The-Hogs.net - Washington Football Discussion, Redskins to Commanders Era

Attention NFC East offenses: The Redskins defense is coming for you.

Armed with a new head coach, a new coordinator and plenty of new faces, the Washington Redskins have revamped their defense and plan to attack and be more aggressive than in years past.

Under new coordinator Greg Williams, who spent the previous three seasons as the head coach in Buffalo, Washington plans to utilize its athleticism to put pressure on its opponents. "Players usually would rather be aggressive than passive. They like blaming coaches when the coaches hold them back," Williams mused. "There won't be anything like that here. We are all in this foxhole together, and we are going to be as aggressive as our personnel allow us to be."

"We're sending guys all the time from every position, even cornerback. You never know who is coming and we are setting the tempo."
- DE Regan Upshaw
With some very gifted athletes on the defensive side of the ball the Redskins will be forcing the issue with an in-your-face mentality. "We're coming to get you," defensive end Regan Upshaw stated. "We're sending guys all the time from every position, even cornerback. You never know who is coming and we are setting the tempo."

One of the reasons the Redskins are able to take such an aggressive approach is their solid corps of defensive backs. "We have good corners that are able to man-up and that is the key," Upshaw explained. "You have to have corners who can make it easy. They can lock-up a receiver and not allow him to make any plays and then you can go in and do things with the other players on the defense."

Williams agrees that having corners with the ability to slow down receivers is a key to the Redskins success this year. "When you have cover-corners, you can do a lot more things with loading up the box and putting pressure on protections," he said. "When you aren't as good at the corner position, you are lighter inside, lighter against the run and lighter against the pass. We have shut down corners and we need to see that. We need to see our corners line-up and shut people down by themselves so we can overload the protections and overload the run front. We'll be pretty good on defense when that happens."

With the departure of Pro Bowler Champ Bailey in an off-season trade, veteran cornerback Fred Smoot is ready to step up and accept the responsibility of shutting down the opponents' best wide receiver each week. "I love the pressure," he said. "Pressure brings out the best in good players. Corner is a pressure position anyway. I'm a man-to-man corner, that's what has got me here, that is what is going to keep me here."

Washington also boasts one of the league's best linebacker groups, which can cause havoc for opposing coaches as they game plan for the Redskins. "You've got the best linebacking corps in the NFL right here," Upshaw stated. "You've got Michael Barrow, he's like the Godfather – running the whole show. You've got LaVar (Arrington) and Marcus Washington and both those guys are terrors coming off the corners."

Washington, who joins the Redskins after four seasons with the Colts, joined the Skins in part due to Williams and his reputation for being aggressive. "He's going to turn me lose a little bit, take the chain of me a little bit," Washington offered. "It's going to be a lot of fun. Greg Williams is a smart guy and we have a great coaching staff."

The talent level the Redskins boast is what allows Williams to be creative with his scheming. "You have to have the right personnel to be as aggressive as we want to be," he explained. "We're not going to say that these guys have to play our system. We're going to adapt to the personnel that is here and play the best thing we can for the 11 that are on the field. We're going to play a lot of people and a lot of packages and do whatever we can to get into pressure mode."

While the talent level is there, Williams knows the influx of new faces means chemistry could take a while to build. "We're really happy we have five pre-season games," he commented. "We have a lot of guys that need to get used to communicating with each other on the field."

Williams' aggressive approach to defense formed from years of working with some of the NFL's most successful defensive coaching including Buddy Ryan, George Allen and Jack Pardee. "We've tried to evolve our system to where we are always attacking and always dictating to the offense instead of the offense dictating to us."

During his tenure in Buffalo, Williams' defenses improved tremendously each of his three seasons as head coach. In 2003, the Bills defense finished second in the NFL, improving from 15th in 2002 and 21st in 2001. Last season, Buffalo finished first in the AFC in total defense and pass defense.

In 2003, the Redskins ranked 14th in the NFC and 25th in the NFL in total defense under Head Coach Steve Spurrier and his staff.

Redskin Stouff wrote:Living close to Buffalo, I get to (have to ) watch a lot of Bills games. It was obvious that GW knew nothing about offence, but his defence was downright scary.

They flew to the ball and you could actually see the terror in some opponents faces whrn they were getting gang tackled.

Our defence is in good hands this year.

They will have to play their hearts out and with excellent coordination to make the system work. It might happen but I do not see a Lachey or a Mann or a Manley in our OL or DL of the team. Do you?

Justice Hog, I could not like the system more than I do. I feel GW is the best def coach we could have.

My point to be precise is: give -any- decent QB time to throw without pressure from the DL and he will tear you apart. No matter how good the CB and ST are. Think Manning, Warner, Mcnabb, even Testaverde...

We won't know till the season is over. Someone may step up, you look at the better teams in the league and there are a lot of no name guys who get the job done, and do it well. We have to have at least one, lol.

Who are the candidates who you really feel have the potential to step up in our DL to rush consistently their passers?

tcwest10 wrote:I think, personally, we'd've got by with Ray Rhodes as AHC-D. I'm not complaining; I'm just saying, I think Williams will be like Marvin Lewis...i year, and gone.
Also, I still want one qb killer threat at end. I wish to whatever that we'd managed to land O-Gun, but as time passes the chances of that happening get slimmer and slimmer.
I'll take what we have, but I still would feel a lot better if we weren't so thin at the ends.