Welcome to the Commanders Trey Amos, DB Ole Miss

[Warhead36]

Good pick. Revel was my choice for CBs but Amos is right up there too. he fits perfectly as the 2nd outside CB and allows us to move Sarinstil back to the slot where he can be an All Pro.

Amos has a sick combo of size, length, and speed. Hope the low agility #s were because of an apparent nagging injury that should be healed by now.

[PeterMP]

This pick I don't like that much. Defense needs to start up front and our front is still weak. With the Eagles stopping the run is going to be key for the foreseeable future and against every other team, rushing the QB is king.

I think some of the DL that were there are going to be good players and better value.

I don't think he's going to be a bad player. Just not a really good one and DL would have been better value.

[Darrell Green Fan]

I don't know how anyone can be upset with this pick. Lattimore is simply not the same player he was in NO and it remains to be seen if he can ever recover that level. And he is injured ALL THE TIME. I agree they may be able to fill the edge need in-house, Luvu on passing downs, don't forget Jean- Baptiste. But you can't hide bad corner play.

[The Consigliere]

This pick I don't like that much. Defense needs to start up front and our front is still weak. With the Eagles stopping the run is going to be key for the foreseeable future and against every other team, rushing the QB is king.

I think some of the DL that were there are going to be good players and better value.

I don't think he's going to be a bad player. Just not a really good one and DL would have been better value.

Who are the DL prospects you would have preferred? Most seemed to have Amos rated somewhere between 25-35, around 40th at worst, so he was definite value.

I don't like the fact that we have zero young Edge talent to speak of either, but the reality is that you need to take the best available talent when your pick comes due or trade down, we were pretty lucky to be picking that late in round 2, and still have a top 30ish talent available who played a position of need.

[GoingCommando]

Amos is a good prospect. Great reactive athleticism, stays in phase and easily carries receivers deep, hips are fluid and his transitions from backpedal look really fast so I think his press man cover talent is really good. His hands are a really big strength too. Not so much in catching the ball, but his punches and swipes are super fast and the coordination/accuracy on them is really good. It's how he was able to get so many PBUs. I've always thought PBUs are an underrated stat. They show playmaking ability and coordination and awareness, because most PBUs come from situations where they negated what was going to be a big play.

I think he's a well rounded player though, not just a press-man guy. His snaps where he gets to play in zones and read the backfield, you can tell he's got good vision and that he's seeing the field well. I think there is a really good chance that his field side cover 3 potential is elite. He's got pretty good size too, so I could see him doing alright in cover 2. This class didn't really have a lot of high end classic cover 3 corners for a Seattle-style DQ scheme. I think Amos was probably the best one.

I don't really see a lot of weaknesses in his pass defense. Lack of turnovers maybe? But he makes a ton of plays on the ball, so that doesn't really bother me. He's just a good cover corner. I think his weaknesses as a player are probably more about his run defense, but I absolutely value coverage over run support in an outside corner for our scheme. Our outside corners are generally going to be way off the LoS.

This is a good pick. I preferred Xavier Watts in a vacuum, but he's duplicative of Mike Sainristil and we clearly needed some young outside corner DB talent. Amos is probably a better fit into our scheme considering what we've already built. I'm also on an island in how highly I valued Watts. Pretty much every single professional draftnik had Watts low, and ranked Amos way ahead of him.

Time for a breakout season from Quan Martin. If we get that, and good years from Will Harris and Jonathan Jones, then I think we'll have one of the better secondaries in the NFL this season. And if that's the case, then we should have one of the best defenses period. I'm not as worried about the run defense TBH, because I think our offense is going to be efficeint and high octane and pressure opponents into being pass heavy to keep pace.

[Warhead36]

I'd argue outside CB was just as much if not MORE of a need than a pass rush. You can manufacture pass rush if your offense can generate leads consistently, but if your CBs suck there isn't much you can do about that. Remember how often teams would just throw the ball in ~2 seconds when we had the "four first round pick DL" and we never mustered together any pressure because our CBs would just beat off the bat right away?

[PeterMP]

Who are the DL prospects you would have preferred? Most seemed to have Amos rated somewhere between 25-35, around 40th at worst, so he was definite value.

I don't like the fact that we have zero young Edge talent to speak of either, but the reality is that you need to take the best available talent when your pick comes due or trade down, we were pretty lucky to be picking that late in round 2, and still have a top 30ish talent available who played a position of need.

You have to take into account the value of the position the player plays.

If the best available talent in the 2nd round is a kicker, you don't take them because the value for kicker's isn't that great.

I think DL have greater value than CB and in that sense, I'd rather have a DL even if they in theory aren't as good as the CB.

And we don't just need edge. Even the DTs. Payne isn't good, and there's no reason to think he'll ever be good. Newton I think is promising and flashes on plays. Hopefully, he'll be good but I don't think he'll be great. I don't know what to make of Kinlaw. And everybody else is at best eh. At a position where most teams rotate players, they could have used another player and even an upgrade.

The other thing is if the pick is great value for the position, then somebody should be willing to trade you great value to get the pick. If Amos is really a top 30ish talent, then somebody should have been willing to trade the equivalent of draft picks for a top 30ish talent

Obliviously, that wasn't probably the case because several teams passed on him in that 30-61 range. The fact that other teams passed him tells you that they didn't think he was a top 30ish talent.

(I'll speculate as to why. He's not good against the run, and it appears given the Eagles success that teams in the NFL are rethinking their commitment to stopping the run. And then being in the Eagles division that make is that much more important. He actually appears to be a willing run helper from what I've seen. He just doesn't do a good job of tackling or even slowing people down. And in a league where LBs are have gotten lighter, you need outside corners that can help in the run.)

In terms of who, I think the guy that was drafted right after him (Turner) is going to be a pretty good NFL player and would have been a guy that would have gotten a lot of snaps on this even next year. Also a little later Alexander is going to be pretty good.

(Just to be clear, I don't hate the pick, and I think he'll be ok/good a CB. Assuming there was nobody that was willing to give up good value in a trade (i.e. that valued him as a top 50 pick), I would have gone DL.)

[PeterMP]

I'd argue outside CB was just as much if not MORE of a need than a pass rush. You can manufacture pass rush if your offense can generate leads consistently, but if your CBs suck there isn't much you can do about that. Remember how often teams would just throw the ball in ~2 seconds when we had the "four first round pick DL" and we never mustered together any pressure because our CBs would just beat off the bat right away?

Our 4 first round picks weren't very good. We never mustered any pressure, because the DL wasn't good.

[GoingCommando]

(I'll speculate as to why. He's not good against the run, and it appears given the Eagles success that teams in the NFL are rethinking their commitment to stopping the run. And then being in the Eagles division that make is that much more important. He actually appears to be a willing run helper from what I've seen. He just doesn't do a good job of tackling or even slowing people down. And in a league where LBs are have gotten lighter, you need outside corners that can help in the run.)

It looks like Dan Quinn is installing his classic Cover 3 scheme. The outside corners won't be a factor in run defense in this scheme because they're going to be way off the line. The run D will come down to the performance of the line, the linebackers, and the underneath safety/nickels/overhangs. You run an eight man box in base personnel with this scheme, and it should actually be pretty good at stopping the run considering that. We brought back Wagner and signed Will Harris to put good tacklers in our underneath zones, and we signed Javon Kinlaw and Deatrich Wise to add size to our DL. We should be better at stopping the run now.

[skinsinparadise]

I'd argue outside CB was just as much if not MORE of a need than a pass rush. You can manufacture pass rush if your offense can generate leads consistently, but if your CBs suck there isn't much you can do about that. Remember how often teams would just throw the ball in ~2 seconds when we had the "four first round pick DL" and we never mustered together any pressure because our CBs would just beat off the bat right away?

Absolutely. CB is a premium position.

We are IMO is a window in particular the next 2 years when Jayden's contract is cheap.

I want a better D line but I don't think it was the code red position that could derail the 2025 season. And i know we aren't accustomed to thinking about THIS season as the be all and end all. We are used to thinking of success in the far off future. But heck we are a chic pick for the SB with some national observors and even some gambiling outfits are betting on us. We can do it now. New thinking, new world for us fans.

And considering now matters, IMO CB was the spot on defense that could derail the season. I like the Jonathan Jones signing but he's an older dude coming off a pedestrian season. Lattimore was a hot mess last season. Maybe Jones rebounds next season and Lattimore finds his groove again. But what if they didn't? We going to win with Sainstril and Noah I alone and 2 dudes that are shot manning the other spots? It would be a disaster. If so this move helps mitigate a potential disaster.

Conversly D line was not the same ticking time bomb. It was a big need so don't get me wrong. But I don't think its the spot that would derail the season. They were 11th last year in sacks. Quinn's super power is manufacturing pressure,

And as the season progressed oddly enough Bobby Wagner emerged as a great blitzer along with Luvu. Armstrong quietly had 6 sacks. Kinlaw brings 5. Fowler, we might miss, but his time was early in the season, he slowed down after that. Maybe with his contract on the line, Daron Payne will reawaken since clearly its a bigger motivator with him than most as to bringing out his best. Newton played well in the playoffs. He was coming off of two surgeries. So I think the best is yet to come with him.

Also a key point is much easier to find a pass rusher on the street than a good corner. They can still sign Von Miller or Za'darius Smith. Neither is killer. But if they can end up 11th in sacks again which I don't see why not -- it's not a disaster. CB could have been a disaster, now its less likely to fall apart.

Amos when watching him reminded me of Carlos Rodgers but with decent ball skills. Can press-man play zone. Decent albiet inconsistent against the run. Sticky in coverage. Feisty at the catch point.

I am not a fan of picking players based on need. If we want that then we got the wrong dude as GM, and lets get Ron Rivera back who was the king of drafting for need and we saw how well that aged.