I honestly think Witten had become a really glaring problem for us. He just sucked and they kept using him regardless. But that's not a justification for taking a TE in the top ten of the draft now.
Honestly there are good ways to build a team and bad ways. You don't build a team with top ten draft picks at TE. So to take one without a need seems like a really shitty idea that will keep this team mediocre even longer.
Maybe so.
Or maybe if we didn't treat FA like the plague and had a real team-builder running things we'd go after DJ Jones and Marcus Williams in free agency, re-sign Lewis or Awuzie, and have a very competent defense while still taking the generational TE who very well may be the BPA even over Parsons/Rousseau.
Edge: Lawrence, Gregory, Armstrong, Anae, Carter
Interior DL: Jones, Gallimore, Hill, Woods, maybe McCoy
LB: LVE, I guess Smith (can't ask for too much right?)
CB: Diggs, Brown, Lewis
S: Williams, Wilson
That's a solid looking defense (outside of Smith) and we'd still have our 2nd, two 3rd's and two 4th's to address it. We could easily end up with a guy like Nick Bolton, Carlos Basham or Azeez Ojulari in the 2nd to beef up the LB's or edge rushers, or Alim McNeil or Marvin Wilson to beef up the interior DL. Hell, maybe even Nixon or Barmore falls to our 2nd.
The point is that we have the resources to build a decent enough defense and still take Pitts if the situation calls for it, but let's call a spade a spade here. The real problem is we're all worried that the team isn't going to do dick to address the defense in free agency so we don't want to sink our most premium resource of the offseason into a somewhat redundant talent.