rsmith2783
Specialist
- Joined
- Nov 30, 2004
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"they signed a free-agent free safety (Jairus Byrd in 2014), and said, we are going to keep him in the middle of the field like the goalpost. Well, that's great. He's not going to make one play back there, and now we have changed the entire defense for one signing, and it ruined us."
- Rob Ryan
Plenty of truth to this. Playing Byrd as a single high safety has taken away his ability to get the INTs that we coveted in the first place.
That is indeed the truth. That article answered a lot of questions and it made sense why the defense fell from 2013 to 2014/15.
To back up what RR is saying, shorty after we signed Byrd, he created an instagram account. He didn't have many followers yet, and he didn't have many pictures, but he posted one picture of himself talking on the phone.
His caption said that he was talking to Payton & Ryan about adjustments on the defense.
So what I take from that is when Free Agency started, Payton & Loomis signed Byrd with the intentions in mind to run a Seattle type defense. RR knew nothing about it until after the fact.
I believe he was on vacation when he found out that we signed Byrd.