- Thread starter
- #41
Since the whole defense was poor last year, I have to go coaching on this and cut previously good players some slack.
This doesn’t tell the whole story though. Players don’t just magically get better every year. Once there is tape on your game in the league, teams adjust. Just like a QB. You can’t really say it’s all coaching or all the players just sucked.
Also, I think there’s a HUGE misconception from our playoff run 2 years ago that our defense was stout. It wasn’t. We were below average in a lot of areas. It was going to be hard to maintain the 3rd down stop percentage and red zone percentage we had that year. There is some luck involved with those situations. Teams had tape on that playoff run in 2020 as well. They saw what our weaknesses were in the KC game. They exploited it.
I don’t necessarily agree that promoting Shane Bowen was the right call. Clearly something was off last year and it’s almost never one sided. It was probably both, coaching and players not performing.
It’s very clear what JRob and Vrabel felt the issue was last season. They’ve addressed it and we will have to see how much of last years issues were players/talent related.
But we have to stop this misconception that players will automatically improve year over year. That only happens in Madden lol. Careers usually have some peaks and valleys. Players are constantly having to adjust to new things being thrown at them because every year teams have more and more tape on a player. They know his tendencies and more importantly they know his weaknesses.