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Ngata, others wants better defensive scheme
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It's become painfully obvious that the Ravens defense desperately misses Rex Ryan and is really suffering under the bland schemes of new coordinator Greg Mattison.
I was listening to the Derrick Mason show last Monday night on WBAL radio when guest Haloti Ngata was asked about his thoughts on Mattison and the team's defensive struggles.
His comments were very telling. He essentially threw Mattison under the bus, which surprised me because Ngata is so soft-spoken. He made it clear that the scheme under Mattison is completely different than the one under Ryan. Ngata went on to say that it is obvious that Mattison is learning a lot at the NFL level and the players are all trying to get on the same page with him.
In Jamsion Hensley's chat with fans on Baltimoresun.com Thursday, he reiterated that many of the defensive players want to go back to Ryan's old schemes, but that it seems that Mattison will stick with the vanilla approach. He went on to say that he also believes the team should go back to shifting players around and using the element of surprise.
The bottom line is that the Ravens haven't put much money into the defense recently and the unit continues to grow older. The Ravens were successful in the past couple of years because of a few very good players, an excellent system, and an aggressive, nasty attitude.
Without that scheme, a lot of the flaws that were covered up by Ryan are now being exposed in a big way. This team does not have the pass rushers or the shutdown corners to get after the quarterback with just three or four players in a base defense. Unless Mattison gets more aggressive and mixes things up, the defense will continue to struggle and the Ravens may even miss out on the playoffs.
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