I don't see Barnett moving and Bishop taking over. He made a couple big plays and gave up some others. His sampling is small though. If Bishop could sustain that over a year, I would be fine with it. But don't think that it will happen.

All in all, I hope that no big FA is brought in for LBer. That money is better utilized fixing the Dline. A better Dline makes a better LBer corp.

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I'm sure the fact that Ted Thompson and a large majority of his staff are either former linebackers or linebacker coaches excites Pack93z, but it makes me nervous when off-season aquisitions are contemplated. I am pretty convinced that wils0646 is correct, but at the same time live in fear that one or more of the aforementioned scouts/personnelmen will convince Ted Thompson that this or that linebacker is going to help solve our defensive woes...call it "sympathetic ear syndrome".

Fix the d-line, you fix the linebackers, imo. I know, I know, this or that linebacker was "playing on his heels" or "was out of position" or "taking a step backwards when he should have been going forward" etc. etc. etc.

Let's see what happens when we have a friggin' decent d-line, I say.

I'd go after Vilma but be smart about it. I wouldn't dump a ridiculous amount of cash on him, but I'd try to steal him. There's no harm in doing it. We can't give up on Hawk yet, but we could have Barnett/Vilma/Hawk out there and rotate other guys in as desired. Plus more competition in TC is always a good thing.

I'd aggressively go after game changers on the D-line in FA and the draft though. As said above, that will improve our LB play more than anything else.

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I'm going to agree w/ Porky and dfosterf - our LBers are built to play behind a stout DL. They're not huge guys who can take on a block, they're supposed to flow to the ball w/ speed.

They definitely regressed this year, but the problems on the D line they were working behind have been well-documented at this point. I'm with those that say we should see what we've got when they're behind a solid line, because that's what we've got to work with unless we want to make a wholesale change at that position.

I'm intrigued by the idea of moving Barnett to strong-side, though I don't know that I've seen enough of Bishop to be comfortable w/ him in the middle. I'd love to see Vilma in the middle and Hawk&Barnett @ the oustide spots, but our need is far more dire at D line so I'd rather see the money being spent there.

Injuries, though people seem to be afraid to admit it, also affected this group in a big way this year.

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