Quote:
Originally Posted by atomicnixon
It is the system, not the players. You're very misguided in listening to Adam Archuleta. Gregg Williams defense was always superior, he went to a Super Bowl with the Titans with an amazing defense, turned around, went to Buffalo, and had another amazing defense. Williams landed here in Washington with mostly players that were already here, and had the 3rd ranked defense. So it is the system, the other part is the will of the players to accept that.
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This is some strong, solid evidence for a point I generally disagree with; that a system can take an inferior team and better them substacially, or take a great team and worsen them substancially.
So how would I address this inconsistency in my argument?
Well, the Washington sample is easy. Grilliams had a bunch of players in the prime of their careers in '04. He lost some talent to free agency, and some of the returning players regressed in 2005, yet the defense was able to upkeep its top 10 status due to good fortune and timely turnovers. IN 2006, he lost even more talent to FA and injuries and many players in the front seven greatly regressed. Really nothing Williams could have called would have mattered. I would at least have made Carlos Rogers start pressing more often...but that wouldn't have changed a whole lot.
But you cite additional evidence for his Tennessee and Buffalo tenures that I would have to somehow discredit to support my assumption. I don't know much about the defensive roster makeup of those two teams. I know who the stars were, but that doesn't help all that much. What I can do, at the very least, is see how good these defenses were under Williams.
Buffalo was a very poor defense in Williams' first two years as HC there, but improved to be one of the league's best in his third. This is a complete inverse of the Washington sample. Very similarly, his super bowl year in Tennessee, his unit ranked in the bottom half of the league. The next year, it rose to second.
If scheme/coaching was responsible for the success of Williams' teams and also responsible for the failure of his teams, it doesn't make sense that his first DC stint and his HC stint produced defensive rosters that bettered every year he was in power, while Washington worsened. A much more plausible answer was that while Gregg Williams has a track record for sqeezing the most possible production out of little talent, consistently outcoaching your opponents isn't possible. Eventually, even the most ignorant of opponents will outscheme you. The one constant in successful sustained defense is great production from your defensive players.
So that's where I'm coming from. You find a coach that could have gotten this 2006 defense to play decently, and I'll lead the campaign to get him inducted into Canton tomorrow.