There's always a downside...does this mean our pass rush will falter (even more)?
I dunno, but he has spent the last 11 years learning under Dick LeBeau and Marvin Lewis primarily. The big thing is wherever he's been, they've been great at getting interceptions. I mean, Deltha O'Neal and Tory James were pro bowlers with Coyle as their position coach. The last few years thanks to injury and free agency he's had a hodgepodge of people in his secondary. A few years ago in the playoffs he had to choose between Chinedum Ndukwe, Tom Nelson, Chris Crocker, and Roy Williams as safeties.
It's really hard to judge what his defense will look like. I know while he was at Syracuse, Maryland, and Fresno State he had some pretty good defenses (that also excelled in turnovers)
Pasqualoni couldn't make adjustments, period. Sean Smith said in an interview than when Pasqualoni was the DC, if an offense sent anyone in motion, the coverage call was automatically changed to man to man. Every. Time. This is monumentally easy to take advantage of if you know it's coming, especially if your inside linebackers are as poor in coverage as Akin Ayodele and Channing Crowder. It was a feeding frenzy.
All too often fans blame poor performances on coordinators because they don't want to believe the players on their team are bad. But in Pasqualoni's case the coaching really was to blame for a lot of what went on.
All I'm saying is that if we're going to be running a lot of quarters coverage this year, the X's and O's is probably going to look more like the Pasqualoni defense than Cincy's defense under Coyle. It's not some kind of inherently flawed concept or anything. But that's what it will look like. Reshad Jones in particular will probably thrive in it. And it will help hide the fact that we don't have a true FS.
Agreed for the most part. Hell Coyle was Pasqualoni's DC at Syracuse for a few years. But I think with how Coyle's career path has taken him, and comparing his interviews to that of Pasqualoni's you'll see a HUGE difference in philosophy. PP wasn't very creative and wanted to keep everything as simple as possible. Coyle wants more flexibility.