Haynesworth is Behaving Selfishly

[Ruhskins]

Originally Posted by The Goat

That Allen/Shanny/Haslett decided to take the defense in a completely different direction...that's the real issue, not Albert. Maybe their plan works out. But history, one might say, is not on their side. Shanny has always struggled to keep his defensive unit on track, and Haslett has struggled to build up his defense. I hope they get it right this time...

Sadly, this gets lost on all the overhype and AH hating. To me personally, switching to the 3-4 created more needs on defense, to a team that already had a ton of needs on offense, some needs on defense, and did not have many resources in the draft. While I'm not going to make the argument that the previous defense we had was a good one, I think things would have been easier if we stayed in the 4-3.

Defensive Ends: Orakpo at full time DE, Andre Carter (who had a very good season last year), an up and coming Jarmon, and good depth with Daniels, Wilson, and Alexander would have been great in the 4-3. Instead, with the 3-4 a lot of these guys are being switched to LBs to learn a new position, we are putting Carter to a position where he wasn't too successful in the past, and counting old 3-4 DEs like Daniels and Holliday. And the best guy that would fit as a 3-4 DE is being considered more as a NT. Orakpo is the only one that wins out of this bunch.

Defensive Tackles: We wouldn't be dealing with this Haynesworth mess right now, and we could have brought other DTs to replace Griffin. Instead with the 3-4 we opened a huge need in the NT, and want to waste a dominant, upfield pass rusher with the cumbersome job of a NT. Oh and his back up is a guy coming off a pretty bad injury, and a whole bunch journeymen.

LBs: This was probably the greatest area of need in our old defense, and would have been a need this season in a 4-3 defense. But at least we would have had a MLB in Fletch, and Rocky as a OLB (and we could have picked up our other OLB in the draft and/or free safety). On our 3-4 defense, we have a whole bunch of converted DEs as OLBs, Fletch may be too small to play ILB, and we are counting on a rookie to possibly be our other ILB. And we have yet to bring in any LBs with 3-4 experience. As I've said before, the only winner here is Orakpo.

Free Safety: A need on either defense that I feel the FO is not even thinking about.

So there you have it. I wish Shanahan had left the defense alone, improve it with players, but keep it the way it is. Now I feel we go into the season with question marks in both sides of the ball. I know there has been good change in the way this team is run, but I just don't see the need to make such a huge change in defense. Someone said in the past that Shanahan will make a bonehead move every now and then (i.e. Clarett) and I feel this may be his.

As any good fan, I truly hope the defense works out, but my gut feeling tells me that is going to be a tough year in that side of the ball.