I did read that article. And since my wife is a Notre Dame grad, I watched his defenses a lot the year they played Bama for the title. So I had all that in my head and was well aware of his no crease, bend but don't break approach. Lol. Which is why it was just stupid that I was hoping and expecting to see something more aggressive. I told my dad over the phone at halftime (who is 84 and thinks we should blitz on every play) that we were seeing Diaco's philosophy in play, however vanilla, and to get used to it.
Yah I mean scheme is not going to paper over roster deficiencies. I expect as the players get more experienced the secondary will tighten up. If the general goal is to keep everything in front of you.... almost no coach I'm aware of takes a young secondary and puts them in a position to get beat on the 2nd step.
Consider the questions we on the board had when diaco was hired.
1. Who on the roster will play NT...we didn't have any. They more or less made one out of mick and DT.
2. Who exactly was going to play OLB? This was the harder question IMO because you can't just tell a guy to gain weight and hope it works.
Dealing with the issues caused by two will be problematic all year long I would gather. If we trot out more nickel personnel teams will audible to more run matchups. If we roll out a base alignment, they can audible to a bubble screen type of deal. It does t guarantee we won't have our successes but it will give the advantage to the offenses.
So now the natural question....if we were lacking a couple key pieces to the three four.... why switch.
Because personnel are personnel. Playing a 4-3 without top shelf DEs isn't going to net us any advantage than we find ourself in now. A 4-3 doesn't magically make our secondary more experienced and allow them to press every play. Newby can still be abused in space and there still is the fundamental choice of rolling out the nickel or newby against a particular offensive look that can be audibled.
So you might as well rip the band aid off and get cracking
