Thread: Vic Lombardi speculates Woodyard has been demoted.

I put speculates because he isn't officially reporting it, but based on his tweets today he seems to think this is the case.

John Fox's press conference. Wouldn't specify exactly why Woodyard's playing time has been reduced. Trevathan calling the defensive plays.

Woodyard's lack of playing time has little to do with his neck injury. He wants to play. Says he's healthy enough to play.

RT @Writingez99: You think they're protecting him until playoffs?--->>nah. don't buy that. demoted.

Hmmm, wondered what happened. He was doing so good.

I'll take a wait and see appriacb . Very very interesting though. He's not a mike though..

And it is kinda weird cause we are great against the run.. and have been pretty bad at his strength

Ooof. That's a mistake, if so. I assumed they were being careful with him. If they're pulling him off the field and leaving the defensive captaincy to Trevathan while putting Lenon out there a bunch, I'm gonna get a lot less optimistic.

~G

Better be a damn good reason.

Maybe he broke a team rule or something. I thought he had been playing ok.

Woodyard is the D captain. It's not like DJ Williams where the dude gets a second DUI to get stripped of that leadership and field time. Replacing your defensive captain in the middle of the year is a BAD idea. I'd heard he was still injured and gutting it out, so seeing him in part-time duty against a team we should (and did) destroy was completely understandable.

Vic saying Woodyard states he's "completely healthy" makes sense too, because the guy wants to play.

Fox NOT saying that they were just being cautious and keeping Wes safe and healing for another week makes me nervous.

~G

I thought Wood was playing well. He kind of looked out of position when he dropped back into zone coverage the previous few games. He'd either drop too deep or not deep enough. Other than that, this is pretty shocking/odd. It's hard to believe Paris Lenon is an upgrade.

Originally Posted by BigDaddyBronco

Maybe he broke a team rule or something. I thought he had been playing ok.

Woodyard is our Walter Payton Man of The Year nominee for team and community leadership for the THIRD TIME IN FOUR YEARS. He wasn't even starting when he started getting those nods. If he broke a rule it wasn't by throwing quarters at strippers or having a boat orgy.

~G

Vic was also on the fan with Drew/Scott, and stated the same thing, but adding, that does not mean that Woodward can not earn his starting spot back.

Originally Posted by G_Money

Woodyard is our Walter Payton Man of The Year nominee for team and community leadership for the THIRD TIME IN FOUR YEARS. He wasn't even starting when he started getting those nods. If he broke a rule it wasn't by throwing quarters at strippers or having a boat orgy.

~G

Nah I was thinking being late to a team meeting or something.

My only thought is that they think Woodyard is too small to play the Mike and that's why he's getting injured, so they're working on contingency plans and making sure the backups get field time in case they're needed in the playoffs if there's an injury recurrence. If Trevathan goes out, Woody can go back to his normal Will position. If Miller gets hurt we've already played 6 games with those options. But we definitely suffered without Woodyard in there, so our backup options for him the first time around were either not good or not fully prepared.

Now we're trying to see if Lenon is at all useful or if we need to go with a three safety look (which we also deployed on occasion on Sunday) if Wes goes down again and we need to make a quick decision in a playoff game. We're just testing those scenarios using the Titans as a scout team.

That's all I got.

~G

I wondered at the beginning of the year if playing mike would wear him down. Maybe it's as simple as that.

In Fox's post game interview last night, he stated something about the neck injury Woodward got in the Dallas game, and then added they were resting some players. Who knows.