“I was shocked when I heard that – shocked out of my shoes,” Polian said. “Everyone in the league has a” replay “system and a person assigned to it. Secondly,” defensive “calls not getting in on time and too many men on the field. You should never have too many men on the field because if the offense substitutes, you can substitute. You have all the time you need to make those substitutions. If the offense doesn’t substitute, you’re not worried about substituting. That’s clear-cut.”
And what of the many problems with players struggling to learn or flat-out rejecting Ryan’s defensive scheme?
His answer will no doubt be music to the ears of Mario Williams, Jerry Hughes, Marcell Dareus, Preston Brown, and other players who have openly questioned the defense’s fit for those who have to play it.
“You need veterans to make that defense work,” Polian said. “First of all, the players thrived in another system – in a simple, straight forward, very easy to understand, very easy to communicate system where there was constant repetition of the same thing, over and over again, taught in a very straight-forward way. And the techniques were geared toward what the players could do, what their skill sets were, and the plans were constructed around the players and what they could do.
“Rex’s defense is just the opposite. It is not straight forward. It’s exceedingly complex. There is no carry over learning from one week to the next. There’s exceedingly complex language. There are exceedingly complex checks that have to be made at the line of scrimmage. There is a guy designated to make those checks. It was” linebacker “Ray Lewis in Baltimore and it was” safety “Jimmy Leonhard with the Jets, who literally could not put one foot in front of the other at the end of his career.
“I remember asking one of the Jets’ coaches during the offseason, ‘How in God’s name can you put Jimmy Leonhard on the field?’ He said, ‘No one else can translate the defense, no one else can get everybody lined up.’”
opcorn
