Rashad Johnson Signed to a 3-Year Deal

[MadCardDisease]

I think we're all dreaming if we think Johnson is going to become anywhere near the player AW became. Not saying it can't happen, but I highly doubt it.

Wasn't saying he would become a Pro-Bowler. Mearly pointing out that year 3 was when Wilson really started to understand the defense and contribute. I see similar things with Johnson.

 

[kerouac9]

Starting lineup doesn't mean anything. RJ outplayed Wilson last year and Horton benched Dub because of it.

No. Wilson didn't "start" one game, but in the last half-dozen games of the season, he was in for 60+% of the defensive snaps.

Johnson didn't even earn the backup safety job outright. He was sharing exactly half of the leftover snaps (about 20%) with James Sanders. So we re-signed a guy who couldn't clearly beat out James Sanders. Awesome.

I can't get too excited about this one. Johnson is the Early Doucet of safeties.

I LOL'd at this.

OK so 17 plays out of 1000 instead of 15. I still thought he was involved in more plays than that.

EDIT: I knew something was wrong. It appears that profootball-reference.com's tackle stats don't include special teams tackles. They show Justin Bethel with only 1 tackle while nfl.com has him with 13 and Johnson with 13 instead of 20. I thought it odd that a special teams guy like Johnson didn't have more tackles.

FootballOutsiders.com has a good "snap counts" area (it's under the statistics tab). You can't view a whole season, but you can go game-by-game, and see the usage of players. Don't provide tackle stats, though.

Wasn't the same thing said about Adrian Wilson? It wasn't until year three that Wilson really started to understand his role. I see similar things with Johnson.

This signing needed to happen, especially after we let Wilson go.

Adrian Wilson was a player with clear physical ability who either wasn't being used correctly (a legit assumption considering the coaching staff he was playing with) or had yet to fully understand the game. His was a mental hurdle exclusively, because he had elite physical skills.

Rashad Johnson was a player who was drafted with glowing reviews from con man Nick Saban, who claimed that Johnson was the smartest football player he'd ever seen. Johnson immediately came in making mistakes, and playing with an ego that caused us to have to trade for Kerry Rhodes.

Completely different scenarios.

 

[Chopper0080]

No. Wilson didn't "start" one game, but in the last half-dozen games of the season, he was in for 60+% of the defensive snaps.

Johnson didn't even earn the backup safety job outright. He was sharing exactly half of the leftover snaps (about 20%) with James Sanders. So we re-signed a guy who couldn't clearly beat out James Sanders. Awesome.



I LOL'd at this.



FootballOutsiders.com has a good "snap counts" area (it's under the statistics tab). You can't view a whole season, but you can go game-by-game, and see the usage of players. Don't provide tackle stats, though.



Adrian Wilson was a player with clear physical ability who either wasn't being used correctly (a legit assumption considering the coaching staff he was playing with) or had yet to fully understand the game. His was a mental hurdle exclusively, because he had elite physical skills.

Rashad Johnson was a player who was drafted with glowing reviews from con man Nick Saban, who claimed that Johnson was the smartest football player he'd ever seen. Johnson immediately came in making mistakes, and playing with an ego that caused us to have to trade for Kerry Rhodes.

Completely different scenarios.

I like the signing, but I don't see that Johnson changes the direction of the franchise. He could be good, and he might not. I just hope we paid appropriately.

 

[kerouac9]

I like the signing, but I don't see that Johnson changes the direction of the franchise. He could be good, and he might not. I just hope we paid appropriately.

Yup. If Johnson is getting much more than $1.5M per year, we overpaid for a guy that Keim scouted, or something.

 

[JeffGollin]

I like the signing, but I don't see that Johnson changes the direction of the franchise. He could be good, and he might not. I just hope we paid appropriately.

We're not in franchise-changing mode here as we enter free agency.

We're in "Do not do anything that further weakens the franchise" mode (i.e. we need to re-sign more of our own dudes just to stay even).