[Sassy Squatch]

Originally Posted by DJ's left nut

So Jones, Ford and Houston playing great football has nothing to do with him but Hitchens playing like shit is his fault?

And if you think Fuller's severely under-performing you're just wrong. He wasn't playing as well out wide early so we gave him some run in the middle to get his head back on straight. Since about week 4, Fuller's been among the better CBs in the AFC including in the base packages when we keep him out wide. Even when the defense is getting strafed, the offenses are going around Fuller, not through him.

This will be about my 5th run at this, but please tell me what Sutton does from a scheme specific standpoint that so inspires your ire. I have watched and watched and watched this all season and have pleaded with folks to give me some kind of substantive rebuttal here regarding "Sutton's Complicated Scheme" and none of y'all ever do. You just wander off and then come back to make some other nebulous complaints the following weeks.

This. Isn't. Scheme.

His scheme is fine. It is in many ways quite good but in most ways it is just...normal. You complain about dropping Houston back into coverage and continually ignore the fact that the coverage responsibility A) has to be handled by somebody and our ILBs damn sure can't do it and B) Is a HUGE reason why our blitzes are effective. When the DL's don't know who's coming/going, it helps us a lot.

Moreover, our blitz packages, while less frequent than many teams, are actually damn creative. When you see things like Chris Jones having sacks in 9 straight games, how can you ignore how many of those came off confusion from the DL? Sutton's use of his LBs to free up Jones has been really impressive; Jones has had several sacks this year where the DL has just left him unblocked because they couldn't figure out where the pressure was coming from and Jones ended up looping or twisting or stunting or whatever and getting a free shot in. And then he'll build off that and use the threat of Jones to free up his LBs. The overload blitz on the strip sack was outstanding yesterday and I think it was design that freed Houston up to get there as easily as he did.

Sutton's a smart defensive mind but he's overly loyal, he's too reserved and I think his players have started to tune him out because of those factors. It's time to move on from him. But this flat out ****ing wrong nonsense regarding scheme is just tiresome.

There are former players that have said his scheme takes 2+ years to learn and that they are asked to read and react instead of attack.