Garrett hasn’t had what I’d consider a good defense until this past season. Many times it was the lack of defensive talent that caused the team to either just fall short of winning the division, or to get eliminated in the playoffs.
Everyone here talked about how mediocre to bad the defense was from 2011-2016... so why people are upset that Jason didn’t win a championship, and blame him, I’m not sure.
Though last year’s team did (IMO) have a good (not great) defense, the whole team was very young and had a lot of growing to do.
Typically when a very young, talented team starts out the season so-so and then gets better as the year goes on, making the playoffs and getting a playoff victory, then that team is looked at as an up-and-coming team with with a bright future... not as some type of catastrophic failure. A still maturing QB with the second youngest team in the league is not a shoe-in to be in the Super Bowl.
I expected the team to start out slowly and get better game-by-game, so last season was about what I expected. Particularly with very little pre-season play time for the starters (which I feel like was a Garrett mistake). Hopefully, that was another instance of Garrett learning a lesson and he lets the starters play more this pre season.
I don’t know if Garrett is the right one or not, but expecting a super bowl with the defenses he had and then a complete re-boot in 2016 might just be a bridge too far.
This year though, my expectations have gone up because the young team is maturing and the defense should be good to very good.
This year will tell us a lot, IMO.