Falcons: Are You Ready For Mike Nolan?

[Templar]

With the addition of Nolan and his advanced defensive schemes, and considering the huge sophomore season Weatherspoon had, I feel like teams on the schedule for next season may start to get a little antsy in figuring out how Nolan is going to use all that talent and energy to its fullest.

[The Falcon Jedi]

Nolan is in a bad situation. He is forced to stick our crappy 4-3, and he excells at 3-4, so he has his work cut out for him.

[Jimusmc]

smith needs to let the coordinators do what they do.. give em free reign.

Nolan is being bottlenecked by smith. sigh.

[Radical]

Nolan ran the 4-3 or some variation of it with the Redskins, Giants, Ravens, and part of his time with the 49ers. Why do people think he's a 3-4 guy being forced to play 4-3. We're built from the ground up to play 4-3, so why try to force it?

[FullMetalFalcon23]

(01-28-2012 03:31 AM)Radical Wrote:  Nolan ran the 4-3 or some variation of it with the Redskins, Giants, Ravens, and part of his time with the 49ers. Why do people think he's a 3-4 guy being forced to play 4-3. We're built from the ground up to play 4-3, so why try to force it?

It's starting to piss me off too. Rad., people here what they want to hear and see only what suits them. It's like the Dunta is great press man corner who can't do his job properly because of the scheme argument. We have seen Dunta in press and whilst he is better there is no sudden transformation into an elite coverage corner who can blanket his man down field across field. People want to see him drop more hits. The only way that is happening is if he moves to Free Safety, if you play him in press man you might see him knock the ball away more often but he won't be coming down on people the way zone defense let's you read to the back of your Zone and keep other routes under you.

Back to the Nolan issue, whilst I am intrigued to see the 34 with our guys and we will at times see it. I would rather us have the multi D that Nolan will bring to the table than a pure one or the other. I don't think any of his teams have been pure. 34 Defenses. They gave all been equipped to flip between one style and another, hence the difficulty they provide.

Furthermore Nolan chose to come here, so this idea that he is being bullied by Mike Smith is retarded, you don't bring in a prize DC and handcuff him. Mike Smith stating that the team should at it's essence remain a 43 team at base is not an issue because The Hybrid Nolan run's work off of this too.

It does my head in, because none of those types of statements are based in facts or common sense.

[Radical]

You can even watch highlights of the Dolphin plays and see they were running 4-3 alignments at time. Yeah, the Dolphins' base defense was a 3-4, but they ran several 4-3 plays, hence the term hybrid. You'll see the same thing here, except the base defense will be 4-3. The expectations that we should just switch to a 3-4 to begin with is just ridiculous. We are arguably the most pure 4-3 team in the league personnel wise.; we have smaller DEs, smaller DTs that are meant to shoot the gap, and LBs that aren't known for their pass rushing skills or block shedding ability. It isn't like we've been running the same brand of 4-3 we saw under Mora with the traditional 1 technique tackle(Grady) that we could make a NT. It simply would be too much of a strain on our FO to try to make this all work in one off-season.

[FullMetalFalcon23]

The only thing I see us doing that lets us play the 34 part of our hybrid more effective is to get a guy like soliali in who can also work well for us in our 43. Not necessarily him but a player like him. My preference would be to pick up a rook in the 2nd or 3rd who can play that role and grow into it, whilst we spend more of our FA money on the Oline which is the weaker of our two trench units. I think Nolan gives our D an upgrade before we even think about personnel moves to improve the unit. The DT depth in this draft is a bit sketchy but we got Corey in the 3rd so there is talent to be had if you can find a guy you like that much.

[Paprika Neck]

KOG you really are the cog that makes this place tick, bro.

[Knight of God]

(01-28-2012 02:35 PM)Paprika Neck Wrote:  KOG you really are the cog that makes this place tick, bro.

LOL!!! KOG/cog...I like it.

One thing though about the 4-3/3-4 talks. I posted a youtube highlight and it showed a LOT of big plays and a great deal of those big plays actually came from 4-3 rushes. I promise you guys its coaching. We all want the 3-4 because we have the 4-3 right now and want to see a change, but with the hybrid you can't get any nastier.

[Paprika Neck]

one gap is one gap whether you run 3 or 4 linebackers 3 or 4 linemen. another system that if you get a "misfit" you're giving up a 70 yarder.