Look right now the clear and obvious thing that should be done is Taking Richard out and Sliding Porter back outside. From there you rotate at Nickel and see who steps up. And I mean you give everyone a shot - ALL our CBs and Zaquon and Markeith included to play that nickel role. Cause right now it is clear that Richard is probably the single worst player on the defense right now, and Porter playing out of position significantly has reduced his positive impact.
The problem with our safety play is poor tackling and biting on misdirection basically. That is something I have basically zero faith in Markeith improving. Zaquan could be a solution there, but he just probably isn't ready (and unlike what people wanna say it is possible to be worse). And while everyone is putting all the blame on the safeties - and they've been poor - lets all be real here and say our LBs (and Edges, but imo that is mostly cause Guidry is calling too many DL stunts on run situations) have been incredibly bad at stopping or providing ANY help whatsoever outside on the edge. Like how many 1v1s with a RB to the outside should we honestly be expecting our Safeties to make every game? Sure they are getting beat too much on those situation, but they ARE difficult situations, and our LBs have been less than useless to help out.
Maybe the solution is a little less nickel Defense, and just having more 3 LB sets Or maybe you go to a crazy 5 Man front with Alston, Baron, Barrow, Mesidor, Bain, and and just let them play straight up with nothing crazy and free up the LBs to help outside more and play more different zones focused on making it easier on our safeties... There have been quite a few plays where we are stunting our DLineman and that is what is giving these RBs free lanes outside. To me Guidry needs to immediately cut back on that. Our DLineman need to start just winning straight up head to head. Give Offenses 7 on the line looks and drop guys into zones, and you can stunt a little on more likely passing downs, but these Run stunts/blitzes need to be scrapped. It's putting too much pressure on our safeties.
At this point I think Jaden Harris and Meesh are our safeties. I'd hope that taking Richard out, putting Porter at the position he's better at and not being as agressive on early downs and just letting our Front 4/5 Eat will NET a TD difference defensively. That is all we REALLY need. Our offense is elite. We need a solution that can be the difference in our defense holding teams to <30-35pts. We don't need some crazy solution that tries to get us to play defense that pitches shutouts. Just cut the big play rate and we are good.
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