They are meeting with the players for the last time before they release them for the offseason.

The defense is designed to slow drives down and give the offense a chance to make a mistake, give up a turnover, get a key penalty, etc. Against garbage teams this works well enough.

I suspect that the defense has been run this way the past two seasons because the talent level on defense is so low. This team would need 6 or 7 new, quality starters to have a good defense. With the trash on the roster on that side of the ball, no scheme is going to work.

The problem is that the talent level on defense has been declining for 3 or 4 years running, and it hasn't been replenished. No shuffling of the deck chairs by Bob Sutton can fix that.

I have a lot of trouble believing that there's no talent on this defense. Chris Jones is a beast, Ford was disruptive, Houston is (now) decent all around, Nnadi is good, Xavier played well, our CBs were generally solid. This should be an above-average defense, even with some holes that are obvious.

He's having a bit of a meltdown right now.

The difference is that for every player that should be a starter we have 1 that shouldn't even be 3rd string. Other than Fuller, our whole secondary is terrible. The fact that Ward was such a big upgrade is telling of how little talent we have back there.

Soren Petro was talking about it yesterday.

Bob's defense is way too complicated in one aspect. It's designed to take EVERYTHING away.

By that, I mean this:

BB put together a defensive game plan that took away Hill and Kelce. If he was going to get beat, it was going to be somebody else. Watkins and Williams had big games and he was willing to risk that to take away Hill and Kelce.

Bob tries to take away everything and with superior talent, it can often work. The problem is if the talent level drops, suddenly you're trying to shut down everything but only at 75% efficiency. That's how you see a 13-play drive where they force 3rd and 10 THREE TIMES by shutting down the Patriots on 1st and 2nd down over and over (it worked) and then give up big gains on 3rd down. Notice that it was Edelman and then White and then Gronk. It wasn't really the same guy over and over (although Edelman was great down the stretch).

Bob's scheme just doesn't work.

Of course I mean here is the issue that happens. Fans of course hate Bob Sutton and understandably so. But most everyone who works out there doesn't care what fans think and Andy Reid has now coached with Sutton for 6 years so suffice to say they are probably good friends.

Not even most people who post here would publicly take someone they were friends with for the past 6 years and chuck them under the bus.

Having suicidal thoughts

Hope you're joking.

The Fatman needs to eat before discussing any considerations.

Bob had good defenses before. Had a good defense in 13 that wavered toward the end and got destroyed against Indy in the 2nd half

Had a good Defense in 14

Very good defense in 15

As we lost guys like Poe, Houston and Hali/Berry(injuries/age) its gone to shit. Bob is like Gunther, needs an all pro defense to make it work. But Reid wasn't going to fire him when it was working and because it worked for several years he wrongfully gave him the benefit of the doubt. Reid won't make that mistake next year, you can hear it in his voice when he talked about it yesterday. Sutton is gone.

There are talented players up and down the defensive roster. Obviously they can upgrade at certain places and I'm sure they will.

But it's as if people think that the good defenses of the league have stars at every position. Hell, we don't even need a "good" defense. We need mediocre.

This defense performed fine (usually even well) in the first halves this year. Everything disintegrates in the second half. Because we have an overmatched DC who NEVER makes quality adjustments in the 2nd half.

They really don't have talented players all over the defensive roster...

They have several has beens who use to be good and some one trick ponies that can be exploited by good/smart offenses.

You'd think a guy who spent a bunch of his professional career coaching at Army would know something about providing for the common defense. Bob, Not so much...

He has the responsibility to do so. Anything less is unacceptable.