But what has been done to rectify the opposition's tendency to exploit the defensive right side by running to its left?
We've been told each year all holes can't be filled in a single off-season. (Frankly, that has always struck me as a self-serving bit of excusifying.) However, at the rate things are progressing thusfar in Free Agency 2006, it shouldn't require the full weekend to complete the fortifications: a run-stuffing ILB, a prototypically physical enforcer for SS, an all-purpose RDE and an athletic edge-rusher at ROLB. I suppose one can wait to be filled by the choice at 12; after all, why render meaningless a perfectly good April 29th Saturday?
It has been a marvelously stimulating several days for excitement-starved Browns' loyalists. Conspicuous areas of profound need have not only been acknowledged but addressed, and done so with genuinely quality entities. What is more, many come with local ties, winning pedigrees, championship attitudes, demonstrated football intelligence and an appreciation for what it means to don the Brown and Orange. Not a bad week by any means.
While it is not meant to seem ungrateful, hard-to-please or overly-demanding, it is nonetheless true the defensive right side---so often gashed by the many left-handed running games in the AFC North---appears thusfar to be unattended. What will be done to make games more difficult for Alan Faneca-Marvel Smith, Edward Mulitalo-Jonathan Ogden and Eric Steinback-Levi Jones, as well as the RBs they represent?
The available cap space and monies must be running low by now. The market for headliners---except among the population of over-inflated CBs, perhaps---is drying up. Another round of musical chairs is drawing to a close. Alvin McKinley and Chaun Thompson remain unchallenged thusfar as Cleveland starters in the preferred areas of oppositional focus.
As long as they do, the reconstruction job cannot be considered completed. It may not come this weekend. It may not come this month. It may not come with trumpets and headlines. But competition for both will come before summer. If only via in-house emergences.
Having strengthened itself in the middle with Washington and on the strongside with McGinest, the Browns' D is virtually inviting opponents to continue to look left for ground yardage. That may be part of the plan, of course, a means to dictate to an opponent, in a somewhat perverse sort of strategy. More likely it is evident to the brain trust those enhancements will be significantly negated if something isn't also done to fortify what can be done on the defensive right side.
Therefore, expect it.