This is all well and good. It's very good for a normal safety, in fact, but we have been severely hampered in sealing the edges that he's on. If it's Kam and it's a TE, pulling G, FB, or whoever, Kam pinches that edge off to the 98th percentile where they either have to turn back inside or they have to string it out to the sideline. We aren't getting that now and everyone knows it...and by that I mean teams that are facing us. We have been getting killed left and right in off tackle type plays.
McDougald has been good, but if Kam isn't ever going to play again I'd like to see a bigger, more aggressive athlete there. Yes, that is a lot to ask, but it's been a huge piece of the consistency of our run defense that has been really hit and miss since. And I say that knowing we have had games with no starting backers or a 50% injured backer or whatever. It just makes a massive difference.
EDIT:
Either that or we need to actually invest in a real SLB that can kill off that edge like Kam can. McDougald is fine in coverage, but with Kam you're basically getting a 2 for 1 player where you can just rely on "some guy" to play SLB for roughly 45% of the snaps, if that. As far as the cap goes, it's a huge value. Again, if Kam can't ever come back, I think we really need to look at shoring up sealing that edge with another player besides McDougald, which means we'll either have to hit in the draft or we'll actually have to pay for two legitimate players rather than just Kam.