Neo, you would be wrong (in the football world). I will try to explain. But first I need to ask, why would you go to a 3-4? do you believe the 3-4 is inherently better? Do you think that an alignment is more important than fitting scheme to your players? is the aligment more important than the aggression of the playcalls?
Why would I switch? To be honest, I probably would not have but not for the reasons you espouse. Rather, I am traditionalist. The Redskins are, traditionally, a 4-3 defense with an offense featuring a power running game that takes deep shots off play action. I liked the character of those teams and still do.
For the record, I still hate running anything like Walsh's West Coast offense for the above reason.
And no, I do not preach alignment over working to a players strengths. I think Gibbs is in the Hall of Fame because he molded his scheme to work with the guys he had when he came to Washington rather than fit square pegs into round holes like so many coaches. I also think he second go around with the Skins was something of a failure because he DIDN'T mold the scheme to the players strengths as much as ask the players to mold themselves to the scheme.
Now, having said all that, I see a lot of the teams at the top of the defensive rankings, at least the ones that scare me the most, are running a 3-4. Not all, but most. Pittsburgh, Baltimore (granted, they switch back and forth), Green Bay and San Diego are all using it. It gets more speed on the field and in the modern game, speed kills.
Is it inherently superior? I'm hardly an expert but there is certainly solid circumstantial evidence to support the 3-4 enjoying a better statistical position in the NFL at the moment.
when you make a switch you do it to improve your defence. to expect improvement you need to have the expectation that you will do better immediately with room to improve even more down the road, to have that expectation you need to have at the very least, a majority of players who you believe will do better in the new scheme, if you do not, then you are basically expecting to get worse which is not the goal. EVERY TEAM THAT MAKES THE SWITCH does it with the expectation that there will be immediate improvement and then major improvement down the road, because otherwise you lose your job. now the most important point that counters your logic is this, out of all the players that would have "delayed progress" how many are even on the team now? all we did was get experience in the 3-4 for a bunch of guys who arent here anymore, so basically in real world terms we paid for training for people who dont work here anymore.
Gonna have to disagree here. Anytime a switch of system occurs, whether in football or anything else in this life, I expect a dip in performance. Sometimes a massive dip. Might I recommend you read
Blood, Sweat and Chalk to see what I am talking about. Nearly ever major innovation in football on either side of the ball produced a dip in performance while players wrapped their heads and bodies around systems. Once mastered, however, those systems flourished.
the argument that we needed to "take our lumps while adjusting" is nothing more than an excuse, yes Green bay had a few rough games but they still improved immediately because they had depth at LB and DT, and invested a few picks in the switch, we literally did nothing and we lacked the depth at the right spots. it was either a planned fail or just very poor coaching.
I can't argue with you over players skill sets as I just don't know enough to do it but I can over the argument about taking our lumps. It is part of life and I don't see anyone making a switch of any kind from one system to another not having a learning curve.
As for the team doing nothing last year, I rather agree with you. More should have been done to get the right players but I don't see how it could have been done with the moves made on the offensive side of the ball. Sure, in hindsight the McNabb move was bad and we needed that 2nd rounder for defense but other than that I'm sure what else we could have done.
I apologise I missed your final statement where you said short term, I should have asked you what you define short term as. I define it as 4 games.
For me it depends. I can go with anything from your 4 game definition all the way up to 2 seasons.
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