I've read a lot of comments here by people lamenting the loss of Woods and Ford, and while I agree that it doesn't appear that we've "fixed" the D-line yet, I don't think that letting Woods and Ford walk was an accident. One big key to success in the NFL is the ability to self-scout and diagnose what is not working on your own team. Whatever other people might think about Ford and Woods, Pete and his staff must have decided that they were more the problem than the solution.
We have long-term experience with those players. Some here talk about the bad defense last year as if it came out of the blue. In 2021, it was bad, too. Although in 2021, in terms of points given up, we were just mediocre, if you look at the number of yards, we were the fifth-worst team in the league. In 2022, we were the 7th-worst in yards given up. We were definitely worse against the run last year, with only the Bears and Texans being worse, but it wasn't like we were elite against the run in 2021.
I just hope that Pete and his coaches have correctly identified the source of the problems, and have started to bring in the right players to remedy the situation. But I don't think that keeping the status quo with what we had was really an option.