There’s nothing to feel good about. People just forget about what occurred when he was the Chargers HC. He was play calling, put that defense together and game planned for it. The defense was so terribly bad. All you have to do is watch the game before he got fired. The play calling was so terrible, the players completely quit on him in the 3rd quarter. Herbert was trying to move the offense, but the defense was awful. I remember watching it and feeling so embarrassed for Staley. Next day he was fired.
People are just excited that we may switch to a Fangio base 3-4 system, which is also exciting to me. But we’ve only seen 1 good defense from Staley that had Aaron Donald at DT and several good players littered across the field.
I’m sure a lot don’t remember this but he did NOT do 3-4 while with the Rams. They were still a base 4-3 (enforced by McVay). He didn’t coordinate a 3-4 till he went to the Chargers and it utterly tanked.
I'm half wondering if Staley would be viewed as a bridge DC. It's late to be looking for coordinators. So it is possible they're saying "Let's get a DC to help us change to the defense we want, and if he doesn't work out, we can find someone else when we have more time in the offseason". Entirely possible. But I hope thats the view.
It's also possible they're thinking they'll stay in a 4-3 and will enforce that on Staley as McVay did.