Troy Vincent

Before you got here we had the argument about Branch's production, and I had access to game charts from a guy named K.C. Joyner who now writes for ESPN. According to his statistics, Branch gave up fewer catches for fewer yards and fewer touchdowns than Minter. He also had tighter coverage in most instances and had fewer missed assignments.

 

Have you thought about switching to decaf?

We really can not afford to have an all pro at every position on the field. You have to field some role players with the salary cap. McCree is a good role player. You have to cover weaknesses of certain players every game. You just hope he brings some stengths too and McCree certainly does.

 

McCree is fine and Minter is fine. Together they aren't fine. For whatever reason our coaching staff is ok with using two hit-first strong safeties who are weak in coverage, but it exposes consistent problems and will continue to do so as long as we utilize two of such players.

 

Since he called Gamble "nearly awful" and Manning "awful", IIRC he was stating that Branch was our best DB of 2004. Which I certainly don't agree with.

However, I believe his quoted statistics were that Branch "wasn't targeted much" compared to Minter, and that Minter had two more blown coverages. The overall gist of the situation, I guess, was that Branch was better for less targets.

 

I think Branch played well, all things considered. It appeared to me that in the first half of 2004, he did not tackle well. Nor did he take the best angles.

Was it Colin who blew coverage on Horn in the final game of 2004 vs. New Orleans? Or was it Minter?

It will be interesting. Branch has been the forgotten man in all this. He might compete for a starting spot. (Or maybe it can be leveraged against McCree's agent in negotiations. After all, Branch was the incumbent.)

 

personally, I felt like Branch was invisible in a lot of games. He was certainly good against Arizona, and didn't as often make mistakes as I'd have expected,

In the one game he played in preseason 05, he seemed invisible there as well. Certainly not as involved as the other safeties. And speaking of other safeties, I gotta look at the drafting of 2 safeties, one 14th overall; the signing of two veterans; and the re-negotiation of an aging safety to a lot of money (more than I'd have given, honestly) as a measuring stick of the idea that they weren't exactly ready to give the job to Branch outright. It'd be foolish to suggest any of us know how the team really felt about his performance there, of course.

And he'd kept up with the pack before getting hurt. I just didn't feel like he stuck his nose in there, and stayed far too conservatively back from the ball on more plays than I'd like. Sure, stay deeper than the deepest man, that's good technique, but it's no more useful than what we're doing now, it's just hitting with less force.

 

I think that's a fair assessment. The thing people didn't like about Branch is that he had absolutely no flash whatsoever. Like magnus says, he was invisible. The thing is, being invisible for a DB is not such a bad thing, because you're going to have a lot more opportunities to be visible giving up yardage than in making a play. So while a guy like Branch reduces the playmaking factor for our secondary, he also reduced the amount of yardage given up. That said, I'd definitely like someone better as I don't think Branch is at all instinctive at FS, but he's better than Minter. It's sacrilegious to say, but nonetheless true according to third party statistics. He gave up significantly fewer yards and fewer yards per attempt.

 

never did see those stats

 

Either way on who is better or who isn't. Troy isn't going to be worth the money he wants vs. he age. If he would sign for a vet minimum with incentives on top of that I would be all for it. Carolina just has not had a lot of success signing older players who are in the end of their careers.

 

I thought Branch was okay after the cast came off.