Yes, Scherff has mostly been up to his usual injury shenanigans and Morgan is still a solidly average starter. But the unspoken issue is the lack of veteran presence in the OLine. So many strong OLines play as units and benefit from talented vets. Just look at what happened to the 49ers oline when Trent came in. The Oline improved significantly, even when he’s injured, and he hypes up the whole team.
OL is not like CB, RB, or DE. A talented college player can produce as a rookie and you see it regularly.
I believe that there are a few positions that require significant post-college development to reach their potential, WR QB and OL. Many of the best tackles and guards across the league are 3+ years in and improved a lot from their rookie years So it won’t matter if we draft some athletic specimen early without support and peer coaching from an experienced leader. We need to sign a good FA OL vet to lead the unit.
You can point to the recent sack regression and say we don’t really need one but just look at the playbook. EB excised the playbook and is mainly calling short routes because Sam has no time to make a read or let a route develop.
I think we could’ve made something work for Moses, but scherff was not worth what the jags offered for him. We didn’t need to overpay him to keep him. We ended up overpaying on another injury prone OL anyway in Roullier who we also dumped.
The issue was failing to replace him, along with failing to put out league average lineman in at least 3 spots (every spot, depending on how you feel about cosmi/Leno).
While they are bad now, the o line isn’t that far from being decent. Larsen /cosmi are salvageable and we should look to a slight upgrade at one of the tackle spots and shoot for a cornerstone franchise guy in the other.