Panthers pull a switcheroo at DE

Big 3-4 OLBs are probably just as comfortable at DE. (Being that that is probably what they played in HS and in college.)

He was playing well. If CJ or Hardy goes down, who replaces them?

and turned out to be wrong. Hope they are right.

He has been coming in on defense to rush the passer on longer downs. He has gotten a couple of pressures, but has yet to make any real splash plays.

3-4 OLBs are essentially DEs in a 4-3. You drop a player and you pick a player up to fill his position (like we did with Considine/Hines yesterday).

That’s why we dropped a DE (Selvie) in order to sign another DE (Applewhite).

BAMF is kicking ass and taking names.

I can’t say I had an issue with Selvie either, but Applewhite seems to be a decent player who can play DE or LB.

In Rivera’s press conference he basically said that a lot of players are in position to make plays and not making them or that they are out of position and that they need to find guys that will be in position and make the play whether those players are on the current roster or not.

These moves the last few days look to me like an attempt to find these type of players.

SD was 8-8 last season with the league’s first-rated offense and first rated defense. That tells me that they’re special teams units were atrocious…like historically bad.

These two guys we’ve picked up had a hand in that. On the opening play of the 2011 season, SD allowed Percy Harvin a KO return for a TD—both were on the field.

Here’s the list of players who had tryouts on October 4. Cardinals: punter Matt Dodge. Panthers: linebackers Antwan Applewhite, Kevin Bentley, Kion Wilson; defensive back Quintin Demps.

Well put M_P!

Applebottom can play defense and ST…George Selvie (while I too have been pleased with what we’ve seen so far) is not really a ST kind of guy. He’s a little too long and lean, and he’s not as good at tackling.

So you swap him for a guy who can do more things in Applebottom.

Should be a great rotational player. We’ve watched Selvie for a few games and didn’t get much penetration out of him. I loved the way Tampa (I know stab my tongue for saying it) rotates their Defensive Ends to ensure that they stay fresh. Our rotation past the first two is non-exsistent.

Just A Guy.

That’s my guess.

We saw him play for three years at Wake Forest. We know what he’s got.

I understand that in a lock-out shortened offseason, its difficult enough to install your base defense, much less a bunch of sub packages. But to me, we have been pretty vanilla so far, especially for a team who was supposed to be blitzing “70% of the time.”

Hopefully that comes with time. McDermott admitted in his Monday interview with Steve Reed that they sat back too much against the Bears. I’d like us to start crowding the line of scrimmage a little more. You don’t necessarily have to blitz, as guys can drop back from the line, but doing this can create confusing coverages for the QB. We can’t keep allowing opposing QBs to average a QB rating of 96. With the LBs closer to the LOS, we would also be more likely to contain some of the ‘between the tackles’ running plays that have gashed us through the first quarter of the season.