HoofHearted

He's a one step, punch, and read defender - fine for taking on doubles - but the whole design of the 5 man front is to eliminate doubles and create 1v1s across the board. Penetrators are what you want - not slugs.

Yes, he’s not going to be your every down nose but he offers a ton of versatility (as does Deone) to move around and take advantage of matchups.

Ideally you want two guys who have the range to play high as well as the physicality to play in the box. The more interchangeable these two are the more balanced we can be with our pressures from either side. This isn’t going to be a Rex Ryan/Mike Pettine defense. Google Dave Aranda, that’s the scheme JL runs. Has the flexibility to base out of a Tite, Odd, or Under front, but will largely be the same 4-2-5 we’ve been running (alignment-wise) the majority of the time.

If you’ve coached then I think it should be pretty easy for you to determine what guys can do well and what guys can’t do well. Should give you a pretty good idea (maybe not exact) about the direction this thing is going to go, especially if you understand the full scope of the scheme JL runs.

I disagree with this. He’s going to stay within his system. With that it’s pretty easy to determine where this defense is going to go. It’s going to base out of a 3 down front, and will reduce the ends and backers down in nickel to play any 11p or lighter sets. Outside of that it’s figuring out which front fits this group best, which if you’re looking at just current roster construction it’s an under front. Regardless though it’s going to be a 1 gap principle front. It’s going to rely on sims and creepers to counter opposing offenses pass pro allowing us to drop 7 and only rush 4 to get pressure. It’ll be heavily MOFC coverage reliant. So many on here are projecting ideas based off an old school two gapping 55 front and that’s not what this is going to be.

Milano can’t play outside backer in this defense. Needs to be someone who can hold up in the run game on the edge.

We're going to be mostly Nickel regardless. To 11 personnel or lighter he's going to be in Nickel Personnel.

If he plays exclusively to the boundary we'll be able to mask it some.

Trey and Groot would play the same position if they both projected as OLBs. I'll admit Groot isn't a great fit as an OLB in this defense, but unless he's able to add considerable weight he's not going to hold up as a 4i either. I think we could get away with him being a boundary backer in Leonhard's defense just because of his length allowing him to get into passing windows without having to be great in drops, but it's not an ideal fit. Bernard is strictly an inside backer in this defense, and more suited for the Will position than the Mike.

Bingo!

Again, where are the doubles in a 5 man front?

Yup, it’s the way of the game. Most fans only watch their team. I do hope we are smarter with our rotations.

We’ll need depth across the front 7. I don’t think they’ll rotate as much.

That’s a fun narrative that spread. Houston runs essentially the same defense we did under McDermott and they didn’t seem to have any issues. Why? Because they can get home with 4. As far as McDermott needing to try something else… did you watch this year? We were a totally different defense this year than we have been. We went from a primarily two high shell team to a MOFC team overnight to address the issues. Played more Cover 3 and Man than we have since McDermotts first year here.

No. He's not Aaron Donald. What he is, however, is our most athletic defensive lineman on the roster. It'd be a missed opportunity if we didn't move him around to take advantage of mismatches. If JL is everything he says he is - I think we'll see more movement upfront to take advantage of those mismatches. JL played with a true 0 at Wisconsin. I really doubt we see the static 4-0-4 front he ran while there. It'll look a lot more like the under type fronts you're seeing across the league from all these guys in the Fangio tree. That's the beauty of the 5 down front, there's rarely doubles, the angles are terrible for OL to get to second level defenders. It allows our backers to flow largely untouched until they get to the LoS. Sure, if I get time to draw some stuff up I will.