How To Make the Defense Legit

[HarleyDog]

(05-14-2019, 12:53 PM)fredtoast Wrote: ….Stay healthy.  Preston Brown was injured the first game of the season.  He returned a month later, but I feel he was still limited.  Brown actually graded pretty well in pass coverage when with the Bills.  I think he will be better this year if he stays healthy.  A lot of other key defensive players missed time last year.  Glasgow (13 games), Lawson (9), Vigil (6), Dennard (3), Kirkpatrick (3), Evans (2).

….Replace Burfict.  I was as big of a Burfict fan as anyone here, but he did not even look like the same player last year.  I don't know if the problem was physical or mental, but he was nothing like the player he used to be.

….Improve tackling.  I don't have any numbers to back this up, but we seemed to have a ton of broken tackles last year.  A lot of time coaches take the blame when they really don't have the talent they need, but when an entire team seems to have the same flaw, like poor tackling, that is usually a coaching issue.

Your correct on all points. We were not healthy last year and it hurt pretty bad. I felt the LBs played better till Burfict came back (which seemed slow and out of shape) and seemed to head off a cliff immediately after. As for tackling, we've been struggling with this for a few years. Last year seemed to be huge improvement the first couple games the something happened and they looked horrible again. Then they went from horrible to just downright ugly as the year progressed.