I really like Karlaftis. I watch a lot of B1G football and often he was a man amongst boys.

Would.

To answer the Ojabo question, yes I'd take Karlaftis over Ojabo.

I just don't see a scenario where Karlaftis isn't an 8-10 sack/season guy by 2023. He just has such a high floor.

Maybe not the ceiling of someone like Ojabo but who cares? I'm building my DL around waves of attackers. If you give me 4 guys on that DL that I'm 80% certain will be productive on any given rep, I'll take that over 2 guys who I'm 100% certain will and 2 guys I'm 50% sure might.

I'll take an entire DL of high-floor guys over high ceiling guys w/ low floors.

:bravo:

I just kinda feel like that's maybe where our Brendan Daly disconnect came.

We brought Daly in trying to build the Patriots 'mush rush' sort of approach. Then we put together a stars/scrubs DL.

If you want that Patriots sort of defense where any given player can win at any given time, you're probably not going to be able to have 2 guys making $40 million on the line with a couple of scrubs. But you can have 4 guys making $10 million and you'll get much better results.

Or, in this case, instead of drafting high ceiling guys with higher bust potential, you just focus on the high floor reliable guys. Then you build up the secondary.

That's how BBs done it for awhile now. It's the direction we need to start heading sooner rather than later. And yeah, that means Jones is probably in his last year here...

The issue I have with that is, when it gets nut cutting time in late January, we seem to see year after year you need that one dude. Jones in the Sb, Von and Donald this year etc.

I dunno.

Patriots really never had that 'one dude' on the defense.

That dude plays quarterback for us.

Don't get me wrong, it would be nice to have a force multiplier. But again, you can't pay top of them market everywhere. At a point you have to sacrifice top end for depth.

The defense is the side of the ball to do that on, IMO. And the DL has shown to be a place where you can still get good production there.

Yea, Karlaftis is one of the very few guys I see realistically falling to us that I would take over Ojabo.

The Bills literally just did what DJ is talking about.

They had a really effective rotational DL last year. Didn't really get the job done in the playoffs, though... so they went out and attempted to add a force multiplier.

I think you kind of need both. You need to be able to put high floor guys on the field together and keep them fresh, and you still need the dude who can when the chips are down.

I'm cool with paying one dude to be a force multiplier on the DL and I'm cool with that being Jones for at least one more season. I'm not really down for making 2 long-term commitments again.

I love the work ethic that Karlaftis has. I know the stereotypical “try hard white guy” player but he’s genuine talented. His hand usage is good, he’s got multiple pass rush moves, he’s got athleticism and he’s a a quality run defender.

I’m wondering if they’ll back off their usual arm length requirement bc Karlaftis falls quite short (literally) of that at 32 5/8. They usually go for 34+

They're a tick earlier in the process than we are though - they can still AFFORD to do that.

I just think we're reaching the point where we have to pick one path or the other.

Sharp Football NFL Draft analyst Brendan Donahue projects four offensive tackles to be taken in the first seven overall selections.

Donahue is considered one of the most accurate draft prognosticators in the business, so the fact that he thinks there will be four tackles taken at the top of Round 1 is notable. While the top-three tackles (Ekwonu, Neal and Cross) have been slotted at the top of the draft for the entirety of the offseason, Trevor Penning has been the big riser of the group. The Northern Iowa giant has a huge frame and a nasty mean streak, with Penning pancaking opponents then shoving their faces in the grass. His current consensus pick is to San Diego at 17 overall, a steep improvement from his 30th pick projection pre-combine.

That would be nice.

My worry with shoehorning yourself into a pass rush heavy draft is we're drafting so late that we could be left with slim pickings.

You still don’t seem to understand that this is a very deep group.

They can go pass rush heavy without “shoehorning” anything, hence why many of us can see us going DT instead of EDGE in the 1st.

There’s also the option to trade up so they don’t have to reach for what’s left.

There are ways that they can go pass rush heavy without reaching.

Trading up would make sense. I dont' like sitting and waiting to see what falls, feels like you're just getting whats left.