I have been thinking about this for the last few days, and called NFL Radio about it yesterday. With everything good that Mangini has done, I just can't wrap my head around the move to the 3-4. It has bothered me since Week 1 last season and I was relieved to see that we did use a 4-3 a bit last season. If you look at the best players on D, they are Robertson, Vilma, and Rhodes.....right up the middle of our D. Now, we all know what Vilma can do, he was the defensive rookie of the year, and that wasn't some fluke. Last season, we saw Robertson's abilities on certin plays, mainly in the 4-3, when Rashad Moore took up blockers so that D-Rob had a 1 on 1. And we all know that Kerry Rhodes will continue from where he left off last season. There's no reason that Rhodes can't be used to blitz in a 4-3 the same way as in a 3-4. Blitzing a safety out of the 4-3 doesn't necessarily mean leaving 3 men in the secondary, we all know there are other packages and personnel that can be rotated in. Or, we could be primarily a 4-3 team and then go 3-4 at other times, it doesn;t have to be abandoned all together. The teams witht he best schemes design the system around the best players they have, and on offense we have done that well, but on defense I don't think we have. I am aware that the D started to come together in the second half of the season and seemingly started to grasp the 3-4, but other than Rhodes, the stars are not being the stars. Great players should not be reduced to role players when they can be so much more. I just don't like it. A team that has this much trouble stopping the run needs more beef up front. I don't see why we aren't just going with what works, it's stubborn and ineffective.
The only thing is, thats what Mangini knows and that is what he can be most succesfull with, the 3-4 lets him be more creative. If the FO wanted to play 4-3 to match what we already have then they got the wrong coach. If you start making a coach who knows one thing but try to run somthing else then you get into a Herm Edwards Ted Cottrel situation.
Naaah...a team that has trouble stopping the run, encourages teams not to pass against them...(See last years game against the Dolts....).... Enocuraging teams to run at you also keeps them out of the flow of the passing game, so that the closer they get to the End Zone, the harder it is to get in the end zone. Look at the Points per game allowed last season. http://www.nfl.com/stats/teamsort/NFL/DEF-SCORING/2006/regular?sort_col_1=3 Our problem is not scoring enough.
Dont have time for a long reply as I am heading to class but I 100% agree. It seems the personnel that we have tailors to a 4-3 system more than the 3-4, I will follow with more later, but great post
Robertson is not one of our better players on D. Sorry. Our team blew against the run before moving to the 3-4.
it sure did. who can forget that kansas city game 2 yrs ago. our defense came into there own in the 3-4 the 2nd half of last season. switching back now would be crazy imo. plus we are a multiple front defense anyway.
I think we should of kept the 4-3 instead of making our defense primarily 3-4 first. then maybe toss in 3-4 every once in a while to mix it up. because we already had alot of personell in place now with the 3-4 you have to find players to match. then say the D doesnt work out now you gotta go back and redo the players over again waste of time and money. and when donnie henderson was hear for the one year our defense was good so capitalize off what he did that year and lets go.... P.S. you said mangini only knows the 3-4 go with his strentgh well this is the nfl which said for Not For Long if you cant learn on the fly....... you got to be a chamillion in this game
i agree that it's stubborn, but ... i think this team will have the most success with the 3-4, once they get it right, we are still rebuilding, and if there are players with 1-2 years of experience in the system once it clicks, it is going to give us a great defense i think switching to the 4-3 is a waste at this point and could hurt us in the long run
I would agree if we kept the same personel to execute the 3-4. But we aren't. Kenyon Coleman has been added. We will probably draft a pass rushing OLB and an ILB, or another run stuffing tackle like Justin Harrell. You need big fast linebackers to employ this system. That is why the draft and free agency is key. When Parcells first became D-Coordinator of the Giants he switched them from a 4-3 to a 3-4. At that time his 2 best players were George Martin and Harry Carson and they first hated it. The rest is history. The Jets are a few pieces away from a stout D. The 3-4 is the best!
herm edwards: 2004/2005: 3.6yds per carry 2005/2006: 3.9yds per carry mangini: 2006/2007: 4.6yds per carry you were saying?
With the change of scheme and some missing peices, were were still a very good defense last year. With some new pieces and an extra year of experience in the scheme, we should be quite good.
Having Robertson on that list without having Bryan Thomas is sad. The benefit of switching to the 3-4 was Thomas' breakout season.
sorry but thats a dumb argument. we gave up only 8 rushing touchdowns in 04/05 when we had an offense that could actually score points. in 05/06 teams ran against us like 50 times a game because our pathetic 4th string offense couldnt get the job done and we would be down like 40-3 after the first half
The 3-4 is better for a bunch of reasons: 1. It's the better defense against the run and historically (up until 2006) the teams that stopped the run the best were the best teams in the league. 2006 was an anomaly that is not likely to repeat moving forward. 2. It's a more versatile defense with much more ability to show varied fronts off of the same front 7. The zone blitz is about the only way that a 4-3 can drop more men into coverage as a surprise and it has some deep vulnerabilities. 3. It's easier to get good linebackers than good defensive linemen. You can always take a smallish defensive lineman and turn him into a backer if has decent lateral quickness and some speed. It's much harder to take a linebacker and turn him into a defensive end. The net result is there are a lot more candidates to become good linebackers than there are to become defensive linemen. This is why the defensive line is a 1st round priority on most teams. That's also why a team that only needs to find 3 topflight defensive linemen has a competitive advantage. 4. Because it's a defense that a small minority of teams use it's likely to force an opponent to revise their gameplan going into the game. This is also a competitive advantage due to the extra time the opponent has to take to compete effectively. 5. Historically teams that play the 3-4 have been better than teams that played the 4-3. In 2006 teams that played the 3-4 went 64-48 and 4 of the 7 teams that use the 3-4 went to the playoffs. 6. Cap-wise it's a better defense to use because defensive lineman are expensive and linebackers less so. There are more reasons but those 6 would be enough to justify using a 3-4 over a 4-3.
But it's not any more, not at all. We jumped on the 3-4 bandwagon way too late, now everyone knows how to gameplan against it.
Didn't know there was a bandwagon its a D thats been around for more years that I can remember and if are switching then I hope its for a reason. Like a draft pick you have to give a coach and system 3 years before you can judge it
Hobson and Thomas were not good players in the 4-3......toward the end of the year, they were very solid players in the 3-4. Next year, Thomas will be a star IMO, and Hobson will only get better......Vilma and Robertson also started to improve in the 3-4 toward the end of the year, and Kerry Rhodes had one of the best years for a safety in the league in our 3-4......Look, last year was supposed to be a rebuilding year and Mangini is putting his stamp on the Jets.....Our defense improved greatly before our eyes, and I expect it to be a force as early as next year.......Our team would get raped playing the 4-3 because we do not have a DE to consistently rush the passer, and they are very hard to find......I love the direction that our D is going in, and the 3-4 is definitly the right way to go
