Quote:
Originally Posted by Quesadilla Joe
When Gregory was signed - to a deal that was essentially a 2 year, $28M deal - Denver’s EDGE depth chart was:
Bradley Chubb (who was entering the final year of his deal)
Malik Reed
Jonathon Cooper (unproven, 2021 7th round pick)
Stephen Weatherly
At the time, Baron Browning was still an ILB that Denver was hoping to convert to EDGE and Bonitto was prepping for the draft. Denver also had just traded two 1’s and two 2’s for Russell Wilson (which is looking great now that Payton is in charge) and weren’t going to be able to draft an EDGE high in the draft for a few years.
The Gregory signing started out great for the first four games of the 2022 season but he wasn’t the same player after his knee injury and the Chubb trade.
Luckily for Denver, they were able to snag Bonitto (10th in sacks despite being a backup the first 3 weeks) with the last pick of the 2nd round, Browning showed himself to be a natural pass rushing EDGE with immense upside, and Jonathan Cooper (18th in sacks) developed into a starting caliber EDGE. Paton was able to snag three starting caliber EDGE defenders with the 64th, 105th, and 239th overall picks and that made Gregory expendable.
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Good stuff Knowmo. Paton did a great job. That defense is really doing well.