OK, you know better than Keim and the rest of us so enumerate the top edge rushers that were traded for or free agents that were signed by other yeams that have now proven to be brilliant moves?
As I pointed out, of course Keim bought into the hype due to a variety of factors which no doubt included support for PP from the ownersh and worshipping fans such as yourself. But for you to keep perpetrating the myth that there were and are superior edge rushers available flies in the face of reality as demonstrated by the failure of other NFL teams to address this same need.
AND as you keep excusing PP's subpar performances on the lack of pressure by the rest of the defense this season, IMHO, PP was not very good last season since he needed the defense and Abraham to provide lots of pressure in order to masquerade as an elite DB. An elite DB is NOT dependent on massive help upfront to be among the best. Your reasoning that an elite DB's performance is mainly dependent on the pressure generated by the defense upfront is totally illogical and reflects your deficiency of any real knowledge of the performances of real elite DBs.
Surely you saw in games where Bowles has reassigned PP off the other team's best receivers and put CRO on them because PP kept getting burned. THAT means there are coverage problems the team recognizes and is not willing to lose over just to let PP keep thinking he is the best in the NFL.
Obviosly, you do not know what circular reasoning iand its components really are. Perhaps a refresher review would be helpful with WIKI.
Please provide a list of elite CB's who played on teams that had no pass rush and blitzed on like 50% of passing downs requiring said CB to play man on elite WR's all the time.
I'll even start the list for you
1) Patrick Peterson.
I didn't say there were lots of edge pass rushers available, YOU said we didn't get one because we overpaid Peterson. I said that's not true at all, we had money from other guys, we just didn't use it to get an edge rusher. There were SOME out there, we played one 2 weeks ago in DeMarcus Ware, but we didn't get any. that doesn't mean it was easy to do and we didn't do it, but we didn't get any edge rushers either in FA or the draft.
last year after 5 games we were 3-2, and we had 13 sacks as a team. 7 of those came in the game 5 win over Carolina. Why did the defense suddenly start getting sacks after the first 4 games? 6 in the first 4, 41 in the last 12. I would submit 2 reasons, one we got Washington back for the 5th game, two we started playing Abraham more.
We don't have either guy right now which implies it's unlikely the pass rush is going to get much better, we're going to continue to have to blitz, and we're going to continue to ask Peterson and Cromartie to cover elite WR's with no safety help.
Even Deion Sanders didn't play in a defense where they blitzed half the plays, now he was a MUCH better cover CB than Peterson is but the way we are playing our CB's is very unusual in todays NFL, it's why week after week you get announcers telling us people think PP is one of if not the best CB's in the NFL, because they talk to NFL people who actually get that what the Cards ask him to do is far beyond what most teams ask their CB to do.
In fact both Steve Keim and Todd Bowles are on the public record stating exactly that.
What you are saying sounds suspiciously like the system works, just play better, there aren't many CB's in the NFL that can cover DeSean Jackson man to man and blitz that much, that's why most teams in the NFL don't do it.
