This team has been horrific at creating turnovers on the defensive side of the ball, specifically in the INT department. Why has this been the case?
With the offensive philosophy we have engineered, highly efficient at moving the chains and bleeding the clock with an elite ground game, wouldn't turnovers have a greater effect on this team than most others in the NFL?
How do we fix this? If we can even slightly move our defensive takeaway output back to the league wide mean it would have a substantial effect on our W/L outlook.
Doesn't playing conservative defense negate our advantage on offense?
They are replacing guys like Carr with guys that can catch the ball. I've seen many NFL WRs that didn't have as good of hands as the new CB Lewis.
Heath has shown to be decent at getting INTs and he is likely to be the starter at the beginning of this season unless one of the young guys does something amazing.
If Jaylon plays that improve the pass defense significantly.
Last season Byron Jones had to cover for the limited range of Carr, Church and Hitchens. If those 3 are replaced by players with more ranges, then Jones and everyone will have more opportunities to take some chances.
It's not just INTs either. Safety Woods seems to have a knack for causing fumbles.
By next season, they'll likely move on from Scandrick who has the worst hands I've ever seen. If I could have had the chance to catches all the footballs he's dropped, I would have had multiple INTs per season. Too bad we don't have a time machine where we could freeze it right before Scandrick dropped a ball and each of us go take turn trying to catch the ones he dropped. I don't think anybody here would drop as many as he has dropped.
With smart players that they added to replace dummies like Claiborne, they can play more Zone and otherwise use a more complicated coverage scheme. Zone and mixing it up more often is a good way to increase INTs. Claiborne struggled to even run the 2 man zone when there were 2 WRs on his side of the field. CBs have to be able to switch things up in that situation with 2 WRs on that side; otherwise, they'll run pick plays on you all day. Claiborne seemed to improve on this a bit in 2016, but in the past he would almost always make the wrong decision when they were required to make a decision to play man or switch off based on the routes and alignments. Many times he and Scandrick would be covering the same WR because Claiborne switched off when he should not have, or the didn't switch off when he should have done it.
