New Look Defense

[Bangee7]

Originally Posted by Schneed10

Terrance Knighton was very good at commanding double teams and clogging the middle in his one season here. Yet our defense still blew chunks and he never played in the NFL again after that. So tell me again how a traditional NT is so important in a 3-4 when nobody else in the NFL thought he was worth it?

The Cardinals and Texans are the two teams with the most successful 3-4 defenses over the last few years, I think we would all agree with that. The Texans have Vince Wilfork playing the NT role, a good traditional NT type, but aging. The Cardinals have Corey Peters in that role, a 6-3 305 pounder drafted in the third round by the Falcons.

Notice those defenses have something else in common, strong pass rushers from the end and OLB spots. JJ Watt, Clowney, the since departed Calais Campbell, and Chandler Jones. To say nothing of the secondary play.

I am with Matty, NT is overrated.

Good points, but nobody will convince me that any position on Defense is not important.

No doubt Knighton was Huge, but as we all saw, he was also over weight & out of shape. When he was on the field, he took too many plays off.

Corey Peters is the interesting outlier in this discussion.
He played 497 of 1,019 (48%) defensive snaps last year for the Cardinals.
So you've proven that the argument that Hood & Ioannidis were too small is not valid. (Rich Tandler should be ashamed!)

So, it sounds like it's not the size of the dog in the fight, but the size of the fight in the dog.

McGee missed 7 games last year & only played 220 of 987 snaps (22%).

Our Defense was pathetic last year (against the run, against the pass) - just pathetic.

It will be interesting to see if the same basic players line up at the same spots & play better.

Maybe scheme & coaching can make that happen...it's something I'll be watching.