Probably about half of our team is going into years 2, 3 ,or 4. Correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t those the years where players tend to have the most improvement? So to say we haven’t improved our team is a very inaccurate statement, in my opinion. You don’t think Mike Will is going to be better? Rejus? Freeman? Blount? Talib (your boy)? GMC (Thomas’s boy)? Biggers? Briscoe? I can go on and on. All those guys should be considerably better this year, and last year was good enough to get us 10 wins (shut up Thomas, I know 3rd place, lol). Who of those guys would you want to replace with free agents, thus stunting their growth? I can only see MLB as a possibility. You’ve said it yourself many times, MLB isn’t that important in our system, right? Obviously that is not true, but losing an average MLB is not going to kill us. Seriously, we are talking about Barrett freaking Ruud, not Ray Lewis. The talent is there on our team, perhaps more than ever (at least on offense). I really believe the key to our season is going to be on our defensive line. If we stop allowing QB’s to text their friends while in the pocket, we will be very good. Stop hanging out with Thomas and Eric, and get back to the Captain we all know and love.

No need to be sorry for the rant….
….I only read the first and last few lines…

…..and I doubt anyone else read it at all.

That said, most fans I know are happy with
the current plan.

The common thought is that we can’t include any drafted players, as every team has a draft and every team expects to be better because of those draft choices. However, not every team drafts well. Not saying we drafted better than the Falcons or Saints, but I don’t think we did any worse, so we may not be better than them after the draft, but we haven’t lost ground.

The other common thought is that re-signing your own free agents doesn’t count as getting better, but rather as staying the same. So, we can count out our own signings of Davin Joseph, Quincy Black, etc., but that also means that Atlanta re-signing Clabo, etc. doesn’t count either, and the same with the Saints.

Now, to the meat of the issue. The Bucs only signed Koenen away from division rival Atlanta. Maybe not a huge move, but it does take away from them. But, using the above format, the ONLY player the Falcons signed to get better from another team was Ray Edwards, whom we now know had off-season surgery and isn’t 100% healthy. The Saints had a few more signings. The biggest being Darren Sproles, who they brought in to replace the departing Reggie Bush. At best, that’s a wash. Other than that, there are many average players that aren’t really improvements and one possible improvement in Aubrayo Franklin. So, where’s the improvement in the Falcons and Saints???

Now, using that information, the Saints and Falcons may have improved minimally through free agency at best, and the Bucs maybe even a bit less. However, the Saints and Falcons also have more players on their rosters that are older and on the decline of their careers. The Saints have 5 players that I see on their roster with 10+ years in the league and many more at 8-9. The Falcons have 8 at 10+, and a few at 7-9 years. The Bucs have only one player (Barber) with 10+ and only 4 at 7-9 years. Everyone else is extremely young. Now, all those young guys won’t improve, they aren’t all on the rise. But we have more players on our roster with the potential to rise than either of those two teams, and much fewer players on the decline of their careers.

So, even though another year of experience doesn’t equate to a better team on it’s own, when you consider the other teams in our division have more players on the decline while we have more players with the potential to be on the rise, even if all of them don’t pan out, we can still out-pace both the Falcons and Saints in numbers alone. Add to that the fact that we have beaten the Saints the past couple years, and last year we were about two feet away from beating the Falcons twice (one foot on fourth and one for Blount, and one foot from Weems going out of bounds on the kick return) and you can see we’re already pretty close to both those teams. It wouldn’t take much to turn this franchise from 3rd in the division and out of the playoffs due to tie breakers to being the division champ, playoff bound and who knows after that.

So, for all of you saying we didn’t get any better, please look at the bigger picture and realize that sometimes we can get better by not doing anything drastic.