New Defense - Ongoing season discussion

[Merlin]

This - Shula who has never been a DC needed the preseason to sort out his starters.

McVay kind of screwed him over by not playing the starters a little bit in the preseason and mix and match players as well.

Like how would Speights do with Reeder beside him or Rozeboom beside him.

In preseasons past, McVay had two DCs who who had prior experience as a DC.

The other one who didn't took 4games before his defense started to rock. Plus he had Donald too. Maybe Shula's will too after a half a year. (Will take longer without the Donald effect.)

Yep. Sitting starters just because they're projected starters is an oversight. The starters you should sit are the ones you know are starters. The hopped-up depth types filling a role should play and compete in preseason. And I am confident, given how the other two played, that we'd have better offball linebacking now had that happened. Which wouldn't fix our current issues. But maybe we'd have another win due to a few key stops here and there during games.

Also and btw that affected the OL significantly. As it usually does. Keep saying one of McVay's greatest weaknesses is his offense never starts the season in its power curve. In our Super Bowl seasons, both times, our offense hit its stride midseason.

 

[Tano]

The starters you should sit are the ones you know are starters.

This times a billion. I can't emphasize enough that this is the way to go.

 

[shovelpass]

https://www.matchquarters.com/p/nfl-weekly-data-download-week-4

How often, and how many the corners are in press

Rush rates. How often the rush 3, 4, 5, 6.

 

[Merlin]

Quality of your 4 man rush is what defines how good your pass rush is. This is the one area we are actually in very good shape going forward. Might end up with one of the best 4 man rush groups in this league by season's end. They're not there yet due to discipline in rush lanes IMO.

Sort the secondary and we are actually in decent shape because we'll be tough to score big points on.

Sort the offball linebacking and improve NT and maybe we see some reasonable improvement in getting to third and favorable for the defense.