It's Talent, Not Coaching.

[Coff]

Originally Posted by Beemnseven

No it doesn't. I'm saying -- and I thought I made this pretty clear -- that whether we're in the 3-4 or 4-3, the players we have just aren't that good. That whatever success we've had in the past was bound to start going downhill. That no matter what sort of alignment they're in or what scheme or system that's in place, we'd be in just about the same shitty statistical situation.

Again, people seem to believe that all we have to do is fire Jim Haslett and go back to the 4-3 and everything will be fine. I just don't buy it.

But the defense was good last year. And very good the year before. I'm not jumping on the "fire Haslett" bandwagon just yet, but you can't honestly compare this year's defense to last year's and say that the coaching has nothing to do with the difference. The personnel is nearly identical; the scheme is what has changed; and we've gone from 10th in the league to 32nd. (And thankfully there are only 32 teams in the league.)

Perhaps the difference is just the growing pains of learning a new system, perhaps the difference is just bad luck. Who knows? But the one consistency on defense between last year and this year is the players, so you can't say the players are the reason this defense is terrible.