Truthfully after watching Gibbs defense for a year, I think that giving up big plays is part of the risk of the defense. I think that the consistency of big plays is going to be the issue.

Gibbs defense is man to man in the secondary with pressure up front. That means that opposing offenses are going to get opportunities to throw the ball down the field. Now you get a mix of results on such plays:

1) Incompletions
2) Completions
3) Interceptions

The problem last season is that there was way too much of #2 and not enough of the others. Increase the defensed passes and interceptions relative to completions and we'll be better off.

Part of Fred's problem was biting on the short fake then getting burned because he couldn't recover afterwards. Even if the secondary allows for a higher percentage of those shorter completions in tradeoff for preventing the longer ones, then I think we'll be better off.

SFIAH