Didn't want to make a new thread for this, but I wanted to ask you guys what your best guess is on what happened on defense this year. And I don't mean just bad players and bad coaches -- we all know that.
Listening to some podcasts this morning, it's a total shitshow. They love Elam and prop him endlessly then he gets released before the year is over. Liafau looks fairly promising then this year doesn't play at all. They trade for Wilson and he doesn't play a single play this last game. They ask Jerry why and he doesn't know. It sounds like a massive disconnect between not just Eberflus and the players, but maybe Eberflus and Jerry. Broaddus suggested that Eberflus knows he's gone and so this is his way of giving Jerry the finger. Even happy friendly Schotty is basically calling our Eberflus.
Another good point is that you hired basically the entire staff (save Whitecotton) from Chicago when they weren't good on defense. Maybe these position coaches aren't any good.
Thanks (again) to our worthless media, we have to guess because they won't tell us anything of what they've heard. Give me your best guess of what was going on behind the scenes.
Here's what I think:
-The cardinal sin was hiring a DC who I believe the game has passed by and who was out of ideas on how to evolve his scheme. You can tell it by the way he talks about his scheme, but also see it in the basic coverages we play. Everything about the coverages just looks and feels like it was plucked out of 2004 or 2014 without any nuance or disguise layered onto it, just straight basic cover-2, cover-3, etc.
-Our personnel wasn't, and isn't elite, and obviously trading Parsons didn't help matters but it's not as bad as the results have been, especially with an offense as explosive as ours and especially once Williams and Overshown joined.
-In hindsight I think the horrific LB play early on was a canary in the coal mine for how the game has passed Eberflus by. That was his specialty, as well as the specialty of his top lieutenant Borgonzi, and it's been the worst positional unit on the entire defense.
-Injuries in the secondary made things worse but we've seen shitty results regardless of who is out there, so I don't think that's a huge factor either way. If we had improved over the last half of the year like we did under Zimmer that'd be one thing, but that obviously isn't the case.
-I think a lot of the ideas that helped in the short-term (playing more man, "5 down", etc.) were at least partially influenced by Schottenheimer when he started getting more involved with the defense around the time of the first Washington game, which I think is another sign that Eberflus just doesn't have the ability to evolve his scheme with how the game has evolved.
-It's possible that Eberflus just didn't have a strong enough voice during last offseason but I'm skeptical of that given his history with the team and the FO. Even if that is the case it's not an excuse, it's his own fault if he isn't strong-willed enough to influence personnel decisions. Obviously he isn't going to get Jerry/Stephen to not be cheap, but he could easily steer them away from someone like Kenneth Murray if he wanted to.
-I don't even blame Jerry/Schottenheimer for hiring Eberflus, his profile is similar to guys like Dennis Allen and Vance Joseph who have been great as DC's after flaming out as HC's. Maybe if Schottenheimer had more of a say he could've smoked out how rigid Eberflus is in terms of his scheme and how he sees the game, but that's debatable to begin with.