BGO Blind Pig: 'Damn these tight lips!' edition

[Boone]

The guys get together to bemoan the deafening silence on the Washington Head Coaching front, chant 'Serenity Now', and remind each other Dan Snyder is gone and the Harris Group and Adam Peters are here. Get us a HC dammit, and let the healing begin!

 

[Boone]

I wonder if they’ve given any thought to looking at position coaches? Sometimes that’s where you can find a hidden gem.

 

[Bulldog]

I thought that was what they were doing with Weaver.

Baltimore would not have made him 'Assistant Head Coach' unless they thought he had a bright future within the organization.

I don't know whether Jerod Mayo is going to work out, but he was only the DC for a single season.

Bill Parcells was the linebackers coach in New York and like Mayo held the DC job for a short time.

One thing I will say is that people criticize Aaron Glenn or other coordinators for not putting up 49ers or Ravens stats on defense.

If you look at the defensive backs he was fielding each week thanks to the front office, it's no mystery why Stafford threw for 367 yards, Mayfield 350, etc. in the playoffs.

Detroit to win the Super Bowl is going to have to revamp their entire secondary. Branch is perhaps the one player with upside as a starter coming in as a rookie.

But CJ Gardner Johnson? He was a veteran free agent move that turned out to be a bust move. Nothing but careless penalties and blown assignments.

So, Glenn is only capable of showing what he can do to the degree he has the talent on hand to run his scheme.

With better talent he could do a lot better.

 

[Neophyte]

..."talent on hand to run his scheme." (emphasis mine)

This is what I take issue with. I hate the excuse of guys not having the players to run their scheme.

Let's go back to Parcell's grocery analogy. If I don't have tomato sauce or pasta in the house, I'm not making spaghetti tonight, am I? I have to figure something else out for dinner.

I want coaches who know how effing coach. How to design something to work with the talent they have available. Right here, right now.

No one ever gets exactly what they want player-wise on either side of the ball. If you can't adapt to what you have, you will have issues.

Maybe, after Gibbs, I'm expecting too much but I feel like guys working at the pinnacle of coaching should be able to work with the tools they have available. Doesn't mean you don't try to get better tools when you can. It just means that sometimes you have what you have, and you have to figure out how to use that.

 

[Om]

I thought that was what they were doing with Weaver.

Baltimore would not have made him 'Assistant Head Coach' unless they thought he had a bright future within the organization.

I don't know whether Jerod Mayo is going to work out, but he was only the DC for a single season.

Bill Parcells was the linebackers coach in New York and like Mayo held the DC job for a short time.

One thing I will say is that people criticize Aaron Glenn or other coordinators for not putting up 49ers or Ravens stats on defense.

If you look at the defensive backs he was fielding each week thanks to the front office, it's no mystery why Stafford threw for 367 yards, Mayfield 350, etc. in the playoffs.

Detroit to win the Super Bowl is going to have to revamp their entire secondary. Branch is perhaps the one player with upside as a starter coming in as a rookie.

But CJ Gardner Johnson? He was a veteran free agent move that turned out to be a bust move. Nothing but careless penalties and blown assignments.

So, Glenn is only capable of showing what he can do to the degree he has the talent on hand to run his scheme.

With better talent he could do a lot better.

That has be to part of the consideration for why/how Macdonald became the "it" DC in Baltimore and parlayed that into a HC job at 36 years old. The narrative is he alone has figured out how to stop the Shanahan-style offense currently the rage--and full credit due, the man killed it the last couple years. He also has had a damn good pool of players with which to do that, in a stable environment in which front office, scouting, coaching, etc. are and have been all "aligned" and pulling on the same rope for years.

In addition to watching how well the young guy (have I mentioned he's young?) can shoulder not just the defense, but now also being the face of the franchise, it'll be very interesting to watch how well those schemes he's been running in Baltimore translate to a new roster.

 

[Boone]

I feel like sometimes a key factor for success for a young unproven guy like Macdonald is just the ability to pay zero attention to the fact that you may be woefully unprepared or ready for what you are about to take on.

Call it ‘fearlessness’ but that’s the mindset Sean McVay had as a 1st time HC.

I think Macdonald may be cut from the same cloth. And I think Ben Johnson is not.

We’ll see.

 

[Bulldog]

By 'run his scheme' I meant Glenn needed NFL corners and safeties that could COVER and HOLD their assignments.

If you watched the Rams, Bucs and second half of the 49ers games you saw a defense that if the line didn't get immediate pressure was susceptible to chunk plays because of guys being caught out of position or failing to make open field tackles.

Ben Johnson gets a lot of credit for the moves Brad Holmes made in the front office to bring in guys like St. Brown, Gibbs, LaPorta, Sewell, etc.

Do you see that type of talent on defense outside of Hutchinson?

No.

So, Glenn made the most he could of talent that was suspect.

I remember Bill Parcells taking the Jets from 1-15 to 9-7 in ONE season and the way he did it was through roster reconstruction.

He got rid of the guys that couldn't play at this level, whether they were high draft picks or veteran free agents and moved on.

Parcells looked like a genius because the talent, especially on defense, was a WHOLE LOT BETTER.

Whether Glenn stays or goes I believe Holmes will look to address the defensive backfield in the 2024 draft and free agency class and the Lions have the chance to field a much more competitive defensive unit that can prevent the kind of collapse we saw last Sunday.

All of this is the roundabout way of saying that if I were interviewing him I would listen to what he had to say about his defensive philosophy and what type of players he is looking for at different positions, acknowledging to myself that the guy did the best with a suspect group overall.

I think the mistake organizations, media and fans make is mistaking an individual coach's ability with the overall success of the team.

Teams didn't hold Sean McVay, LaFleur, or Kyle Shanahan responsible for the dumpster fire that was the Washington Redskins.

Meanwhile Josh McDaniels and Brandon Staley were mistaken for the proverbial saviors because they were successful in systems that many coaches could be successful in with the talent on hand.