It's the circle of life. Every year, all 32 teams in the NFL hit the draft and look for new talent to replace aging or departing players. Sometimes, there's no real talent to replace (which is why you end up picking first), and sometimes, you have enough depth to allow even a first-round player to come along slowly. Sometimes, though, a rookie has to step up, or do even more. Occasionally, he needs to replace a player who was a vital piece of the team. Source: Bleacher Report
EJ Manual needs to be a stellar QB for Buffalo. They risked a 1st round pick on him and the Bills are in a serious drought of a winning season.
Again. Le'Veon Bell. I don't think he has "shoes to fill"...those would be very small actually. But I think there is a lot riding on him to carry the Steelers running game.
Geno Smith. He's close enough to a first round pick. If he doesn't pan out after Sanchez's issues, Ryan and staff are done.
Wheaton definitely over bostic. Khaseem Greene is going to be better than bostic, who was a strange 2nd round pick. And i highly doubt arthur brown just replaces ray lewis, hes gonna have to be eased in a rotation (although hes more valuable with Mcclains "retirement"), i like arthur brown but people need to chill on being convinced hes a slam dunk all world LB. Wheaton is going to have to replace wallace just like wallace replaced nate washington, then replaced holmes in his second year. Heath is hurt and sanders/brown are afraid of the endzone...someone has to score points, which was wallace and heaths job
Dude, Bostic is replacing Urlacher and Brown is replacing Ray Lewis. I say those shoes are just a tad bigger than Mike Wallace considering Pittsburgh has Emanuel Sanders and Antonio Brown already there. Arthur Brown is stepping into a linebacking core that lost Ellerbee and Kruger as well.
Name wise maybe, but urlacher and ray lewis were not exactly highly productive players the last 2 years. Lewis was being destroyed in coverage and urlacher lost about 2 steps and became even worse against the run, which was never his strong suit to begin with. They are filling big names of HOF players but wallace is easily the more productive player. The teams are losing leadership, but the rookies arent going to be asked to fill that. If you are looking at either one of them to be the next ray lewis or the next urlacher, then yeah id agree....but i dont think thats what is expected of them, and if it is theres going to be a lot of disappointment
