You’re kind of missing my point. Almost no one in our fanbase wanted Forbes to begin with, and then he sucked under Rivera. Then he sucked under Quinn/Whitt. Nobody disputes that he was a poor fit here and is in a much better position to slowly develop into a serviceable player with the Rams.
But for this regime, Forbes should have been seen as “found money”. The Rams identified how to use him more efficiently and have a starter on their hands. One they have to hide a bit, sure, but he’s clearly playing with confidence and growing into his skillset. Why couldn’t that have been our new regime? My whole point is that it’s a failure of self-evaluation from our coaches, especially Whitt obviously. If they’d correctly identified his strengths and weaknesses and how to accentuate the former and scheme more around the latter the way that the Rams are operating, we could have salvaged a usable player that we sorely needed. If we’d added more talent to this defense in the last two years, with better coaching and evaluation, we’d be one overly-pedigreed CB stronger on our defense.
Obviously Forbes never would’ve become what he’s growing into now on this defense surrounded by this talent coached by these coaches. That’s my entire problem with the whole situation. How am I supposed to trust any of their evaluations from the last two years now? Of current under-performing players being utilized poorly and of incoming college prospects? Who else are we wasting, mis-evaluating, or using incorrectly—stealing the confidence and swagger that got them drafted or signed in the first place?
It adds a very uncomfortable undertone to evaluating this whole regime, to see another franchise successfully salvage a player we had every incentive to fix.
I’m being a little dramatic for effect obviously, but it’s beyond simply “frustrating” to me. It’s concerning. We’re still learning about this regime and a lot rides on these guys getting things like this correct. It’s a data point, and not a good one. I’m still collecting data points, nobody (except Whitt) needs to be put to the stake for this. But it’s a negative data point and it goes on their ledger. And it’s concerning. Over a larger sample size, I want to be the franchise that fixes players by correctly identifying their strengths and weaknesses. I don’t want to be the franchise that has its players fixed somewhere else. The sample size is still pretty small, like you said the Eagles have this happen too. But it’s a miss that I’m counting.
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