Seller's Remorse: Stephen Tulloch

Great players are always in position to take advantadge of the situations you mentioned.
Tulloch is a good tackler, but a great tackler can also force a fumble from time to time. Luck can´t work against a player all the time.

but in retrospect, I don’t think the idea to just let him walk was a great idea.

McCarthy is already better and he is the future.

Despite his flaws, I hated to see him go.

He was an excellent tackler and great against the run—those are the two things you want out of a MLB.

I do wonder, though, how much his improvement against the pass had to do with having that beast of a defensive line in front of him. It certainly didn’t hurt.

As far as turnovers go, I kind of agree. I think fumbles are flukey. Of course, if you’re a big hitter, you’re going to force more fumbles probably, but they seem almost more like a random variable to me. Picks can be flukey as well, as you demonstrated with your about Babs, but less so. I feel like picks often to come with just flat out being better in coverage (along with other things, like the ability to confused a QB with a disguised coverage). Either way, I never worried too much about his lack of turnovers.

Still, I think McCarthy’s got a big upside and is already a playmaker, so I’m not upset about it.

If we had Tulloch in the middle instead of Ruud the first part of the year or even the whole year our defense wouldve been better and perhaps another win means playoffs?

Tulloch was awesome against the run and we SUCKED against the run…just ask fellow MCMer aljeal who always brings it up. lol

But, really, that would have just been a lesser of two evils. I also defended Tully at the end of last season, but the context of the system is important.

In a traditional 4-3, Tulloch executed his primary responsibility (run support and playmaking in the middle) exceedingly well, while his secondary responsibility (pass coverage) left some things to be desired. In that sense, at least he was good at something, whereas there appeared to be no bright spots in Ruud’s game.

In Gray’s system, there are some deep, Tampa 2 type drops for the MLB. Tully would have been exposed in this aspect of the game.

I think Tulloch is a good player, but every player must be evaluated within the confines of the system which they’d play in. Heading into the 2012 season, McCarthy will be the better player for our system.

We knew what we had in Tulloch. He was not what we needed going into the year. (I actually preferred Ruud at the start of the season).

He’s also not the first player to look better with Schwartz coaching him. Plus, if he’s sooooo talented, why is Detroit letting him go?

Lions fan here. He was a huge improvement over what we had in 2010, although our overall defensive statistics were worse than in 2010.

Stephen was a guy who played almost every snap, and made some big plays for us. I had heard that he was very poor against the pass, but that is not what we saw. He looked very good dropping back and had two INTs, both of them very big in comeback wins against Dallas and Carolina.
I was a little disappointed in his tackling, as he missed a number of tackles near the line. That was something I did not expect to see.

That’s a moronic question. Besides, what makes you think we would’ve even drafted McCarthy if we retained Tully? In hindsight, I’m glad we let him walk, even if it means we had to go through Ruud to get him.