Morlon Greenwood quietly putting up solid numbers. Again.

[gtexan02]

Every year everyone clamors for the release of Morlon Greenwood. And every year I feel like the only one who realizes that he's a solid contributer.

Do we pay him too much? Absolutely
But is he a solid LB on this team? Absolutely

Its easy to get rid of overpaid players when:
a) They are very old and declining
b) Your team has great depth

We qualify for neither of those.

So let me be the first to say that I am GLAD we have Greenwood aboard. Here are his stats for this season:

101 total tackles (13th in NFL)
80 solo tackles (9th in NFL)
1 INT
1 FF
4 PD (6th among LBs)

Not too flashy, but he just does his job and does it well. Second 10+ tackle game in a row for him. When he is playing like this, the defense does better.

[euro-Texan]

With Ryans hobbled a bit, Greenwood has really picked up the slack.

[HJam72]

Get ready for the "stats don't tell the whole story" comments, and "he gets most of those tackles five yards downfield".

I've come to the conclusion that replacing Greenwood is not our biggest need. Is he worth the money? Well, probably not, but at least he comes to play.

[hookinreds]

Greenwood and Anderson had huge nights last night. Both were all over the ball, either on the tackle or stretching the play out.

[Hervoyel]

Originally Posted by HJam72

Get ready for the "stats don't tell the whole story" comments, and "he gets most of those tackles five yards downfield".

I've come to the conclusion that replacing Greenwood is not our biggest need. Is he worth the money? Well, probably not, but at least he comes to play.

That's the real point here. Morlon Greenwood got over-paid a few years ago. Hey, it's professional football and it happens. He's a respectable NFL linebacker. He's not a pro bowler or a future HOF candidate but he belongs in an NFL game. He's not a gross liability. He does his job.

Could we find an upgrade at that spot? Of course we could and we probably will eventually. Right now we have bigger fish to fry than finding someone to bump Morlon Greenwood off the field. People need to get over the big free agent contract he signed. It's done, we can't make it go away or somehow undo it. It's not Morlon's fault that Casserly gladly overpaid. It's not Morlon's fault that teams pay too much for free agents far too often.

Greenwood and Ryans are set. That third spot could use some attention however. Nobody has three (or four) monster linebackers. there's a weakest link in every linebacking corp but if Greenwood is ours than we're doing better than a lot of teams.

[Hardcore Texan]

Originally Posted by gtexan02

Every year everyone clamors for the release of Morlon Greenwood. And every year I feel like the only one who realizes that he's a solid contributer.

Do we pay him too much? Absolutely
But is he a solid LB on this team? Absolutely

Its easy to get rid of overpaid players when:
a) They are very old and declining
b) Your team has great depth

We qualify for neither of those.

So let me be the first to say that I am GLAD we have Greenwood aboard. Here are his stats for this season:

101 total tackles (13th in NFL)
80 solo tackles (9th in NFL)
1 INT
1 FF
4 PD (6th among LBs)

Not too flashy, but he just does his job and does it well. Second 10+ tackle game in a row for him. When he is playing like this, the defense does better.

I agree, he has been very solid, I was saying the same thing last night.

Where are the sacks in your stats? He has had a few this season IIRC.

[thunderkyss]

Originally Posted by HJam72

Get ready for the "stats don't tell the whole story" comments, and "he gets most of those tackles five yards downfield".

I've come to the conclusion that replacing Greenwood is not our biggest need. Is he worth the money? Well, probably not, but at least he comes to play.

I'll second those arguments.

I'm really appalled by our LB pass covering abilities. Even though that PD number puts Greenwood at the top of the league among LBs, as a whole, our LBs don't help much in pass coverage.

It's like they understand what their zones are, but not how to play those zones. I.E. when someone enters your zone, you cover them.

I understand when the zone is flooded, the LB is put in a bad situation. But OCs aren't having to do that to challenge our LBs.

If our LBs would learn pass protection, then our corners & safeties would be able to play real man coverages. They would be able to cheat a little, instead of having to keep everything in front of them like they do now.

But I do agree that replacing Morlon shouldn't be very high on our list of to-dos.

[gtexan02]

Watching Ryans get faked on the ball fake and let Scheffler (sp?) get open downfield last night was an indication that our team is hungry to stuff the run and isn't good at covering the middle of the field

Ryans is by far our smartest LB, and even he bit hard on that one

[Vinny]

I gotta give some props to Greenwood the last few weeks. It looks like he has taken on more responsibility as DeMeco has been hobbled a bit. Average players playing above average tend to happen most when your elite players play like superstars. For instance it's no coincidence that the secondary looks better when Mario is a beast on the edge. It's a synergistic thing.

[Nawzer]

Morlon has certainly played well the last couple of weeks. He's solid player who has stepped up his game and hopefully he'll keep playing well these last 2 games. But if in the offseason there's someone out there who would be a clear upgrade over him we should pursue him but even if we don't upgrade that position Morlon Greenwood won't kill us.

[badboy]

As our safeties get better, the middle may not resemble the Texas panhandle; wide open spaces with one or two bulls scattered. I'm thinking after this next draft and a FA or two, our next moves will start to selectively move out some of our current roster.

[texasguy346]

Originally Posted by gtexan02

Watching Ryans get faked on the ball fake and let Scheffler (sp?) get open downfield last night was an indication that our team is hungry to stuff the run and isn't good at covering the middle of the field

Ryans is by far our smartest LB, and even he bit hard on that one

DeMeco certainly bit on the fake, but I'm sure him having a bad wheel led him to try and overcompensate a bit and jumped the run. The Broncos were able to exploit the middle of the field in the passing game, and ordinarily with Ryans healthy that wouldn't have been the case. Still Greenwood had a very good game yesterday. I'm also happy with what I've seen from Anderson. I noticed Clark on the sidelines so does this mean that Charlie has taken his starting job?

[Fox]

Greenwood's been solid the past couple weeks. Anderson looked pretty good last night too. Put a shot on Cutler on the called QB run, and looked good on the blitzes.

[painekiller]

I want an impact player at WILL, and last week Greenwood was just that an impact guy, last night he was OK but not a big impact.

[kiwitexansfan]

Even as recently as last week I was slamming the failings of Greenwood, Clark, Anderson etc for what appeared to me to be Ryans having to do all the tackling for the LB corps.

It would seem Ryans is just that much better than those guys, they have skills but need Ryans to not be 100% to really shine as individuals.

My apologies LB corps.