It’s accurate, as you can see below. Certainly the injury to Ridley did’t help and then all the rotation along the offensive line was bothersome. This are really issues to examine closer this offseason because I don’t know the simple answer.
I mean, they’re still in the top half of the league, so it’s not like they were awful. Really, on the defensive side of the ball, we’d have taken 14th in DVOA in any ranking, but the bar has been set so high, Top-10 the last eight seasons, it was hard not to notice a dip.
My initial feeling is that it comes back to the interior offensive line and just needing to upgrade one or both of those spots. I like Stork long-term, but I think they can do better than Wendell/Connolly and wished they had taken more substantive steps last offseason.
Then it comes back to just finding a better early-down back, and I’d guess that might include Ridley on a prove-it deal and a significant draft pick to compete with Blount.
In spite of all this, if Ridley had stayed healthy, they’d probably be a few spots higher and we wouldn’t be quite so concerned, but it is something to look at this offseason.
