[mlmpetert]

Originally Posted by Slingin Sammy 33

I wish I could, but the best I can come up with is Vinny & Zorn are gone and Snyder doesn't appear to be playing FF with the team anymore with BA as GM.

As long as MS/KS/Haslett are here, no matter how we upgrade talent, on O we'll struggle in the Red Zone thanks to the heavy reliance on the pass and the ZB scheme. There's obviously an unwillingness to tailor the scheme to the talent available.

I think Haslett has done a B/B- job with what he has on D. I still think we're beter in a 4-3 alignment with Rak & Kerrigan being able to focus full time on their strengths (hand-in-dirt, get after QB) than in the 3-4 with those two learning new techniques. We still have no true NT. If we're staying 3-4 I'd love a more one-gap attacking style, which we won't do.

I think we'll improve if we hit on a true franchise caliber QB (but what team wouldn't). With the current coaching staff and philosophy, I don't see us ever progressing to be an elite team.

Wow, this is almost exactly the way i feel, but said much better then what i could have typed out.

I truly believe that that solely relying on a ZB running scheme can only work if you have a top 5 QB, otherwise defenses will consistently beat you in the redzone and short yardage situations. Unfortunately finding and developing a guy into a top 5 QB is a rare and long process.

I also think the change from the 4-3 to 3-4 was a much bigger issue then people generally acknowledge, primarily because of the opportunity cost associated with making the switch; the entire rest of the team was put on hold and possible even set back to fix something that wasn’t broken. “Fixing” the d was a luxury that we wernt in the position to have.

But to me it’s less the coaching staff and more the current philosophy, maybe those are one in the same but I think philosophy can change and that’s why I see room for improvement. And imagine if we brought in a new coaching staff that wanted to change the d back to a 4-3 base and do entirely away with the ZB system, we would be just as bad in 2 years as we are now, maybe worse. So now that we wasted 2 years on fixing our D I think we can put less effort in upgrading it and focus on the offense a little. Id also love to go to a partial ZB scheme that incorporated plays suited for short yardage situations, but most importantly id like to see our coaches become more adaptive and less uncompromising in their philosophies.