How good was our defensive line this year?

It was the best unit on our team, hands down. Our front 7 in general is about as stout/good as any.

B+ A-

One of the top against the run, constant pressure, mauling offensive lines, on the field far more than other defensive lines.

A+

who voted C?

Originally posted by 49erFaithful:
who voted C?

Originally posted by Chief:
One of the top against the run, constant pressure, mauling offensive lines, on the field far more than other defensive lines.

A+

This for sure. Now if we can just recognize a screen pass every now & then it would help. A for the season.

we had a couple of games where they did not hold up , like Atlanta , 2nd Seattle game and Green Bay ! -

They played vry well, and I would have given them an A if it was consistent the whole year. There was several times we had breakdowns including Atlanta, Tennessee, and Philly. With experience though and a good majority of them returning, consistency should come much easier...

Originally posted by Leathaface:
It was the best unit on our team, hands down. Our front 7 in general is about as stout/good as any.

this

I will give them a B+. For most of the year they were very good but a few times at the end of the game when they needed to get off the field for what ever reason they could not. There was a lot of bend but don't break and it seemed to work for them.

I said B, because at times yeah they played lights out, but they had their most effective games in the past 3 games, in which they were against sorry teams.

They did make tons of stops, but like a lot say if you want to just accept mediocrity. They played lights out usually in the second half of games, but there were more than a few that I would of liked where had they made that key stop, we would of won the game, or given the ball back to our offense. GB game especially.

And yes i mean games in which Smith and Hill were behind center on offense. Sometimes we just had too big of a deficit to overcome and IMO it led to some key losses.

I gave them an A-. I feel if we could get a Justin Smith calibre player on the other side we'll be a defensive powerhouse.

Like all of football most plays are plays of inches. In the Minnesota game J. Smith just missed sacking Favre on that last play. So a couple of those in a year makes a great difference.

I can hope that another year of development out of Sop, Franklin, Brooks, Lawson, Willis, Harolson, Balmer, McDonald would give us those 3-5 more plays in a year that we need to get over the hump. But I certainly saw the "lights out" quality and hope to see it more consistently next year.

We know that J. Smith played at a high level. We know that Franklin did his work at NT. Did we see any advancement out of Sopoaga? Is he a late bloomer and is starting to come around or have we seen the max out of our three main Dline players? We know that McDonald does ok as a reliever but I don't think he could start. RJF got some valuable playing time but the jury is out as to whether he could push Franklin to a backup spot. D. Evans has not been a big contributor. Tukoafu could contribute but he is still a question mark. So for me J. Smith is given starter. Question marks on Sop and Franklin, RJF, D. Evans, McDonald.

So in this years draft could we use a DE, do we need to get rid of RJF and get a bigger better NT backup? Should we resign Franklin or let him go?