Its a good question, but the issue is two things; a) who would your personnel be and b) how do you adjust to formations.
Right now Butler plays the LB/S combo which allows us to adjust to the spread formations that most teams use. CFU spread less than most of our opponents, only using 2 WRs nearly half the time, mixing in 1 FB and 1 TE or 2 TEs in those formations. They went 3 WR about 35-40% and 4/5 wide 10-15%. Keep in mind that against UCLA, ISU, and CFU even though we saw teams that run more than they throw, they still were in spread sets most of the time and ISU was in 4 WR a lot. You have to adjust to that. And UCLA and CFU utilized the pistol set with their RB a ton, which puts different sorts of pressure on your defense as well while still spreading the field with 3 or 4 wide much of the time. Against these formations, utilizing a traditional 4-3 would be very difficult if you didn't have a good OLB that could cover the pass, which is why we've went to the 4-2-5 with a safety type at that 3rd LB spot. This simply allows for easier adjustments to spread sets.
One of the things Cosh seems to be trying to emphasize with this defense is creating the same presnap look every time, but then giving a variety of coverages, rolling down safeties, and getting 7 into the box a lot of different ways after the snap. This has made things tough on the safeties, but I think they've adjusted well for the most part.
As far as personnel, Butler has done a solid job at his spot, unless he is getting blocked by bigger bodies, then he gets swallowed up. Against CFU, Zimmerman and Hartman started, then Lamur and Hartman played a series (CFU's TD, on the scoring play Hartman made the incorrect run fit), and the rest of the game Zimmerman and Lamur played. Given the personnel, against bigger teams I think the logical adjustment would be to move Lamur to Butler's spot since he is a bigger body, and slide Zimmerman and Hartman to the safties. It will be interesting to see if we make that adjustment. As was said, we did start sliding Lamur closer to the LOS against CFU, and that is more possible b/c CFU ran fewer 3 and 4 wide formations. I think as long as teams are in 3 or 4 wide we'll still see the 2 high safety look, but I agree that we need to find better ways to get an extra defender in the box (Lamur) against these teams that like to run more than pass from spread sets.
