[jspchief]

I'm going to put it all on our secondary. And specifically the play of our safeties. They offer little help in passing plays and seem to be caught out of position often. They also take the blame on the majority of our run D. A large portion of our games where we perform poorly against the run (statistically), it's due to one or two big runs. Not 15 yards big, 40+ yards big. To me, your safety is the guy that stops a run at 15 yards instead of letting it continue to 40+. It's like they're getting burnt on pass plays because they always bite on run fakes, yet when it is a run, they aren't there to make the stop anyway.

That doesn't mean that I don't think our LB situation is bad. They are very mediocre. But with better safety support, most of the games where we played poorly against the run wouldn't have been as bad. Besides, we have suffered a lot of injuries at the LB spot, and specifically at MLB (a position that I feel is important to have a field captain at).

The D-line I'll go easy on. We do get solid pressure, and play well against north/south run plays for the most part. Many of the damaging pass plays are not due to lack of pressure, but instead lack of downfield coverage. QBs know that they can get a ball off quickly in the direction of some of our poor secondary players.

I honestly believe that with better safety play we could be much more effective on defense. We wouldn't be top ten, but we might be a legit top 15.