Quote (Hako @ Jul 15 2015 09:05pm)
Please do.
You think (just guesses right now obviously, but lets have some football talk) he might try and bulk him up some and make him a 4-3 RDE? or keep him strictly at LB? My outside assumption would be he'll probably play him similar to how he used Von Miller. I'm definitely curious about that situation though.
Hindsight is always 20/20 and in a few years we'll be able to look back at it (kinda), but I think if we took Mack last year instead of Bortles, we would have been drafting #1 overall in this past draft and got Winston. It will be interesting to see how Mack/Winston pan out vs Bortles/Fowler.
I've said for a few weeks now (at the disagreement of some other Raiders fans ^_^) that I think Khalil will play with his hand in the dirt more, so yes more like a 4-3 DE like you say. I've read that he's bulked up quite a bit, but that's literally said about every single player in every offseason lol. The curious thing about our defense is that we have tremendous versatility in the front seven. We have 4 LB's (Mack, Curtis Lofton, Malcom Smith, Sio Moore) that can and should start and get a lot of snaps. Obviously some guys are situational as Curtis is a primarily 1st/2nd down run stopping LB and Malcolm is better in coverage so he's a third down guy. That said, we have the ability to switch to a 3-4 as we can put Tuck and Mario Edwards at DE, and put Dan Williams or Jelly Ellis at NT.
I anticipate we'll still be primarily 4-3, though I don't think us running a hybrid front with some frequency is out of the question at all. If/when we do go 3-4, I think Mack will line up as the stand up edge rusher. Either way, with his hand in the dirt as a DE or stand up edge rushing OLB, I think he will have an absolutely amazing year. He got only 4 sacks last year, but every metric indicates that those numbers will go way up the next few years.