Originally posted by T-9ers:
You can't just say Solomon needs to be playing inside on 3rd because someone obviously beat him out for that position. I mean how the sport works, you compete for the job and get named starter, and Solly ain't the guy right now.
So Where you going to play him? 3rd and short , you need size upfront, Blair or Jones. 3rd and 5,6yds then you still got to respect the run and Blair is still the better choice. So what's left? He's 3rd and passing situations. I mean that's a role player imo.
No need to make excuses for the guy anymore. He's just not better than the guys in front of him, he hasn't earned that role on this team. Hopefully they can find a role for him or a suitable matchup next game.
First of all, you don't seem to understand how modern football works.
There is no "beat out" in the modern NFL because they don't actually do much of anything during training camp anymore. Nobody competes for anything in camp these days; the fringe guys do it in preseason, and the guys assured of making the squad - their roles are just determined by whatever the coaches
feel, rather than what is actually demonstrated on film.
The most hilarious part is that nearly everything the players do in camp and practices is the exact same stuff the team already saw Thomas do at the NFL combine. They drafted him #3 overall after seeing him do all the same drills he's been doing in camps and practices, and then from the very beginning, barely played him.
He missed most of the first camp because of the graduation rule…and they responded to that by making him back up Arik Armstead at Leo. Armstead got hurt, and they played him mostly at Leo. When Pierce Holt 2.0 failed as an edge rusher, they decided you don't just come in here and take Cassius Marsh's job, and Thomas might be better dropping into coverage with Earl Mitchell.
Year 2 comes around, he has put on weight…and from the very beginning, they're reducing his snaps. Now Armstead is healthy and he's getting 5 snaps inside per game until the last few weeks of the year, when they finally play him inside and he has good games vs. Denver and Seattle.
Year 3…they once again talk all off-season about how they view him as an inside pass rusher, and now with some actual edge rushers, now he'll finally be getting more snaps inside like the end of last year, blah blah blah…only to play him just 12 snaps, with only 2 snaps inside (both on running plays).
Now…BLAIR? Aside from the fact that Blair weighs exactly the same as Thomas, he is literally the worst run defender in professional football. He is absolutely awful. The only reason he is even on the roster is his pass rush last year, which was mostly coverage sack hustle type crap. He's a HUGE liability at the point vs. the run.
Furthermore, Thomas is literally the strongest player on the team. Check the weight room numbers. You don't win in the trenches with size. If you did, teams would just go out and sign sumo wrestlers. You win with strength and leverage. That's why Aaron Donald is heading to the HOF and Dan Wilkinson was a bust.
Here's the other funny thing: The guys who are
actually "tweeners" are Arik Armstead and DeForest Buckner. They're too slow and unexplosive to play on the edge and succeed as edge rushers (Armstead couldn't crack 5.0 in the 40 running downhill with a hurricane at his back), and they're too high cut and lacking in strength to be good fits inside. Buckner at least has good athletic ability for the inside, though, and makes plays east-west and as a pass rusher. He's a liability at the point, though, which nobody ever seems to notice.
People are talking about Armstead's "production"…uh, that's because he's in on three times the snaps Thomas is. The guy played the 2nd most snaps of any lineman last year, and had a whopping 3 sacks in that time…1 of them being on a play where he chased Mahomes out of bounds for a laughable "sack," rather than a real sack (just like Thomas's only "sack" last year). The guy didn't even put up sack numbers in college.
If Thomas were in on 40 snaps per game, he would probably wreak havoc.
There are three things going on here:
1. The coaches are in love with Armstead. For some reason, they think 6'8" or 6'9" is just awesome for a defensive lineman. Leverage, wut's dat? That's what they say. Now, he's very good against the run as a 5 technique, but he's basically a clone of Chris Canty…if any of you remember him. Provides next to nothing as a pass rusher no matter where you line him up. His coverage sack bull rushes should not be impressing people. And the coaches' love with Armstead has come at the expense of Thomas, despite Thomas having been drafted #3 overall. Saleh is kicking and screaming when Lynch asks to play Thomas more because if it were possible, Saleh would switch Armstead and Thomas's draft statuses around.
2. Saleh's style of game planning is "throw random ish at the wall." Last year in the opener against the Vikings, Thomas barely played any snaps. People were reacting similarly to that in how they are in this thread, figuring the coaches clearly think he's a bust. Then there were games later where he played far more often. Saleh goes into games with plans to drop nose tackles into coverage. He does 3-2-6 packages. 3-3-5. He doesn't tailor game plans to opponents, nor try to use his players in roles that make sense for them. He just does random stuff for the element of surprise. In essence, he's an idiot.
3. The coaches themselves seem to buy into sumo wrestler theory. If only Thomas were 800 pounds of blubber, then he would be fit for INSIDE. Now he can take on the double teamzzzz. Never mind Buckner getting pummeled by double teams left and right. Never mind Thomas being the highest grading interior defensive lineman in the nation vs. the run in college. Never mind that Thomas played inside his entire football career until the pros, including starting at Stanford as a NT as a sophomore. Never mind the 450 pound bench press and 600 pound squat. What are we gonna do on the run plays when he's in there, despite the fact that on the few occasions he has been inside on running plays, he did well?
The coaches are scratching their heads over #3 because they're just that stupid. So every year, "we've got to find more ways to get him inside." And then they never do, because they're idiots who don't grasp that there are only 11-12 3rd downs per game, and that's not enough snaps to really make an impact. Oh, and then they split those snaps with the likes of Sheldon Day, a castoff from the Jaguars.
Yeah, why would we want our #3 overall pick to get a chance to develop in actual games? Let's rotate him with some scrub we signed off the street.
I mean, don't you remember how Alex Smith EARNED his starting job in 2005?