Quote:
Originally Posted by JAFF
Nothing always works all the time. That's life. How did this team lose to Jax 6-0 last year? WTF. The offense stunk that day.
The NFL has morphed into a league with athletic QB's and play fast up and down the field. A large, slow D can't compete with speed. Speed never goes into a slump. A large slow D can't catch Pat Mahomes. And moving him off his spot doesn't seem to bother him, that guy can throw from any positon. So you need to go HIT him. And he's not the last of fast mobile QB's, he is the future. And does anyone have a power run system in the NFL other than Dallas?
Yeah, I'm keeping it simple, because I'm not a GM. I don't pretend to be one on the internet. And the Dungy D works because it is simple. Players don't have time to make decisions, so you give them less thinking and more doing. Defense is reacting, and then you get to the ball, all 11 guys. That's how you can play young guys with less experience.
And I believe if Ballard can draft a 310 lb DT who can run like Warren Sapp, he will take him. But those guys are rare. You he's not going to sign a guy 2 gap blocking sponge because that doesn't fit this D. They don't need Tony Sarigusa. They are looking for John Randle.
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Here is my take on it. You are obsolutely right that the league is curving towards a spread system with fast mobile QB's (fast mobile QB's are really nothing new). The speed we have gained is definitely necessary and will be an asset next year.
The problem is we have two power run teams in our division and several more in the conference. We will have to go through these teams to get to the superbowl. To defend the run in this system it is all about maintaining your lane and distance (gap integrity or whatever you want to call it) while moving up the field. Dungy preached it relentlessly, we rarely practiced it. Those defenses often got pushed around a lot. MJD is still running on them.
Maintaining your lane is easier in the 1st quarter than it is in the 4th, in the cold, on the road, in the playoffs. Colts fans have seen this before. The pats went run heavy at the end of last year to counter all these light fast defenses and to protect Brady's aging arm. They use a fullback. The question is will we be able to hold up against the pats, in NE, on their turf, in the playoffs when they will want to run all day long?
I don't know if they can, so I would like to strengthen the dline with some size. I hoped they would have addressed it in the draft, but it didn't happen. I don't think we need a Siragusa, and I don't think he would fit. But a big DT (in relation to our own guys) that fits our style of D did just become a FA, hence this thread.