Gonna bump a previous post in this thread to make my point a bit:
Quote:
Originally Posted by DJ's left nut
Athleticism will eventually show itself once technique is worked out.
But one thing you really cannot teach is aggression at the point of attack. Darron Lee demonstrated it in camp and as soon as the lights came on went back to shirking responsibility and avoiding blockers.
Meanwhile Gay:
Dude is more than willing to power downhill and attack at the point of contact to keep plays from developing while his teammates take out the trash around him.
That will be ENORMOUS as this defense continues to develop an identity and focus on a team concept. If he can be trusted in run situations to simply ensure that he's occupying a man or two and making things more difficult for the runner, he'll be an asset regardless of the box score.
And in time his coverage technique will round into form and we'll see that athleticism flash. |
If you spend so much time telling Willie Gay that he needs to come in under control and make sure he never gets put in the spin cycle, you're gonna lose this kind of reckless abandon, IMO. You can't have a thought in your head to blow a play apart like that other than "See run fit, kill run fit - hope ballcarrier is there when I'm done" He's not looking around the G to find the ballcarrier. He's not going Derrick Johnson out there and looking to knife the gap. He's looking to find a mother****er and hit him. He has his eyes on his target from the moment the ball is snapped and smokes him. Then after he stops the guy, he finds someone else and suddenly he's wrecked an entire gap precisely BECAUSE he's just playing downhill.
Let the guy play at 100 mph - it's what makes him so appealing and what makes him so damn nasty to play against.
Let Bolton do the cipherin' out there.