An excellent post and I couldn't agree more. It won't be popular among the pass rush crowd but everything that is wrong with our defense, to me, starts with safety play. Our first game we came out and did a pretty good job in playing the way Ryan wants to play: tight man coverage, with a single high safety and a rover in the seam, blitzing from where he feels like it play to play. He has two corners who have the ability to get a press, which makes the pass rush that much better.
Unfortunately, Sensabaugh is crap unless he is covering a man, McCray is NOT a coverage safety at all, and it has led to us playing more and more zone coverage without blitzing. I would say that our safety play was the predominant reason we lost the Atlanta game; we just couldn't play to the player's strengths because of this one position.
Frankly that is NOT what our defense is setup to do. I see a high premium being put on getting not only a safety, but safety depth next offseason.
Also I agree with you very much on Hatcher. I love watching the guy play, his pass rush is very underrated and he is doing a very good job at disruption.
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