This has been the battle cry for the last 4 years and its getting old. I understand Fades point as it seems like the same old thing once again. Taking a half a season to get things sorted out to be pedestrian on the defensive side of the ball at best. Its way past due to solidify the roster and scheme. And as somebody has already said - I have zero confidence in Hurtt. Hope he proves me wrong.
Except it's not the same old thing. If you wanna boil it down to 'we are great' or 'we suck', well you can look at the last several years on offense (last year aside) and defense and say 'we suck'. But it's not that simple, nor is the cause for failure the same year over year. In 2020 and 2021, we had a suspect pass defense and solid enough run defense. In 2022, we were solid through the air on defense but bad against the run.
Two different problems, different coordinators over that span with drastically different results, run v pass, and entirely different personnel.
Prior to that, and up until the dismantling of thr LOB, we became a middle of the pack overall.
So if you wanna have a substantive conversation about the evolving or devolving unit that has been our defense, at least tie it to fact.
Post LOB we tried to substitute out parts but with low round draft picks and without players that brought the necessary attitude, so we went from great and revolutionary, to watered down and less talented.
The first aspect of our D to suffer post LOB was our short to middle pass defense. Offenses figured us out and we were slow to react. Our pass D rankings plummeted and reached their worse point in 2020. Our run D was solid, and overall, we were top 10 in scoring defense, or just outside of it.
We were slow to adapt thereafter and looked to the addition of a Swiss army knife type of talent in Jamal to help our D regain a schematic advantage by making us less predictable, while still adhering to the core philosophy that brought us success.
Then, in 2021 we shifted our approach and went wholesale into a schematic shift that saw (frustratingly) a defense using players that looked to be out of position ( adams playing deep, Dunlap dropping off the line) in what was the first step toward what we were supposed to see in 2022.
Then, in 2022, the player the defense was built around went down in week 1 and for that reason and others that have been documented, the defense spent 17 games trying to adapt, then revert, then adapt again without key players to lead the effort.
This year, the FO was tasked with filling the voids in a leaky unit. When they didn't see the value or personnel they wanted on the interior Dline, they got the best talent available in other spots with the goal of building dominance on special teams, the running game, passing game, and pass defense, to cover for whatever inadequacies they might have at the one position they couldn't fortify in the way they wanted.
But its not as tbough they've not addressed the run defense. In their estimation and has been reasonably supported, much of the failure last year had nothing to do with not having a J Carter type on the D line, but rather with not playing sound gap responsible defense in the run game. So they brought Bobby back to run things on the field, brought Reed back to provide stout play and penitratiom inside, added Cameron Young and a slew of young and veteran talent on the edges, and look to be going back to the approach they likely were hoping to settle into when they first brought Adams onboard. So less front play that we saw in 2022 and more of what we've been used to. 3-4 looks with 1 gap play and penetratiom on the interior.
None of that is what we saw last year. None of it is a continuation of anything in any way.
Again, you can call it ' continued ' sucking if you want, but based on what? A preseason game?. that carries about as much water as the arguments that said Geno would suck here prior to last year because he sucked before, pointing to statistical evidence as proof and cherrypicking every error in his preseason performance to use as basis for predicting failure.
We may well not turn into a top 5 to 10 defense this year. We may only be 15 to 20 against the run. But if we are that, it won't be because we don't know what we are doing. It will be because some other aspect of the improved areas of the team weren't as effective, or that communication of responsibilities and execution was poor.
But it would have to be woefully poor to warrant the doom and gloom by the OP of this thread.
Basic knowledge of thr game and evaluation of the choices we've made make it pretty obvious that the 2023 TEAMWIDE strategy to win games involves controlling the ball, stopping teams from throwing against us via pressure and coverage, and limiting oppositions run effectiveness by making it illogical for them to run in the first place (getting a lead and holding the ball and making running a losing strategy against us) . Teams won't want to kean in the run if they are behind. And it will be easier for us to defend the run if we put the opposing teams passing game under pressure and make it predictable.
For us to fail to the magnitude the OP predicts we'd have to fail completely as a team. And that's just not likely given the changes we've made.