And you can’t try to fit a square peg into a round hole. Sutton has to go.

Cleveland has a better defense. Their ppg is higher because they have a horrid offense that turns it over and puts the Browns D in bad spots. If we had a more turnover prone offense our D would be ranked dead last

Love or hate Tony Romo (jinx?), he seemed to have better insight into stopping the Pitt and Dallas defenses than Bob Sutton did. Easy to be an armchair DC, but this defense is truly getting worse. Last year they finished 24th in yards allowed and 7th in points allowed. So far this year: 29th in yards allowed and 25th in points allowed.

They aren't going to fire a coordinator that is working with this type of talent. It's not on him. There's only so much you can do to adjust the scheme to cover up weaknesses. Defensive line and linbackers can't get off a block or make a tackle? Gotta go +1 in the box. Go +1, acker/gaines/mitchell/peters are 1v1 and only one of them can have 'help' from a safety. Pick your poison, because 3 of them can't cover 1v1, and all of them suck at tackling.

fyp. This team has enough talent to be better than they are. There is such a thing as putting a player in a position to succeed. Bad scheme, bad coaching decisions are hurting this team.

Do we, though? Acker, Ragland, Pierre Louis are scrap pile guys no other team could keep on their roster, let alone start. Zombo is bad. DJ has lost two steps. Sorenson and Parker are serviceable. That is more than half of our starting defense that is average to terrible.

We aren't loaded with superstars anymore. We have Jones who's great in spurts and peters who's off his game this year. And then Houston who's consistently great. We have a much bigger talent problem than we want to admit. Scheme will help but it can only cover up so much of our talent deficiencies. These aren't guys who became free agents. These are guys who were cut repeatedly by other teams.

This is a problem new to this year. This defense wasn't bad last year once we landed Terrance Mitchell. We fell off a cliff once we lost DJ and were forced to start ramik and Terrance Smith. We were limping into the playoffs without those guys, with Hali and Houston mostly MIA late in the year and without Bailey, Howard, and Poe. Considering that our defense hung in there OK.

Yep. I think the scheme has actually helped in past years so the lack of talent wasn't addressed. When Berry went down, they were effectively done. He was the ONE guy the defense couldn't afford to lose. A play here or there could be the difference in winning one or two games.

I like a lot of the talent we have.

KPL is a quality LB who is a perfect replacement for DJ. He's a quality tackler with the same athleticism DJ had 5 yeas ago. Ragland has really started to come on now that he has had time to figure out the defense and his role.

Aside from coaching, the 2014 draft flaming out is why this defense is so bad. If we get a new DC, OLB opposite Houston and an even average CB, we can be good.

Also, losing Eric Berry could not have been highlighted any more clearly than yesterday.

That Eric Murray **** up against Jason Witten is a pick 6 if that's Eric Berry on the field.

Is it really Sutton fault that DJ and Tamba are turtles and not the Ninja in a half shell they are just in a shell?

I'd still be happy if Bob is fired today. Still, agree about KPL and Rags. They need to be the starting ILBs from here on. D.J. is hurting the team far more than helping, at this point.

This scheme needs to start playing their CBs aggressively. Stop allowing the easy quick hitters, and maybe the pass rush will show itself.

Here's the upside... that was our best run D of the year by a mile. We actually did a really good job against Elliott. Zeke has been an absolute terror the past month and we kept him under 100 and under 4 YPC. Our D was a much better formula for stopping Pittsburgh than anything we've tried in the past.

The problem is we built this defense to beat New England. We didn't build this defense to beat Pittsburgh or Dallas. First, it was stupid to even try the NE counter against Pittsburgh. Second, the biggest reason for our Dime defense failures has been the long ball - part of that is because of this ridiculous disregard for OPI this season, the second is that our DBs have been comically terrible at guarding the jump ball.

So maybe there is something to work off of. We can run Dime against certain teams, but we have to either limit the jump ball or get significantly better at guarding it. Against power teams, we have to figure something out but at least yesterday we showed ability to flex our personnel.

Unfortunately, our talent is not well built to stop both the run & pass. We probably have to sell out. Our best hope is that our playoff road doesn't include a power team like Pitt and Dallas. Trying to be optimistic here.

We've gone so many years with horrendous ILB play that we have a low bar for what good looks like. Those 2 guys are upgrades. But let's not kid ourselves about how good they actually are. They are better than terrible.

Zombo and acker look like the best players on defense.

Yikes

What? Acker is garbage.
Zombo has one sack

Something is wrong with Houston, be it sickness or injury. Still has 7.5 sacks

Definitely early to say. They looked pretty good in some small sample sizes though.. so I'd hope they give them more looks.

Tamba looked good when he was out there.

You put a player in position to succeed, and they miss a tackle.. or a pick six goes through their arms... or is slow filling their gap. You going to blame that on Sutton? It's not the scheme. You can't hide that many weaknesses with adjustments.

It is a coaching problem.

It is a coaching problem. Sutton is calling horribly predictable defensive plays, and as illustrated above, cannot even call a 3rd and 15 play right.

Does the defense need more talent? Yes it does.

Does the defense need a better coach? **** yes it does.

Sutton is recycled coaching trash.

If you want to know why NFL is declining. Hiring recycled junk coaches with zero creative skills and no ability to think forward.

Coaches move around the league with same results. It sucks because these old ****ers suck. .

Calling our defense horribly predictable is very oversimplistic. We run a pretty complicated scheme. Just because we don't blitz defenders doesn't mean we aren't mixing things up. We ran a lot of different looks yesterday. I don't think our defense is predictable. I would agree that too many times, our situational playcalling is off or it's predictable, such as 3rd and long. We need to take the Prevent page completely out of our playbook.

Perhaps we should run a less complicated defense and blitz more?

Bullshit. We are not mixing anything up. Running the same drop 8, rush 3 time and time again. Opposing offenses know no pass rush is coming, and opposing QB's simply have to wait for a WR to pop open. We see the same thing over and over again.

I am at the point of humoring him. He is ignoring reality. Even Romo was pointing out yesterday how the Safeties kept lining up in the same bad spot, play after play after play.

Just don't get all the Sutton apologists here. 31st ranked defense. Fire Sutton, promote Gibbs. (Assuming that he'll accept.) Are you really concerned that the defense might go down to the 32 ranked defense?

JAG players + good scheme/coaching > JAG players + bad scheme/coaching

If moving Gibbs to DC moves the defense up one spot, then DO IT. Who knows, maybe a new DC moves this Defense from shit to average. Where's the risk when you're working with the 31st ranked defense?

Gibbs was a disaster as a DC. I don't think he would want the job again.

He had his moments. "Prior to joining the Chiefs, Gibbs spent three seasons as the defensive coordinator with New Orleans (2006-08). In his first season, the Saints reached the NFC Championship Game for the first time in team history. They ranked 11th in total defense, allowing 307.3 ypg that season. After ranking 28th in the league in scoring defense in 2005, they ranked 13th in that category under Gibbs in 2006, allowing 20.1 ppg."

His defense did go downward after, but it never hit 31st. If you don't like Gibbs, pick someone else on the staff. There has to be someone on staff that can manage the defense better. If not, call crazy Gunther. You damn well be won't be watching 3 man rushes on passing downs with him. :)

https://nbcprofootballtalk.files.wor...ghamvsjets.jpg

The coaches of CP answer to everything is blitz and leave these bums 1v1 on the back end. You guys say bad play call yet show no film or why you think its a bad play call.. you just look at the end result. Was there a missed tackle? Maybe.. but who cares its a bad playcall. I keep forgetting you guys are all watching film on what dallas liked to run with given down/distance, personnel and hash tendencies, right? The dline & LB are playing like complete ass. Zero gap integrity and piss-poor tackling, and you guys think scheme can fix that? DB's getting spun around on dig routes.. screw it, blitz! :rolleyes:

We're 29 yards away from being dead last 32nd defense. 29, Eric Berry, Omen.

They went back to being a bottom tier squad after 2006 and he got the boot in result.

Gibbs is Bob Sutton lite. He got fired because Sean Payton wanted a more aggressive D and they won the Super Bowl the following year.

You are tied to that narrative, we get it. But nobody on here has said that blitzing is the answer to everything. (Sutton has an obvious aversion to it.) Better coaching and better scheme is only going to help this team. You can't get new players now, so you have to go with what you can change. Sutton is not coaching to his players' strengths. He is not helping this team with his scheme. Our defensive players can play better than the 31st ranked defense. So you go on and carry your torch for Bob Sutton. And enjoy watching Justin Houston NOT getting a sack because he's streaking down the field with a tight end. :rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:

Gibbs got the defense to 11th overall. When has Sutton done that?

If you don't like Gibbs, pick anyone else not named "Bob Sutton".

So tell me how do you scheme to the strengths of Sorensen, mitchell, gaines, acker, Zombo, poor gap integrity and poor tackling? I'm not a sutton fan.. did not like him back at Army and don't care for him now. You are crucifying him when there is nothing he can do to scheme around that.

I honestly want to know what YOU would do to scheme around these problem areas?

Bob Sutton ****ing sucks!!!

Reid is loyal more so to Sutton given that his D has carried the team for the better part of 5 years.
After this season is the perfect time to replace Sutton. New team identity, new direction with a young QB.

So we run the same coverages every time? Qbs aren't waiting for receivers to open. Right now in dime we are getting beat because we're doing a terrible job of defending jump balls.

Against a power offense like Dallas, that's something entirely different. That by the way was not a traditional dime. We ran a more traditional 3-4 front.

Blitzing is not some magic bullet. In dime, we have to do better on 50/50 balls. Miles better. Or cut them out entirely. In 3-4, we figured out how to limit the run yesterday, so how do we know balance stopping the pass too? We have to stop running dime on power, and I would hope we don't run power against a spread. And our situational playcalling has to improve.

The idea that we didn't mix it up yesterday is over simplistic. There's more to a defense than whether we blitz or don't blitz. And by the way, the past few weeks we've been doing a lot of 4 man rush.

Sutton had a top 10 squad 2 years in a row.

Coaching fixes tackling. Gap integrity as well.

Coaching also corrects what you suck at, and plays to your strengths and works as hard as possible to mask weakness.

Our players aren’t this bad. We have some tremendous players on our defense.

We also have several starters who were cut from their teams. Not cut as in we can't afford you. Cut as in they couldn't beat the third string. And some that we could cut tomorrow and nobody would pick up. This might be the worst talent we've had in defense. Some of our players are underachieving. But half of our starters are average to terrible, and I don't think coaching can fix that.

Sutton deserves to be fired for the simple fact that he goes into prevent defense when the offense is in a 3rd and long situation. That and Peters isn't shadowing the #1 WR. Offenses know to just move their best player away from Peters for success.

When you're in the bottom 5 for nearly every statistic, it's a talent and coaching problem.

Welcome to 5 years ago.

Yeah, I don't know why we continue to have DCs that insist on keeping CBs contained to one side. Frustrating.

The idea that there's a ton of talent on this defense is overblown, IMO.

There are a couple of nice players but it gets very thin after that.

Thinking about this a bit more, if Sutton deserves to be fired based on a 9 game sample, shouldn't Reid also go with him who has been running a 4 year atrocity of an offense? OL play has never been above average, abysmal running game, no true WRs, too many horizontal plays and FGs. I get the W-L record and the Smith factor (whom Reid handpicked) but I hope Mahomes can win with Reid not despite him.

When Reid got here, the offense had Charles, Smith, and Bowe

The defense had Houston, Hali, DJ, Berry, Flowers, and Poe.


Basically, almost all of our talent was on the defensive side of the ball when Reid got here. The offense has gradually improved, even without spending a top 2 pick on the offense. Kelce, Robinson, Hill, Hunt, and Conley were all taken after the 2nd round

Defense was given Peters, Jones, Ford, and KPass (all 1-2 rounders). You'd think we'd be a better defensive team, but here we are

When Sutton is shortanded in the playoffs, you get the Indy debacle
When Reid is short handed, you get the Pats playoff game. Not great, but still scored 20 on a solid defense.

Also, a lot of our offensive shortcomings always came back to quarterback and Wide receivers. Dorsey never prioritized receiver in the draft like he did defensive back. But which unit is better?

Reid>Sutton

Good call. Forgotten they were that high for 2 years. But they were also 24th for 2 years and 31st this year. I would love to know how many times they dropped Houston into coverage in the good years. And how many times they stuck with a 3 man rush on passing downs in the good years. All compared with this year. Maybe my memory isn't the greatest, but I don't ever remember the defensive scheme looking so lost. When is the last time the Chiefs' defense ranked 31st or 32nd?

Bottom line it's not just players or coaches. It's both. We can't change the players right now. So improve the coaches/coaching/DC. Not sure what else the team can do to improve the defense. Isn't the whole point to keep getting better? Can't get much worse than 31.

Has I435 crossing guard not taken one for the team yet?

I don't care what talent you have and what scheme you run, you do not consistently drop the highest (or one of) paid pass rusher into coverage more than you rush him.

Especially on 3rd & long
Especially when a team is pinned inside their own 2 yard line
Especially when it's a crucial passing down or drive that will decide the game

It's amazing to hear Gruden and Romo and all these announcers say with disbelief that Houston has actually dropped into coverage more than he has rushed the passer.

That is just ****ing inexcusable.

What kind of talent luxury pool do you think Sutton was swimming in? Berry has been injured over half of the games the past 4 years. Houston has mostly been injured and been a shell of himself in the playoffs. DJ had season ending injuries twice. Poe has been battling back injuries the past few years. In 2014, we had a solid defense losing Berry and DJ the first game of the season. A few years ago, we limped into the playoffs without Houston and Hali. Last year, we limped into the playoffs without DJ, mauga, Bailey, Howard, and Houston coming back at 80% for the playoffs.

I seriously don't understand the insistence that this defense has been crazy talented or that we can't field a defense with lesser talented. For a defense with stars players that can't stay on the field, this D has been pretty consistently good the past 4 years. This year is a unique problem.

thank u

Andy Reid also mostly sucks!

By mostly do you mean the 6 or the 3?....

Yes. And refusing to move your best corner to the best receiver when prudent. And for not going heavy in obvious running situations. And for not selling out on the run when you played Pitts. And ignoring the fact that it's okay to blitz in the appropriate situations. (Carr should have been hammered and the Oakland game should have been a win.) And refusing to move another CB outside when the starter (Acker) is getting torched repeatedly. Or NOT moving your best pass rusher around to attack the offense. Has anyone heard any player go out of their way to say something good about Sutton or the scheme? Maybe I missed it. Seems to happen on the offensive side of the ball and special teams. Not so much on defense.

I mean the consistently poor decision making, playcalling, and clock management in meaningful moments of big games. Winning a bunch of regular season games really doesn't matter if it always ends with an excruciating early playoff loss.

If you shit your pants at work every day at 4:55, nobody's going to give you credit for not shitting your pants for the first 7 hours and 55 minutes. Nor should they!!!

We can agree it's talent and coaching.

The issue is unless the problem is purely playcalling (it's not) than not a whole lot can be done by now. I don't think Gibbs would successfully scrap an entire system in a week.

They need to ride or die with Sutton and completely change focus in the winter.

Whether it's Gibbs or someone else, the whole system does not need to be scrapped. But you have to try to improve this defense. Hell, if Andy can impart the message to Sutton and make him change, keep Sutton. But after 9 games, I don't see Sutton changing it up. So a change in coaching might just invigorate this team and provide some motivation in addition to fixing the coaching gaps on defense. Keep the same scheme, just make adjustments. Many of the needed adjustments have been addressed in this thread. And then if they want to change focus/scheme completely in the off season....have at it.

There's only so much minor tweaking you can do.

This D has a philosophy problem and a problem with handling fundamental Defensive playing.

This D is what it is mostly by now and to rid the funk they beed some wholesale changes and a new identity.

Or the 1-4.

Yeah 5 years of this defense is enough.

Our defense in the playoffs:
Indy loss. Totally unacceptable from the D
Texans win: Great defense here.
Patriots loss: allowed 27 points...Patriots only had the ball for 22 minutes. So 1.2 points per minute
Steelers loss: Yeah...

Neither side of the balk has ever been insanely talented by but the defense has had more talent for longer. And let's face it the bulk of our cap is tied up in defense

:shake:

Good chance players doze off when Sutton explains his schemes in the weekly D meeting. We need someone fiery!

Against NE, the Chiefs played without Houston and with Hali as questionable. It was not a bad defense against a dominant offense.

Against Pittsburgh, we never recovered after losing DJ. We were on our third string at both DL and ILB after losing DJ, Howard, Bailey, Mauga to IR. And Houston and Hali played that game at 75% after late season injuries. Still that defense was serviceable given all the injuries.

This narrative that we've been insanely talented on D is an exaggeration. We've had some talent but we've also been rocked by injuries to our star players.

And Sutton needing only star players to make his D work. He should be coaching only the pro bowl at this point.
New England's D was atrocious the first 4 weeks, they seemed to have gotten better. They have never had star power in their D. Yet they don't bottom out. That is real coaching for you.

Again, Sutton has coached a mostly solid defense the past few years and that includes during many, many stretches where we didn't have Berry, DJ, and especially Houston and Hali. Last year's defense was a cripple fight. 2014 we lost Berry and DJ the first week of the year. Stop with this ridiculous narrative that our success in the past was driven by star players to short-sell what we've done on defense in the past.

Our defense was solid in the past. It's not working now and it isn't just a talent issue. They are two totally different things.

I still think the Houston in coverage thing and not blitzing enough is a bit of an overreaction. I'd like to see less of it but it isn't the silver bullet people think it is.

The rest of your list makes sense. We have to figure out two defenses. The Dime isn't a bad front against a team like New England but we have to get a million times better at guarding 50/50 balls. Pass rush is a much smaller issue compared to completely incompetent ball skills on the deep ball. In fairness, we've gotten screwed on this because we're getting hosed big time on bullshit non-calls on OPI.

Using Dime on PIttsburgh was moronic. What we did against Dallas was a big improvement but we need to go a step further because in selling out to stop the run, we couldn't stop the pass. We've got to figure out how to make that base 3-4 defense work against power teams like Dallas and Pittsburgh.

To the bolded part, yes. Tony Romo pointed it out repeatedly. Sutton made no attempts at adjustments yesterday. None.

Never blitzing is not the answer either. Some pressure on the QB is necessary for a successful defense. Sutton is calling a defense that puts no pressure at all on the QB.

Playcalling and scheme are not 100% of the problem, but they are at at least 35-40 percent of the problem. If firing Sutton reduces that number to 25% of the problem, then it is absolutely worth it to fire him right now.

We play so much man coverage that leaves us vulnerable to 50-50 balls and crossing routes. On the flip side it is giving us some INT opportunities but the D is just dropping them, that should have Sutton fuming. To keep playing 3-4 against Dallas and Pittsburgh the LBs have to be good in coverage. Sutton does not trust them, so he brings in Sorenson who is just lost in the pile. Berry could be trusted in the run game in place of a LB. His loss is huge.

We did make adjustments. We moved to a base 3-4. We tried out a bigger lineup. We did try Mitchell out there (I wish he was out there more, but he was out there). We experimented with Zone & 4-man rush. We tried a lot of things out there. Keep in mind we're talking about a RB who's had 130+ all purpose yards in 4 straight games. We had 2 days to prepare for him and we held him to less than 100 total yards. It's not like the Pitt game where we got beat by the same dumb Dime front all game long. It's not good enough, but it's a sign that we're trying to make adjustments and it also shouldn't downplay that maybe we also just happened to get beat by one of the most dangerous offenses in the NFL. You're ruling out the possibility that Sutton can't reduce this to 25% or less. I don't know if he can but I completely disagree that he's shown that he's completely incapable of it.

I mostly agree. On the 50/50 balls, that should hopefully be a coachable thing. We need to teach our DBs to have a million times better ball skills. In games where we play Dime, I think we'd be singing a different tune if our DBs were even just average on those plays. So I don't think the Dime as a whole is a terrible concept. We've executed badly which is a reflection on coaching, but I think that's much more fixable and I don't think that's a "we're not blitzing enough" or "Houston is covering too much" issue.

I don't know the answer to how we fix the 3-4 problem. The first step is acknowledging we need a bigger lineup against power teams. I don't know why it took the entire Pitt game to recognize it. At least we did that in Dallas. We now have to figure out how we can do that without selling out entirely against the run.

Romo. Upgrade as new DC. Do it.. and not even kidding. Too much time gone along. Things not getting better? Change things to force change.

Sutton's a joke.. and he's been carried for far too long by great players and fortunate turnovers. Now, the great players are all either too old or broken.. and the rest are misused anyway. **** Bob.

LOL with this ongoing narrative about Sutton being carried by great players. And turnovers? You do realize that your guy Alex has been carried by turnovers a hell of a lot more than Sutton has, right? This defense was good enough to win a ton of games the past 4 years even without the turnovers.

If a problem is easily identifiable (as with our run D) then the fixes will be straightforward although I doubt it will be done during the season.
- Better gap recognition by our inexperienced LBs
- Add one more legit pass rusher
- Stone handed DBs need to get better at catching balls else they can GTFO
- Berry's return

These are the basic steps that need to happen even before we evaluate if players are executing and if Sutton is soft or not.

win %.. which was already dismissed by many.. was carried.. for Alex

actual offensive production was greatly reduced because of TOs for Alex though..


Cake and eat yes yes?

We don't have ball hawks. Sutton needs to tell them to stop going for the INT and knock the ball down. Bat it away and make sure there is zero chance of a completion.


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The end of the first half was the epitome of Sutton. 3rd and long and we have them on the ropes. He plays soft zone and rushes three. First down. Followed by the same ****ing thing and they're in the redzone. **** Sutton. Get the **** out.