BlackandBlue

It's easy to point to the players that proliferated under Pease during his previous tenure (Martin, Warren, Turnbull come to mind), but I thought I would look at the progress of this year compared to last year, and how we stack up to the rest of the NFC South.
Front four stats through the first nine games

Tackles
2003- 148
2004- 154

Sacks
2003- 12
2004- 19

Forced Fumbles
2003- 4
2004- 6

Top two defensive line players compared to the rest of the NFC South.

Player Name Tackles Team Rank Sacks Tackles for loss
Charles Grant 35 6th 7.5 3.5
Brian Young 31 8th 0.5 2.5

Atlanta
Patrick Kerney 40 4th 8.0 4
Ed Jasper 22 10th 1.0 3

Carolina
Julius Peppers 40 4th 6.0 3
Mike Rucker 23 9th 0.5 2

Tampa Bay
Greg Spires 43 5th 3.5 4.5
Chartric Darby 26 9th 0.0 0.5

There are two big differences in the teams schemes, but I don't feel that it has that dramatic an impact. First, this is the first year that Atlanta is running the 4-3 defense, which means a brand new scheme to learn. But because of how the 4-3 defense works, obviously, this has been a tremendous boost to Kerney and his play. Second, Tampa Bay runs that damn Cover 2, but the real burden of this defense falls on the linebackers and secondary, not the front four.
Injuries may have had an effect last year, but not as much as I thought. We lost Kenny Smith for the year, this year, and he started nine games for us last year, and played in 15. Whitehead started 10 games for us last year, but has only played in one this year. Howard started 8 last year, and has started 5 so far this year. Outside of a game here and there, there really haven't been any other major injuries.
Off topic, the biggest kick in the crotch I had was when I was going through other team's stats and saw how many had a linebacker topping their list in tackles, which has been pointed out here many, many times, so I won't go further.