Keith Butler STAYING!!!!!

If I'm Butler, I'll sign on for a one-year contract at Def Coordinator money. And if DL isn't gone after the season, I am.
Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. Otherwise, they can call Tom Bradley to take my spot, he's used to waiting for the top job to open up.

 

I think the writing is on the wall for DL. I am as much of a fan of his as anybody and he has helped lead this team (defense especially) to some unheard of heights but I still think the game is passing him by. Change is always scary but sometimes it is for the best!

 

Based on what?

We weren't so hot in 2007, and in 2008 we had one of the greatest defenses in NFL history, while going up against the most difficult schedule in the last 30 years or something. His players are changing. I see no signs that Mr. LeBeau is out of the loop. Speaking of loops, he sure threw the AFC champ Patriots for one when they played in week 8.

 

Just like the o-line ....The D's front 7 was banged throughout the year. Smith, Hamton, Keisel, Hoke, Harrison, Woodley & Worilds all missing multiple games. The pass rush suffered this year.

 

I wonder if Butler just found out that Arians will be the OC in Indy? Keith was probably thinking "I don't want to have to go through what DL had to go through in Pitts, as in bailing out the offense."

 

Based on what offenses are doing now days and what DL continues to do. Yes, we have games where what we do works better than other times but we have our down moments too. Please, don't mistake what I'm saying for a lack of confidence in DL...I would take him over 90% of the people out there. It is my opinion, and mine only, that his schemes are designed to do one thing and teams or doing another. I mean, yeah we did a good job week 8, what about the first round of the play-offs? Did we throw Tebow for a loop? Just saying...

 

I agree that he blew it against Denver by not making adjustments at halftime. He went in with a good plan: make Tebow beat you with his arm. Unfortunately, in the 2nd quarter, that's exactly what he started doing, with the best passes he'd ever thrown in his whole life. DL should have backed off, and had the safeties play regular to help Gay and Ike. He didn't. He still went all out to stop the run to force Tebow to beat us with his arm, which he did in overtime, when we inexplicably had 11 players in the box on 1st and 10.

Early on I put the blame on Tomlin, because it wasn't about individual playcalls, it was about the entire philosophy. Just like if the OC is handing the ball off every play when you're down by 21, blame should go to the HC for not stopping it. Tomlin should have said, "Dick, Ike is playing like crap and Tebow is playing better than ever. Go back to normal." But clearly that didn't happen, unless LeBeau just didn't listen, which I wouldn't believe.

Now, why didn't he make the obvious change? He was clearly obsessed with containing Tebow and the running game, which they pretty much did. He lost his two star defensive linemen in the 4th quarter, so maybe that played into it. In any case, this game was a flukish game in which a freakish offense that is not "what teams are doing now" beat us by doing what it doesn't normally do and is not normally good at.

Looking at LeBeau with the Steelers, they have always been amazing against the run and either pretty good or so-so against the pass. But don't forget, pass defenders is what this team has always lacked. He's never had good CBs. The changing ways of the NFL require a team to have 4 good CBs on the roster, and we could barely get by with 1. So when teams like Green Bay put out 4 awesome WRs against us and we have to cover them with Ike, B-Mac, Gay, and Anthony freakin' Madison, and the QB is good enough to find and hit the most open man, it's not going to be pretty no matter who the DC is. And after all that, we still did a better job than most teams at containing them and would have won that game if not for the brutal turnovers on offense.

So I think the GB Super Bowl is a much better case for the "LeBeau isn't keeping up" argument than Denver, since GB is what the league is actually doing. That said, have you looked around? Offenses are setting records every single week. ALL defenses are getting slaughtered. And our defense was messed up this year. Both our star pass rushers missed tons of time, and even their backup missed time at the same time, bringing us down to our #5 OLB at one point. Our DL is aging and in transition, to say our CBs are also in transition is putting it nicely. Our offense didn't really help us out any. And weren't we still statistically the top defense of the year? I know there were some weak teams in there, but still. Given what he had to work with, I thought he did well this year.