AFCN - who do you fear the most in 2024?

[Joelist]

(06-29-2024, 11:22 PM)Nate (formerly eliminate08) Wrote: Bottom line, when you are one of the worst run stopping Defenses in the league you shouldn't get worse just because one player left that 
was oft injured and was on one of the worst run stopping Defenses in the league. The DC in the name of Lou Anarumo needs to get this shit
together and I believe he will even if you don't.

We don't even know if DJ Reader will ever play a snap again in the NFL or even be a shadow of his old self.

Our run Defense was top 5 a couple years ago, it could be at the very least mid pack especially with an Offense that scores a lot and makes 
other teams throw the ball to catch up.

Plus one has to look at WHY they were so bad against the run. And again the problem was explosive plays - in this case the Hubbard playing injured coupled with Trey not being the best at run D resulted in us getting killed by runs to the edges blowing contain. And if that wasn't enough the safety issues on alignments per Lou's own statement had both LBs playing hesitant because they lacked confidence the secondary or even they were properly set. 

As to new players helping, Bell and Stone at Safety gives a huge injection of IQ, which flows down to the LBers being confident everything is correctly set. Then on the DL we went from one great DT (assuming Reader fully recovers and comes back quickly which was a BIG if), one solid DT (BJ Hill) and then falling off a cliff to a DT room that while maybe not as high end at the top has an above average DT in Rankins, then Hill who is solid to slightly above average and then Jenkins who was elite in run defense in college and Jackson who was very good against the run also. Top to bottom this is a better DT room flat out. Meanwhile Hubbard should be back to 100% and Murphy now has another year under his belt (and you could see him starting to pick it up as the season progressed) plus Ossai plus Sample plus our new EDGE pick Cedric Johnson who has the physical tools just needs to be coached up as he is kinda raw. 

Frankly I don't see how we DON'T improve on defense overall and versus the run.