SaintsBro

I have NO IDEA about why, today, this is so true. But I do remember, something I read from back in the relative start of the Gregg Williams era.

I wanted to know more about GW, so I went digging for articles about him and his past defenses, his past career history as a coordinator. This must have been in late '09 to maybe 2010 sometime. I really dug for articles all over the place, every team he'd had a defense for, I read a ton about him.

And this one Washington DC sports writer wrote an article, that was kind of a post-mortem autopsy on WIlliams' time in Washington as he was leaving there. And in it, he kinda said that, one of Gregg Williams' "things" that he did on defense at all his various different teams, was to have ONE really good linebacker, to sort of anchor the position, and then surround that one key player with a bunch of faceless fly-by-night nobodies around him, journeymen linebackers, plugging them in and out. But your anchor guy at LB was gonna carry the day for the group. Which is sort of exactly what happened with Vilma, here.

And one of the downfalls of that Gregg Williams defense in Washington DC, mentioned in that article, was that as time went by, they couldn't replace the BIG playmaker guy (Marcus Washington) as anchor, and they were left with nothing but faceless fly-by-nights.

Now obviously, of course Williams is long gone and we've had two different coordinators in here since then, and no idea what Ryan is thinking....

But the lingering effects of those 2-3 Williams era defensive drafts (P-Rob, Malcolm Jenkins) and the style of building the defensive team over the last 3-4 years, PLUS a virtually useless funky Spagnuolo/Bountygate draft, PLUS never really properly addressing replacing Vilma as a STUD linebacker and true LEADER of the defense (a leader, not "Captain").....I dunno....just a theory, but maybe that is some of what we are seeing with our lame linebacker corps.

I mean right now Lofton is supposed to be "THE GUY" at linebacker, the stud, and everybody else is sort of like, who? Who is this guy? And nobody is standing out. They're all pretty useless.