The coordinators

[Schneed10]

4-3 or 3-4, doesn't matter. Kerrigan Murph and Smith are all flexible enough to play with the hand in the dirt or standing up.

Barry is a major part of the problem. Stick with me here on the X's and O's, but here's why his system is a bad fit.

- One of the premises of his system is an attack-style, one-gap approach at the defensive line and a lot of zone defense on the back end. The one-gap favors quickness and penetration up front to generate a lot of disruption and pressure, and the zone on the back end is designed such that DBs can have their eyes on the QB more, which can then lead to picks if the line penetrates and disrupts often enough.

- This system can be effective if you get enough penetration. We don't. Baker is the only one that occasionally shoots gaps.

- The obvious vulnerability that comes with shooting gaps is that it's easy for the offensive line to use your momentum against you and just wash you out of a play. So it can leave gaping holes for RBs to exploit.

- In order for a one-gap to be effective against the run, you need extremely athletic linebackers that can get into a gap vacated by a one-gapping lineman, they have to do it extremely quickly. And they have to be hitters capable of stalemating a lineman in the hole. We lack the athleticism and size at LB.

That's the problem with the scheme. There are also plenty of problems with the secondary - the safety position is undermanned, while the CB position should be better given the talent. I don't think Barry does a good job communicating when a CB should use inside or outside leverage and I don't think he has them understanding where their help is. But those aren't scheme things, that's just poor coaching.

Sticking with the scheme problem, I don't know how you continue to run a one-gap defense when you know you don't have the horses up front to penetrate often enough, and you know you don't have the LBs to make up for vacated gaps. With this personnel group I would be running more of a Greg Blache two-gap scheme. Given the limitations with the line talent, I would ask them to occupy blockers. It's much more vanilla but it would at least stop the run much better. That would keep linemen off our physically overmatched linebackers, and let them use their decent recognition skills to stop the ballcarrier.

You don't get too many game-changing disrupting plays with a scheme like this, but we haven't been doing that anyway because we lack the talent. If we had a Fletcher Cox alongside Baker, it'd be different. We should be two gapping, forcing teams into more 3rd and 7s, and then running stunts and twists to try to win on the obvious passing downs.

I don't like defensive coordinators who show an inability to adapt their system. Barry does the same damn thing every game. We one-gap, we get gashed by the run, we use Whitner in the box to help as the CBs back off the line, and we get destroyed in the secondary. He should be able to get more out of this group, and his inability to make adjustments is unsatisfactory.

If we had better personnel would Barry be better? Sure, duh. But even with better talent there will be times where our opponents are ripe for a one-gap with zone, and other times where other opponents are ripe for a two-gap. I don't like his lack of flexibility and poor adjustments.

We need a talent infusion at all three defensive levels but we also need some better thinking at D coordinator. It's truly an organizational failure. Barry needs to be replaced and a lot of the players need to be upgraded.