2023 Offseason

[Sirius_Amory33 10]

Just jotting down my thoughts on the state of the team going into the 2023 offseason. We have very little draft capital and are not in a great space cap wise, so Grier has his work cut out for him. The biggest issues I see:

• O-Line - When Armstead played this year, the line seemed much improved over last year. The problem is that Armstead had numerous injuries and the line was historically awful last year, so "much improved" was still bad. They ended up ranking 31st in the league.
• Running Backs - Both Jeff Wilson Jr. and Raheem Mostert are free agents so whether we bring one or both of them back, we need to address the backfield. 
• Tight Ends - Our tight ends were just about complete non factors this year. Gesicki had stretches where he contributed but he's very likely to not be back next year and it was clear McDaniel doesn't see him as a fit for his scheme. 
• Back up QB - A lot of fans are going to be pounding the table for a veteran QB to back up Tua due to the fact that we can't rely on him to play a full season, but I'm more than happy with sticking with Skylar as QB2. We've tried spending millions on veteran backup QBs with plenty of starting experience the last two seasons who just ended up losing when they played anyways. Skylar is cheap and we need all the cap flexibility we can get.
• There's multiple things on the defensive side of the ball I'm not going to elaborate on yet because I think getting a solid DC with a proven track record and being healthy in the secondary would honestly make the biggest differences here. We need to lock up Christian Wilkins and Zach Sieler, they both anchored the defensive line and were flat out menaces to opposing O-Lines. We don't know how Nik Needham will come back from an achille's injury. We probably will be moving on from Byron Jones but at least Kader Kohou played lights out this year and could be counted on to replace him. X heavily regressed but was it due to the scheme issues and all the injuries? I think we can still count on him to play well. Linebackers were still a weak spot as well. We've got a lot of great young talent to continue building around though. Please, football Gods, let us get Vic Fangio.
• Jason Sanders had his second poor year in a row. I was hoping his issues last season were in part due to Michael Palardy, because it was hard to fathom him suddenly dropping off from All-Pro caliber, but his struggles this year have me worried. I'd be surprised if they don't at least bring in competition.

That's it for now, I'll revisit as the offseason goes on. Until then, Fins up!