Heard Lombardi say the other day that he thought the style of cover-3 that Pete Carroll developed over time has seen it's day come and go. He cited Seattle, Atlanta, Jacksonville and San Diego (the coaching tree is fairly obvious) as the teams which employ it, and that they are all being exploited by offenses that have figured out how to defeat it.
It's pretty clear that if something was remotely effective, it would work particularly well with Thomas-Chancellor-Sherman-Browner-Maxwell running it, but it clearly was a viable option as long as the talent evaluators were able to put the right type of players on the field; why else would some of these coaches stake their careers on it.
Funny that I heard Phil Simms say the day after I listened to Lombardi that Atlanta makes more mistakes on defense than any team in the league.
I've read everything online about what makes the style a true C3 variant, but I'm interested in hearing what the X/O guys here think about Lombardi's comment. I know a lot of you guys played in the secondary at various levels.
Carrol's defense has been ravaged.
Atlanta has been trying to force a system on players who do not have the skill set, which is a major problem in the NFL. Not enough coaches adjust their schemes to fit their personnel. The team that does that the best just happens to be NE.
However, there are a couple of things that bug me about him:
1. Constant crapping on Giants, Eli, and Gettleman;
2. Changing his mind without stating acknowledging his previous viewpoint - earlier this year Baltimore's and Denver defenses were going to be great; now he states that they are crap and soft; and
3. The latest one - Daniel Jones is good value for a second rounder, bad value as a 6th pick, and Minishew is a better prospect than Jones and has "IT". It has been 4 games and Daniel Jones has good points (mobile, accurate, tough, super-competitive) and bad points (slow on reads and slow to recognize disguised defenses - but the hope is this becomes faster with reps and experience).
4. His sidekick on the GM Shuffle is a complete tool.
Adnan Virk irritates me on the podcast as well. Anybody with his cheap-shot attitude ought to come up with an original idea now and then.
But the interesting thing is this:
It's possibly a talent dependent scheme more than any other right now. Suddenly the defense is very good and it seemed to come out of nowhere, and a large part of that is the players.
You really need the pass rushers to make it work after you have the building block of good LBs and a decent secondary. This year the Niners got two strong edge guys in Nick Bosa and Dee Ford and added a good MLB from the Bucs (Kwon Alexander). Sherman is healthy and back to his older self, and their young CB Witherspoon was living up to his draft stock finally. This in addition to having Buckner and Armstead already on the team and very good at stopping the run and good pass rushers from the interior.
They added a Wide 9 tweak this past offseason from the DL coach Kris Kocurek that was in Detroit under Jim Schwartz when their D was legit. In order to make the Wide 9 work, you need the guys. When Detroit had the guys in 2014, they had a top 5 defense. And despite what most people think, the original intent of the Wide 9 was to stop the run, not so much as a pass rush scheme (but that was a welcome byproduct).
If you want a better "scheme", it's hard to beat the Vic Fangio 3-4 with pattern matching coverage. it's not as sexy as the other schemes, which is why it's not as common. It takes time to learn and you still need a good edge guy, but once your guys learn it well it becomes tough to beat it if undisciplined as an offense. It's supposed to be the ideal blend of man/zone coverage, but not as easy to implement. I think the issue in Denver right now is despite having good talent, it's a pretty new D for them to learn. The 49er and Bears defenses got better each year with the scheme.
I still don't "trust" this "Seattle 4-3 cover 3" against the best QBs and offensive minds, but something to keep in mind is that Kyle Shanahan wanted this type of defensive scheme when he took over the 49ers. He felt it was the one that gave him the most challenges. He's proven himself to be a top play caller and he's had some good QBs, so it will be interesting to see where this trend goes.