Melvin just coaches corners and nickels. Safeties are not his problem. That is on Tony Hughes. And the problems with blown coverages are 90% on the safeties from what I've seen. Was the case tonight and was in the Alabama game. Made Banks look bad twice @ Bama and Slay look bad at least once tonight, simply because they were in underneath coverage and the over the top safety help either wasn't there or didn't arrive until it was too late. I thought our LB coverage(with Wells and McKinney) was decent tonight for the most part. The 2 times that I remember Wells getting beat were simply great passes.
Whitley is killing us right now. Been a hugely underwhelming year from him...
Engie knows football. You nailed the problems with our secondary. Poor safety play and Nickoe is the weak link. It seems more mental than physical. Of course, injuries can affect the mental. Whatever the reason, he's just not there anymore. The other problem with our defense is that we have a subpar DLine and middle of the pack LBs across the board. None of our LBs are fast and aggressive. Right now our best DLineman will at best go late 2nd round. We don't have a lineman with the speed, strength and quickness to apply interior pressure. We don't have a DE that can get pressure on the QB. With the exception of Banks and Slay, no one on our dense is outstanding. Hopefully the young guys will be better next year.
Our dense has two players that offenses try to avoid, # 13 & #9. The rest can be easily had. I don't know if Wilson is getting the max out of this defense or not. But watching the last three games, it looks to me that his scheme tries to cover his lack of talent.