Can we stop acting like Pagano is the major issue on defense?

msadows

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Yes, he's not as good of a DC as fangio was. Few are, fangio was fantastic for years. Thats not a slight at pagano.

The major difference in this defense has nothing to do with playcalling or scheme, it all has to do with talent. Legit the opposite of our major issues on the offensive side of the ball. People blame pagano for not being aggressive, but don't understand why he can't be. It's all talent, we don't have the linebacker/db talent to blitz on a regular basis against good QB's.

On the dline, we have no real nose tackle. Hicks is getting doubled up a lot more. Nichols, while playing great, isn't a difference maker. The loss of Eddie Goldman shows up hard in the run game.

For linebackers, the only one playing well is roquan. He's having an all pro year, outside of that mack is having the worst year of his career. Granted, his worst year still makes a ton of previous #1 bears edge rushers look like jokes, but you expect more from him based on the cap hit. Quinn is mostly worthless. Seems like he's either hurt or doesn't fit this scheme. Danny T is a complete liability in pass coverage nowadays, and can't shed a block anymore. Thats where the goldman loss hurts the most. Lineman are getting to the second level, and its hurting Danny the most. He's just not athletic enough to get around slow ass linemen anymore.

In the secondary, fuller is having a great year. Lowest completion % of his career. There are no turnovers, however. Why? No pressures. We were bottom five in the NFL in pressures before the last couple weeks, now we are in the mid teens. That's still terrible considering what we have invested in the guys who should be rushing the QB.

Jaylon is fantastic for a rookie, but he has had plenty of mental lapses, which is to be expected. I can't critique him since he shouldn't have been put into this position this early. That Artie burns injury really hurt the secondary.

Outside of that, everyone in this secondary is trash. Legit trash. Skrine is one of the worst slot CB's in the league. Eddie is one of the worst FS's in the league. Gipson is decent, but worse than the last two SS's we had play next to jackson. The young guys are being thrown to the fire.

Overall, you can scapegoat whoever you want, but at the end of the day to me this feels no different from when the cubs tried to blame hitting and pitching coaches for their players inabilities. The issues on defense are all talent based. These guys just suck compared to 2018. Some fell off a cliff, some of them are new players who just suck. Either way, this isn't that talented of a D anymore.
 

msadows

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Seriously, just getting tired of the scapegoating towards pagano. He's not a great DC, but I really doubt fangio would make much of a difference for this D based on this shit talent they have.

I guess you gotta blame someone.
 

bearsfan1977

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Eh, somewhat agree with you. This has been a weird year in the world. Losing Goldman undoubtedly hurts. My problem with Pagano is he seems to scheme soft a lot. Those wide open zones are almost constantly open in the middle. But I don’t really know, we could have worse. They should have promoted Brandon Staley.
 

ChiKhan

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I was watching TTNL and they were taking about how Roquan said he needs the secondary closer to the line of scrimmage. How do you expect us to guard 3rd and 6 when our secondary is 12 yards back there's no way we can get there on time. They didn't show a clip but apparently they did say Roquan said that. I also think age and attrition have caught up to Quinn Mack and Hicks. All three are definitely playing hurt.
 

MikeDitkaPolishSausage

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Seriously, just getting tired of the scapegoating towards pagano. He's not a great DC, but I really doubt fangio would make much of a difference for this D based on this shit talent they have.

I guess you gotta blame someone.
Fangio would make a huge difference with the current defense we have. End of thread.
 

Enasic

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Seriously, just getting tired of the scapegoating towards pagano. He's not a great DC, but I really doubt fangio would make much of a difference for this D based on this shit talent they have.

I guess you gotta blame someone.

Dude fangio had the defense playing at a top 10 level before the Mack trade. This defense would be infinitely better with Vic
 

bamainatlanta

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Dude fangio had the defense playing at a top 10 level before the Mack trade. This defense would be infinitely better with Vic

Fangio even made the talent-less 2015 roster respectable on defense. Im not even a big Fangio fan myself
 

Anytime45

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Weird seeing the guy who keeps telling us that Pace is better than BB also say that theres a talent issue on defense even though Pace has invested more money into that side of the ball than any team in the nfl.

OP loves to take virtually every single stance on every single topic so he always can say hes right.
 

Zvbxrpl

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Seriously, just getting tired of the scapegoating towards pagano. He's not a great DC, but I really doubt fangio would make much of a difference for this D based on this shit talent they have.

Leonard Floyd's best years were with Vic Fangio. So was Roy Robertson-Harris' best year. Bilal Nichols had a nice rookie season, even as a part-timer. Eddie Jackson was a far more active and productive safety under Fangio. This is just attention-grabbing for the sake of it...

I can keep going on with player comparisons--and to Chuckles' credit, Vic was by no means perfect. Also to be fair, the bears could be doing a lot worse than Chuckles (look no further to the guy this weekend, Pettine).

But Vic could do BOTH make QBs think and bend, not break when he needed to/the situation called for it. Chuckles is straight bend-don't break and did the most disguised coverages (IE looking like zone but running man) against Carolina earlier in the year and it had a lot of success on Teddy Bridgewater.

Then he just stopped doing it. Vic did it to everyone, even when it didn't work--and there were days it didn't.
 

DaaBears

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NOTHING is more important to a defense than the defensive coordinator. Do you think it is just coincidence that whatever team Buddy Ryan coached had the best defense? The best defensive coordinators seem to always put out the best defenses. We already know there is a ton of talent on the Bears defense.
 

Alpha Male

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its hard to say for sure what the problem is. It could be that the talent is declining. Last year the defense was similar to the 18 defense in terms of points allowed per game.
 

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