Interesting perspective of new Saints DC Ryan (from Dallas media)

Jiva said
Those are accurate accounts of issues Ryan had while in Dallas. I am not in support of the Ryan hire, but I do want to add that the Cowboys Defense is fundamentally set up improperly imho. Dallas built it's entire team from the Outside - In. This means that the strength of their Defense is the perimeter, OLB, (FAST) ILB, and CB. That sounds great, I wish our Defense had strengths at these positions; but the issue is the middle of their defense was pitiful. As good as their best positions are, they are as bad at the other positions of DE, NT, and both Safeties. They have to have the worst Safeties in the league, their DE and NT are non existent in stopping the run and rushing the passer. Also, lets mention the lack of depth they have at any position on defense. One injury and everything dominoes down hill.
To me, this made Dallas one dimensional on Defense, because you always knew where the pass rush was coming from (Ware and Spencer). And they HAD to blitz to get pressure.
I doubt our talent on D is as good as Dallas has in some areas, but I think we are more versatile and smarter than the players Ryan worked with in Dallas. Hopefully we can get some more good, versatile talent in the draft to give him more to work with.

The positions of their strength is the right one. In this pass happy league pressure should come from the outside in a 3&4 alignment. They had 2 pretty darn good passrushers in Ware & Spencer, and they also had pretty good cover CBs, which is essential to have when putting pressure on the passer. So the setup was ideal.

I think their problems came from injuries. When you lose 2-3 guys on the starting lineup, it is felt, no doubt. If I compare their safeties to ours....theirs played better than ours. I felt our safeties were terrible last year under Spags....Their whole secondary was playing better than the Saints secondary.....especially the way they were used by Spags. Even if we say that the LBs were a wash......and their secondary better, then the only other area to look for is the DL..... C Jordan is a good DE, so he and Spencer cancel each other out....But Ware is just better than W Smith, and our Ellis didn't play as good to make the Saints DL better.

JJ is a problem, but they had some key injuries which was the main cause for their poor showing. I hope we can sign Spencer away from them, and must do something at the safety position in FA.......both Woodson and Reed should be available.....maybe we could land one of them.