Those of you concerned about depth; are comparing this roster to some idealistic roster or those of the 60’s or middle 90’s. Maybe even 2010, when we had a great QB making 1/28th of the cap instead of 1/8th today. Depth is a thing of the past, EVERY team is an injury or two away in EACH position group from disaster. GB 2017 roster is easily a SB winning capable roster.

Let’s compare this roster to the won that finished season 8 of 9 [5 of 6 against playoff teams] in 2016:

Offense:
Huge Upgrade at TE: Bennett and Kendricks for Cook, Perillo
Upgrade at WR: Allison, Davis one year more advance and Nelson 1 yr removed from injury
Upgrade at RB: Monty starting out at RB and Youngsters v. last yrs version of Monty, Starks, Jackson, Davis et el
Slight Downgrade OL: Evans for Lang. Depth: Springs, Murphy 1 year better; Patrick for Barclay, a slight downgrade; but Barclay will be back last half of season.


Defense:
Upgrade at DL: Francious v. Guion =Wash; Clark and Lowrey will be MUCH better
Slight Upgrade at ILB: Martinez will be 1 year better
Wash OLB: Brooks for Peppers; Fackrell 1 year better; perhaps a good half year from Biegal; no Datone, who might be back, but not a huge loss. And now he knows he’s close to getting bounced out, he might be really good when he comes back.
Secondary: Huge upgrade across the board. Gunter 6th on depth chart instead of starting; Brice, Evans 1 year better. Hyde’s loss is meaningless.

ST: Punt returns might be a solid downgrade; Hyde was great. Davis might end up better, we’ll see. Vogel kinda scary; but even if he freaks out, a vet off scrap pile cant be much worse than the guy we had last year.

Save for your "secondary" grouping not wanting to break them into CB and S, I agree. If you broke it down at CB and looked at what we came into the season with vs. what we're coming into this season with there is quite the disparity. We had Sam Shields as our #1 CB, and we felt like we may have found 2 guys who could play in Randall and Rollins after the Hayward departure. Technically, at one point in the off-season we had Shields and Hayward and the steady and unspectacular Hyde. That duo is almost unquatifiably better than what we have now with House and who? Who is starting outside opposite House? Do we know?

We now have House with Randall and Rollins both coming off beyond brutal second seasons. King didn't show anyone that we should have any confidence he's going to be a factor for us. Gunter is still here and still can't run. Pipkins is a developmental type, Hawkins is a wildcard.

This CB situation is dire compared to last off-season...it's not even close. Not sure we're generating more pressure from the OLB spots so the DL better be much better and it looks to be better, just not sure how much.

Give me how we felt about 2016 going into 2017 any day on defense, not offense.

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Last offseason doesn't really matter. We didn't have Shields last season when it mattered. What we did have is two starters that needed groin surgery and Hyde/Gunter. House is going to most likely be a much better starter than Gunter and Randall/Rollins should be better than they were when injured. Didn't you want Haden? He's been "beyond brutal" for 2 seasons now. Wasn't any better than even Gunter last year.

Ya gotta pay attention: I’m comparing the SB quality team we fielded the last 9 games and Shields was long gone. Hyde played some OCB in this stretch; but Rollins was injured, who was clearly ahead of him on the depth chart. And now we got House and Hawkins and King might be better by the end of season. Hyde’s play in slot will EASILY be replaced. And last year at this time Gunter’s reps were very limited; he’ll be a lot better this year as well. Our CB group in 1000x better than the group that won 8 of 9 against 6 PO teams.

In playoffs Dallas went FG, Punt Punt, then Burnett was replaced by Brice, and the flood gates opened. If that happens again, Brice, Evans and maybe Jones later in season will do MUCH better. In Atlanta, Rollins didn’t play Brice had 3 snaps and Hyde went out in 1Q too. And Burnett played but he was an injured shell of himself. If we lose 6 of our 9 top secondary guys again, we will be infinitely better and though Atlanta will still shred us again, the O should be able to outscore them.