_fan..anyway you could break down the defense this year and tell us what we are doing schemewize or is it just that much better talent?
If I have some time I will. I'm much more comfortable breaking down offense and have limited time, so that's my focus for this year.
A few thoughts on defense. First, having better players is the major impact. Brown, an improved Kibble, some decent defensive ends and corners, Lamur's move to LB and Walker's improvement, decent safeties; all are major and we are essentually better at every position athletically this year. But the move from the 4-2-5 to the 4-3 is huge. The 4-2-5 really requires you to have 2-3 elite level safeties as well as at least one very athletic LB and a good defensive front. We had none of those last year. Its also tougher to adjust 4-2-5 defenses to unbalanced offensive formations (like trips and TE over that I've talkeda about). What we've done is go to the 4-3 with improved players, but also the 4-3 features linebackers, and we have 3 pretty good ones there. That allows you to hide some things (like Hartman a bit) that you really can't do with the 4-2-5. While I think we'd still be a much improved defense just b/c we have better players if we had stayed in the 4-2-5, I think the improvement is magnified b/c we moved to a 4-3 scheme.
