Originally posted by SofaKing:
Whitner is in the last year of his deal. Overall, he's been a good player for us despite his deficiencies in coverage. It would be wise to draft a potential replacement, maybe 3rd or 4th round, just in case the team decides to go in another direction after the season.
Agreed. Giving up 14 TD's is horrendous by any standard but having a DC continue to match up your 5'10" SS on guys such as Boldin and Pitta is even worse...to do it all season is inexcusable. This is the bigger issue. We should not have to "hide" Whitner's poor coverage ability esp. in the RZ/EZ. It flat out cost us the Superbowl. That said, I'd love if we could keep him AND let him compete with a high draft pick SS with more upside to learn from. And to those who seem to think the front 7 can help disguise our weaknesses, you are dead wrong. They will continue to attack Whitner every game now...now that we have been exposed there as many teams have that mismatch at their exposure (taller TE's and bigger WR's they can move inside on him). It works in reverse...if you have better cover S's, Brooks/Aldon get those coverage sacks as well or TFL instead of just QB pressures that still end up going to huge plays and TD's.
I've been very curious to see how the FO was going to fix our secondary (the DL shouldn't be too hard - high draft pick at NT or DE to train under Justin).
At the end of the day, if we have
Brown -
FS (?) -
Whitner -
Rogers back there again, we're in big trouble! Teams won't even bother to run it...