That's great and all, but still none of it addresses MY point, that this defense has been historically bad for too long, whether it is a 4-3, 3-4, 2-3-2, 1-1-1-1-1-1-1, whatever, that it may take someone who really knows what he's doing to figure out what can be done with what the Saints got.

Also, stop making statements like "Allen is flexible, Phillips is strictly 3-4". Please...

And don't tell me what happened 2013-2014. I saw the games. Ryan's system wasn't complex; on the contrary, his system was so simple, he got figured out, just like he's gotten figured out the next season everywhere he's been.

A source within the Saints organization said most of the sideline issues revolved around Ryan's calls coming in late or the wrong defense being called. The source, who was granted anonymity to speak freely of the situation, said that happened "at least 40 or 50 times this year."

"It was awful," the source added.

...

It drove Payton crazy that Ryan's defenses turned into a whirlwind of chaos and confusion, plagued by misalignments and personnel issues due to Ryan's penchant for mass substitution packages.

"There were a few things that you looked at from a year ago and you said, 'We can't have X number of snaps with not the right number of guys on the field. We can't burn timeouts, you know, every other week because we can't get the right personnel on the field.' We just can't do that," Payton said Wednesday. "We can't have guys looking left and right at the snap of the ball. There's a game last season where the first eight plays of the game, we're misaligned and we don't even cover down the right way. Those were just facts."

Rob Ryan runs a multiple scheme that is complex in nature, and heavy on personnel groupings.

Cowboys executive vice president Stephen Jones clarified this week that Ryan was dismissed for a mass defensive confusion caused by too many schemes.

"We felt like too many schemes can cause problems regardless of how good they are and how sound they are," Jones said, according to The Dallas Morning News. "If there is more than the players can digest in this day and time -- as you don't keep players for long, they move on and you have injuries."

It's a fair point. Ryan is known for mixing up concepts and deploying his personnel in creative ways. His defense worked well at full capacity, only to give way to communication breakdowns when inexperienced players were forced into the lineup. It certainly didn't help that Ryan lost five starters and two role players during the 2012 season.