I've been in favor or letting Capers go for a while now. I think that he and Thompson are philosophically a bad marriage. I also think that he's a "system" coach who struggles to adapt to talent that isn't exactly what he would want in the ideal situation.
There's no question that Thompson is one of the better GMs in the league. But I also believe his stubbornness has cost us a time or two, and there's at least a question that he is losing his touch on the defensive side of the ball. He's poured draft after draft into the D, and it hasn't gotten better.
Ted is a decent enough GM. He's prudent and deliberate. But the same things that allow for GB to be consistently a winning franchise under him are also what limit us from being able to compete to win Super Bowl rings. We shouldn't be looking at mediocrity around the league as a reason to be content. We should be looking at New England and asking ourselves, "Why haven't we been able to do what they have done in the past five years?"
The problem-I agree-is that Ted and Dom are not a good mix. Dom runs the type of scheme that should be stocked with veterans and sprinkled in with some nice young guns. It also should be a top-heavy D in terms of talent. Ideally, at minimum you want a Top 3 EDGE rushing OLB getting 15 sacks a year coupled with an All-Pro ILB who can move/be very physical at the point of attack/take on blocks from O-lineman/be at least effective when fire zone blitzes are called. Then, you need a high quality, mammoth-of-a-man 0-technique NT to draw the attention of the O-line's interior consistently enough to let your 3-4 auxiliary players run clean/confuse the rest of the protection scheme and/or QB while giving them little time to react. Or in a nutshell, you compliment 2-3 stud LBs and 1-2 really good defensive linemen with as much speed and smarts as possible at the other 6-8 positions on the field that you can afford. Is having a good nickelback (Rod/Charles Woodson) important? Yes. But having Kevin Greene, Greg Lloyd, Levon Kirkland, James Harrison, Casey Hampton, Lawrence Timmons, Ryan Shazier-esque players is PARAMOUNT. Your front 7 must be designed meticulously and specifically in a 3-4 to have the ability to execute certain things. Guys like Brett Keisel, though valued in the Dom/**** Lebeau 3-4, are easier to attain than the guys I mentioned previously.
This is where I come back to Ted. When we won our Super Bowl, we had a B.J. Raji. We had a Clay Matthews playing like a Top 3 EDGE rushing OLB. But realistically, outside of Desmond Bishop and A.J. Hawk, we've never even had flashes of top-notch ILB play. Meanwhile, we've never replaced Raji, and Clay is not a stud anymore. Perry is not a premier guy, either. He is like a good #2 WR, or 2nd scoring option in basketball. He isn't the top dog, and if we expect him to be that for the next five years, we're in trouble when it comes to getting to the QB on defense. The bottom line is, Ted has not assisted Dom in assembling a stout 3-4 defense, nor has he invested properly in maintaining its foundation. He has basically done what he wants, hope he hits on certain guys he likes, allowed parts of the defense to be glaringly deficient before addressing it after the fact, and all the while made Dom work with what he has given him/take the blame for bad performances from the unit. But sometimes, you can't fault the contractor, you gotta fault the architect.
Let's dig further. Ted has a thing for defensive backs. It's apparent to me when you look at his tenure that he values the secondary highly when acquiring players for the Green Bay defense. Which is a big issue, because since Ted is the czar of "draft and develop" he's forcing Dom to play a bunch of young guys nearly right away in a complex scheme that is designed for older, more experienced players. Guys like Carnell Lake, or Al Harris.
The tradition of the 3-4 is that of a defense that can give opponents fits IF it is built the right way. A 3-4 is designed to create more pressure on the QB in the pass game than a 4-3 can while not sacrificing the ability to effectively stop the run/not being as vulnerable in the quick passing game itself as a counter. But if you look at Dom's D in GB since we won the SB, we have not been able to be a consistently dominant defense, and at times have been very porous. At first it was the inability to stop the run, which is an Achilles heel for a 3-4 that messes up everything else until corrected. Then, it was giving up the big pass play due to inconsistencies with communication in the secondary. Now we finally have a quality young FS in HHCD that replaced Collins, yet are still vulnerable due to QBs having the time to pick apart our defense late in games. Because Ted didn't keep Charles around/let Casey go/hoped his cheap rookies in R&R would step up, we have seen with Sam Shields' injury that we were suspect at the CB position and paid for it, even while Ted invests in it regularly to the detriment of the front seven.
Ted is really more to blame for the defensive issues, and not Dom. I haven't always felt this way over the years, but after this past season and seeing what Ted has done so far in the off-season I am certain in this. Ted paid Nick Perry and let JP + Jones walk, even though if you think about it, Julius and Datone were almost as productive as a duo than Nick was when you consider sacks and pressures as stats/how Nick got alot of his stats last year. They also would have been cheaper to resign overall than what Nick is to keep as a "premier EDGE rusher". But Ted did that to prove a point. He drafted Nick in the 1st round, so he has to keep HIS guy since he balled out on a prove-it deal. Same thing with Clay. He should have been restructured by now, but because he is Ted's marquee guy, he ignores the fact that he is not living up to his contract, but consistently lets guys like Casey/T.J. go (and is prolly gonna let Morgan walk after next year, too) when he thinks he can afford it.
Ted's cheapskate mentality and emphasis on building the defense from the back-end forward is what has screwed up Dom's defense. Couple that with a history of bad breaks health-wise with key players, and it's forced Capers to adjust with his hands tied behind his back. His answer had become the elephant end/OLB instead of the consistent use of a 0-tech NT, quicker 3-tech DTs, and playing nickel like it is the base defense.
I think the reason why GB's defense isn't good enough is fundamental. Dom has been trying to bandage the unit by rolling with the 2-4-5 in as many situations as possible, and just rotating players in and out like hockey. Last year it bit him in the behind. Offensive coaching staffs took advantage of the defensive alignment and put up big numbers on us. Which is why I think TT and Dom are trying to work together this off-season in one last try at building a Top 10 defense together. I see Dom wanting to run 3-4-4, 3-3-5, 3-2-6, and 2-2-7 defensive alignments this year. Base 3-4=20% 3-3-5 (The real base defense)=40% 3-2-6 (DIME)=25% and 2-2-7 (Quarters) 15%. No more 2-4-5. It is not big enough to stop the run against good, powerful O-lines (like Dallas/Tennessee), but also doesn't give you enough flexibility in personnel to get a pass rush later in games when offenses get aggressive. You're a sitting duck with that defense when you're trotting out 2 slow ILBs who can be isolated and exposed in the passing game, especially when your secondary is vulnerable at the corner spots like we were. Without any elephants, we gotta have 3 DLs on the field more to stop the run and push the pocket from the middle. With using Josh Jones and Morgan Burnett as ILBs, we can have the speed/athleticism in the middle we need to combat teams like ATL who have good receiving RBs. But in order to do that more consistently, we need to not have them caught in the wash. Which is why I would not expect to see the 2-4-5 at all this season, and only see two down lineman in obvious 3rd and long passing situations late in games when we are trying to protect a lead.
But, Ted is still ******** us over by leaving the OLB position cupboard dangerously bare. So Dom is still hamstrung. We're basically replacing Julius Peppers with Jayrone and Montravious Adams in terms of production (not schematically). Now, instead of trying to scheme the defense to get to 50 sacks in a season, and increase the turnovers that give Aaron more possessions, he has to find a way to manufacture consistent pressure/duplicate the 40 sack year we had on defense that STILL WASN'T GOOD ENOUGH FOR US TO BE A COMPETENT CHAMPIONSHIP UNIT. This is why I can't be on the fire Capers train. Ted is the one who needs to go. Replace him with Eliot Wolf, and tell him to go shopping for some front seven goodies to help out Granddaddy Dom. Then we can properly evaluate him as a DC.
