Hey guys.

New to the site here. Was a poster at Football's Future until something happened (what I don't know, I can't seem to log in there anymore).

Anyways. At the start of this off-season, myself and a few others were very confident that our defense would be poised to bounce back, and felt that last year was the result of injuries and play calling more so than that of lack of talent. With that being said, I was really hoping that we would land a defensive coach that would be more of a 43 kind of guy. Sean McDermott was at the top of my list or even Chuck Cecil from the Titans.

Most others who I talked with also agreed at the time (before we hired Capers) that we were really built for a 43 scheme. I mean, if you look at our current roster defensively, and plug in Raji and Matthews into the Bates scheme that we had employed, we actually would be in the best situation talent wise ever to run that scheme.

Two huge run stopping cloggers in Raji and Pickett to press the pocket and Kampy and Jenkins on the ends with Matthews, Barnett (if healthy) and Hawk flying around really would impress me as a defense.

I'm not always a pessimist, in fact I'm usually quite the opposite. I guess I just find myself wishing we had of went a different way with this one.

I do understand MM's theory behind wanting to shake it up, and the fact that drafting 34 players fits what MM wants to do on special teams. But the bonus of being able to draft 34 players in the latter rounds of the draft isn't going to happen anymore with seemingly every team switching over. It isn't like Pittsburgh, Dallas and the Bills are the only teams employing the set anymore. I think I read somewhere that there are 14 teams running it now?!

Just my random thoughts and fears as we go into the season.


Btw kudos on the site.
Very decent and having the videos there to look at is very smooth I might add. I'm sure they will prove to be invaluable when arguing a point with people here 😛.

Dubya

P.S.
Looking forward to chatting with my Packer Bretheren and Sisters at my new home!

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First welcome aboard..

Second, if we had a DC that was hard nosed and inflexible; basically making us play to his scheme I would be more concerned than I am.

Looking back in Dom's history, and pointing directly at the 1999 Jags club and the defense they played that year put me at ease the day he was hired.

The 1998 Jags were a 4-3 teams.. in 1999 they played a variation of different fronts taking advantage of the personnel that was afforded him.

Dig into that defense.. and you will see many of the same types of personnel questions we have here.. and they ran multiple fronts and finished I believe in the top 5 or 10..

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I am ok with it because even if the 3-4 is getting lit up I don't see Capers and crew just sitting and letting it happen. Not like last year where when the 4-3 was getting lit up we changed absolutely nothing.

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I said last year when some here thought we ought to go 3-4 it's NOT THAT EASY to do. Now that they have done it and people here are figuring out it's not that easy to do now it's being highly questioned.

#1, we have an excellent defensive staff so I really don't care what we run I think we have the players that will benefit from what these guys bring to the table. I say this and ask "how much better off would we have been to stay in the 43 when we were not very good at that either?"

I think the biggest problem we faced last year was being out-stragized in the battle between OC and DC because Sanders couldn't play the chess game good enough and everybody knew what we were going to bring.

I look at the starting 11 guys and who we can bring in on the sub-packages and I see a pretty darn talented group of guys and now we have a DC whose as good at preparing and specializing schemes for specific opponents as anybody out there.

We were ranked what, twentieth last year? I have no doubt Capers will elevate this group to a much higher level.

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22nd pts
20th yards
12th pass yards
26th rush yards