he’s very talented and I think he could earn playing time. Schobert could easily still be a thousand-snap LB1. But his value is much more fragile than many believe it is. Schobert is really going to struggle to maintain his high number of opportunities from 2017. Here’s how his volume stacked up against his peers.
Pittsburgh Steelers
Winner
Jon Bostic played 915 snaps as a Colt in 2017. When he came to Pittsburgh many (myself included) thought he’d slide straight into the space vacated by Ryan Shazier’s nasty injury. The selection of Terrell Edmunds in the first round threw that into serious doubt. In many ways, Edmunds is more similar to Shazier than Bostic. Bostic is a very average player who had a good IDP season thanks to his volume last year. I think we’re going to see Edmunds come in and take his job.
Losers
Sean Davis and Morgan Burnett. Even if Edmunds does not play ersatz LB he is the most limited in terms of coverage ability when compared against Davis and Burnett. By some distance. And as we know, in the NFL, coverage ability is far more important than tackling. Davis and Burnett allow them to play more creative coverages because of their versatility. As a good friend of mine says “Pittsburgh still runs the tried and true 3-4 fire blitz which is pretty Cover 2 heavy”. I think owners of both Davis and Burnett will be disappointed by their personal productivity.
Davis really wasn’t playing that much in the box last year anyway. Here’s how his alignment broke down.
Hopefully that gives you an idea of the biggest movers.
Thanks for reading.
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