It still blows my mind how this team doesn't run a 3-4 defense

[Majic]

We signed Brett Urban a few years ago. That is the kind of DE we need to be targeting.

 

[Carter]

All of this wouldn matter would we just for once focus the DT position with a true 1 Tech. If we had a couple of decent run stuffers up front all of this wouldnt matter.

 

[thunderpimp91]

The success of a 3-4 pass rush is predicated on the surprise element of that 4th pass rusher. He could come out of nowhere. The defense is looking to confuse the O-line and their blocking scheme.

Defenses have also evolved to do this better out of a 4-3. You look at the best modern day 3-4 pass rushers and there is zero question about who is rushing and who is dropping into coverage. Pittsburgh is going to rush TJ Watt 99 times out of 100. The Cowboys are not going to move to a 3-4 and start dropping Micah Parsons into coverage a third of the time the way the would do an Anthony Spencer back in the day. It wasnt even uncommon for DWare to get 100+ coverage snaps a season.

A 4-3 crowd the LOS approach disguises who is rushing just as good if not better than the 3-4 looks do, plus you have better athletes on the field to get after the QB. This is a big reason why the 3-4 is starting to die out and is really more of a run defense front.

 

[beware_d-ware]

WRT Osa being a good 3-4 DE, the DEs you want in the classic 3-4 are not just big, they're also very tall or long. Think of Spears. You want your 3-4 DE to line head-up on the tackles and keep the tackle out of their chest, so they can defend 2 gaps. You don't want a DE who gets engulfed.

Osa is short, but he's got really long arms, so I wouldn't categorically write him off. But he gets engulfed right now as a one-gap player, and you'd be putting him in more of those bad situations as a two-gap player. He could probably make it work, cause good football players are good football players, but it's not his best fit.

The holy grail of the old school 3-4 was the "pressure five" - the DE who could cover two gaps in run defense and also get to the the QB on passing plays. Those dudes were unicorns. They were never big sack guys, because they had to run straight through a tackle on their pass rush, but they could give the defense pressure without blitzing and they freed up the rush LBs even further. Most of your good 3-4 defenses had one - off my head, I'm thinking of players like Justin Smith with the Niners, Aaron Smith with the Steelers, Richard Seymour, or Haloti Ngata.