Cooper Carlisle. will be an unrestricted FA from Oakland. He is a 9 year veteran G who can play either guard position, and also center. He is 6'5" 295lbs.

He has played 7 years in Denver, and two with Oakland. In his career, he has played in 126 games starting 69 including all of his last 4 years. I would expect Carlisle to sign for a reasonable veteran contract.

With the possible loss of Tauscher, and the unkown status of Clifton, the offensive line could desperately use a good veteran for leadership, and Carlisle has a ton of experience with the ZBS. He could be a great pickup for a reasonable price. This is the type of FA signing that would be right up Thompsons alley.

Edit: Carlisle previous contract with Oak, was for 2 years 4.4 million. I could see him being signed to a similar contract for around 1-2 mil a year.

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Intriguing idea PFWT.

My only concern is what hapens to our young Gs?

TT, I think, has shown that he isn't fond of sacrificing the chances younger players have at a position by going out and getting vets.

I don't think Ted would like to limit the chances of Sitton / Barber by doing a signing like this. Although it would be a good one based on experience in the NFL and the ZBS, it is important to remember the Packers do not run a pure Zone Blocking Scheme like Denver does, even if the Packers insist on referencing the blocking scheme on offense as "Zone Blocking."

Assuming Spitz wins the starting C spot, you'd have Colledge, Sitton and Barber as the remaining guards. We could definitely use a G in this scenario, but I don't think Ted Thompson would go the route of bringing in a vet and potentially limiting the exposure the younger players would be in line to get.

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I don't think this would be such a good move, the Raiders offensive line was not that great last year, and we need to improve, not pickup leftover's from one of the worst league OLs. There are lots of better options.

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I like him, although I don't know how much of an improvement it'll be over our current players. Bringing some leadership to the line would be a great asset, but I don't know if it's that important as long as he's not the center.

I think we have alot of young personnel we can shuffle around the line though, so I'm positive we could use him in some way.

Like you said, this seems to be a player that Ted Thompson would sign, just getting some depth while trying to keep developing his young guys. Lets hope it'll work out.

I don't know how this guy did individually or anything but you cannot really judge a player by how the unit they are a part of did or else we would have to consider players like Tauscher and Kampman garbage.

(also players that are on the Raiders seem to be better if they play somewhere else for some reason :thumbleft: )

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