[papabear]

Originally Posted by barrett

If you are firing off you are not doing much diagnosing. So we had gaps and lanes.

I had this same argument last year. The problem with an across the board 1 gap system with your front seven is if one guy screws up it can lead to a huge play.

Most teams have at least one DT anchoring and eating blockers. We don't have that guy. Travis Johnson is far and away our best at it, and he is average (and missing). Okam, for all his size, is better at penetrating than at holding ground. deljuan shoots gaps. okoye shoots gaps. Cody shoots gaps.

Having that one space eating tackle can make the difference. It allows your other lineman to be more agressive. Okam is our best hope. He looked much improved...until the Saints game. I still think there's a chance he can provide a boost to the NT position.

More aggressive is not always better. I said this over and over last year when people wanted aggressive. You have to have the players for aggressive. Otherwise every D-coordinator in the NFL would be bringing pressure on every play.

I know people who talked about how we should use more agressice zone blitzing....and then bitched when we ran a zone blitz with Mario in coverage. The whole premise of the zone blitz is that it confuses the QB because he never knows who is rushing and who is going into coverage. If your going to do Zone blitz then Mario (really all of the lineman) have to drop into coverage from time to time or the element of surprise is gone. My point is that aggressive defense is one of those buzz words that people get caught up in without realizing the negatives.

Demeco is great when protected by the DT and awful when the OL gets to him.

Haven't noticed it as much this year yet...but I was really disappointed in Demeco's sloppy tackling last year. He missed a lot of tackles because he just lunged in the general direction of the ball carrier. Could have been a symptom of the injury I guess.

Diles is small at SLB.

That's what scares me. We supposedly want to do a lot of 4-3 under stuff where the SAM is up on the line and really needs to be a physical presence. Other than Cushing we don't have anyone who is built for this. If he misses a lot of time we'll have to adjust the defense...and that could keep us from building an identity on defense and executing the way we should.

We need to hope TJ and Cushing make a big impact, or we may be even worse on D than last year.

I agree...although I'm not sure we could be much worse. The key is stopping the run. If we can be decent against the run and force 3rd and longs on a more regular basis I actually feel pretty good about our ability to harass the QB.
Our defense needs to be aggressive to a degree...there's no point in not having Okoye(or most of our other DT's) shoot the gap. It's what he's best at. We need someone to step up at the other tackle who can really mix it up and clog the middle. Our only hope is TJ or Okam IMO....or another teams cast off.