Thought this would be thought provoking, I'm still digesting it, but thought it was worth sharing.

http://www.dailynorseman.com/2012/6/27/ ... ront-seven

Great article, thanks for sharing.

This could be disproven with further analysis, but I think it is safe to say that in addition to the issues in our secondary, the fact the Remi Ayodele could not play the nose properly in our scheme (there was mention that he was not a good fit for this technique in an article around the time of his release) had a negative impact on our line.

The optimistic fan in me wants to say our line will be even stronger in 2012 by getting rid of him, but the skeptic in me wants to ask the question of “If Ayodele was so bad, then why wasn’t he immediately benched in favor of another back up?” That to me is the $64 question. Ayodele being a bad fit is more or less settled, but whether one of the backups will make an immediate impact is probably still unknown. The coaches must have had some reason for not replacing Ayodele.

It will be very interesting to see how the back 7 piece shapes up once he writes it. I’m curious to see how that plays out, especially what happens at Safety. I suspect there is more to what is going on with the Vikings at that position than just “they suck”, but I do not know enough about the scheme to justify such thinking beyond a hunch.

Ayodele's snaps decreased greatly over the season. He kept the title as "starter" but if you look at the snaps that he played, it was clear over time that he was not.

So is he released? I'd be ok with him as a backup.

He's gone.

The usual reasons. He was an off-season acquisition who was supposed to fill that hole. Any time someone is brought in specifically to start at a position he's going to be given time to settle in, to play, and to either sink or swim. Usually they're given too much time and too much benefit of the doubt rather than the opposite.

You see exactly the same thing with draft picks. A guy taken in round 2 who is clearly inferior to a UFA signing at the same position automatically secures a roster spot, gets more starts, more snaps, and more touches, and that situation can last for several years. It's tough for many GMs, coordinators and coaches, with their huge egos, to buck up and admit they've made a big personnel mistake, and it's almost always to the detriment of the team. Think Troy Williamson. He should have been cut after his rookie year, but he lingered in Minnesota like a bad smell.

get rid of the tampa 2 and go to a 3-4

I would get rid of the Tampa 2 because we currently don't have the "athletes" on that side of the ball to run it. I was going to say 46 defense but this is a passing league and it leaves areas for receivers to catch the ball especially in a blitzing situation.

Part 2, dealing with the pass defense aspects of the scheme. Again, very interesting.
http://www.dailynorseman.com/2012/7/19/ ... #storyjump

To me this article series begs three questions for the Vikings on Defense in 2012:

1.) MLB: The article heavily emphasizes the importance of this position for our scheme, even with the reduced needs in the Dungy version. Right now we have a giant question mark at the position, if it doesn't get answered we could be in for a very long year. Hopefully Brinkley can find some durability.

2.) Nose Tackle: In short, we really miss Big Pat. Who is going to step up to command double teams in order to make the rest of the defense work and allow better production from Kevin Williams?

3.) The last issue is a well tread topic on this board: Safety Play. As the article described, the scheme is geared towards your INTs coming from this position. We obviously are not seeing any of that. The positive is that for the most part our starters are different from last year.

In fairness, the article does say punts are the priority and not picks, and the unit has had success at generating 3 and outs in the past, just not much lately. Here is to hoping that Raymond and Smith can become the "industrious" type of players the article describes.

After reading part 2 I dissagree. We have holes, so does every other team, but we also have some solid pieces. JA and KWill are among the best in the league at their respective positiosn in the scheme. Robison is solid at RDE. Our CB, assuming they can stay healthy/on the field should be a strength for us. Greenway is exceptionally talented at his position in the scheme, and EH is proving to be a solid player on the strong side if he can find consistency.

They need to find better play at Safety, an answer at Mike and NT, and keep their CB healthy for 16 games. The rest of the positions are looking very good to great IMO. IF we were tp switch schemes we'd still have train wrecks at various positions above, plus undermining some of our strengths. About the only positive would be more reps for EG.