Washington’s Defense finished 3rd in PFF

[turtle28]

And they should only get better 

[e16bball]

They were also 3rd according to DVOA, behind only PIT and NO. 

It’s very exciting, because there are some obvious places to upgrade that should make it pretty easy to try to go to the next level. Lots of good defenses have “good” players across the board — New Orleans actually strikes me as such a team — so it’s tough to make a couple simple moves to take the team up another level. But we have at least 3 pretty easily identifiable spots (MLB, WLB, and FS) where we could inject more talent and prosper. It’s actually kind of remarkable that arguably our worst defensive starter in Bostic (and I do say arguably, because I don’t think the staff views him as poorly as we do) can play such a critical position in the 4-3 defense and we were still able to reach such a lofty level of performance. 

Aside from those 3 obvious holes, our other focus needs to be on accumulating quality depth. We had excellent injury luck on the defense this season. We had some issues at safety, and a little rough patch at LB, but those were already our weakest positions — the cornerstones of our defense, the DL and the CB group, were largely unaffected. But we did lose the Greek, and we were able to withstand that because of the depth at DT. We need to focus on adding some of that at other positions, particularly given that we’re likely going to lose big depth at DE (I suspect both Kerrigan and Anderson) and a depth piece at CB (Moreau). I think we’ll need to consider the mid-rounds of the draft for those positions, though it may have to be more like rounds 4-6, given the extreme needs on offense and the bigger starting-level needs on defense. 

[aceinthehouse]

I'm tellin' ya...

Move Landon Collins to LBer to play that SS/LB hybrid role...

Start Cole Holecom on the other side & draft us a true MLB for a 4-3 look base, but with a Nickel package on the field.

Keep Curl at SS & look to upgrade the FS position by draft or FA.

I'm actually not too worried about our CB's because of our pass rush.

We can throw Mickey Mouse out there at CB & be alright. Lol 😁

My main targets in the draft are...

WR

MLB

FS

TE

OG

But I think WR & MLB is our biggest hole on the team, as far as making us elite.

[offbyone]

Good year for defense.  Unfortunate that they crapped the bed in the finish.  We need a MLB and we need guys in the backfield who can play zone as JDR seems really zone focused despite us not having the personnel.