Jaguars, Urban Meyer Must Move Away From Old Scheme With DC Hire
Jacksonville Jaguars head coach Urban Meyer was brought in to present a restart. As a result, one of his most important moves, the hiring of a defensive coordinator, should be anything but a continuance of the years of failure the franchise has been stricken with.
The Jaguars have been the NFL's worst team over the last three seasons for a lot of reasons, but a flawed defensive scheme and a historically significant regression on that side of the ball are among the chief reasons.
Meyer can't make the same mistakes the last regime did, and that starts presenting a new vision for the defensive side of the ball.
Meyer is going to be working hard at finding the right coaches for his defensive staff. He has reportedly already landed interviews or commitments from several positional coach candidates, while reports have come out of the Jaguars setting up meetings with Raheem Morris and Joe Cullen to run his defense from the coordinator position.
If Meyer has proved one thing during his career as a college head coach, it is that he knows how to surround himself with a quality coaching staff. He did it at every stop of his career, and the hope for the Jaguars is he can continue it in Jacksonville.
"If there is one strength I have, it is surrounding myself with really, really great coaches. And really great players, and we will work on that next, but Jacksonville deserves an incredible staff and we are going to do our best do that," Meyer told Jaguars reporter J.P. Shadrick shortly after he was named head coach.
So with this in mind, there is no questioning that Meyer knows the importance of the hire he will make at defensive coordinator. He has long delegated his defensive duties to his assistants, so the thinking is that Meyer will let his coordinator run the scheme that is best for the roster.
But with this in mind, Meyer needs to make it a focus to move on from their classic Cover 3, Seattle Seahawks-style of defense. It has simply been implemented for too long with bad results, and even changing the man calling the plays and teaching the scheme doesn't take away from its deficiencies.
The Jaguars have run that same brand of defense since hiring Gus Bradley as head coach in 2013. There have been different variations and wrinkles over the last eight seasons, as there is with any scheme, but the Jaguars have had their philosophy steeped in the same basic principles on defense for nearly a decade.
In that decade, the Jaguars had one winning season. In that span, the Jaguars had a 37-91 record in the regular season — a staggering win rate of 0.289%.
Now, there are a lot of reasons the Jaguars have been so ineffectual for so long. The defense is not the primary bearer of that responsibility, as that likely goes to the inept management of the quarterback position and overall poor moves made in the front office in general.
But the defense has played a major role in the seven seasons of double-digit losses the Jaguars have had. Below is a representation of their defensive ranks out of 32 teams in each year, with a three-year run from 2016-2018 serving as a major anomaly.
| Year | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Yards per game allowed | 27th | 26th | 24th | 6th | 2nd | 5th | 24th | 31st |
Points per game allowed | 28th | 26th | 31st | 25th | 2nd | 4th | 21st | 31st |
First downs allowed | 28th | 24th | 29th | 8th | 1st | 3rd | 21st | 31st |
Defensive DVOA | 30th | 21st | 25th | 15th | 2nd | 7th | 29th | 31st |
Defensive Pass DVOA | 29th | 20th | 31st | 17th | 1st | 7th | 24th | 31st |
Defensive Rush DVOA | 28th | 24th | 16th | 11th | 25th | 5th | 31st | 24th |
Points allowed per drive | 25th | 22nd | 26th | 19th | 1st | 6th | 23rd | 29th |
Turnovers | 24th | 24th | 27th | 30th | 2nd | 22nd | 22nd | 27th |
Net Yards Gained Per Pass Attempt | 26th | 21st | 23rd | 5th | 1st | 5th | 23rd | 31st |
So, what was the difference for those three seasons?
Jalen Ramsey, Yannick Ngakoue, Tashaun Gipson, A.J. Bouye, Malik Jackson, and Calais Campbell to name a few. The Jaguars' defense was in the bottom tier of the league's units until they added two future Pro Bowlers in Ramsey and Ngakoue in the 2016 NFL Draft and then two other Pro Bowlers in Gipson and Jackson.
Then the defense took another step, becoming the NFL's most dangerous defense in 2017 thanks to the additions of Campbell and Bouye. Jacksonville had multiple Pro Bowlers in the secondary, on the defensive line, and Telvin Smith and Myles Jack anchored the linebacker spot. The defense was elite, but so was the talent.
You can then track the drop off of the defense with the departures of these players and Jacksonville's inability to properly replace them. As a result, it is clear that the scheme that the Jaguars have operated under, and the one Meyer is reportedly fond of, is one that requires elite players to work.
Simply put, that just isn't feasible. Sure, there will be seasons where it all comes together and goes perfectly. Look at the Jaguars in 2017, the Seahawks with The Legion of Boom. The scheme can absolutely work with the right pieces.
But is it the right scheme for the Jaguars to continue to move forward with? It has restricted their ability to be creative with their defensive front, limiting where players can line up and ultimately making Josh Allen and K'Lavon Chaisson each looking like so-so scheme fits, especially in Chaisson's case.
Then there is the fact that the scheme doesn't do what the best defenses do. It doesn't dictate anything, instead letting the offense determine what tempo the game will move at and what areas of the field will be attacked. It is very much so a reactionary defensive scheme, and one that offensive coaches have had no issues exploiting in recent years
Jacksonville knows better than anyone, even better than Atlanta, what happens when this scheme goes wrong. The need for a reset in the franchise was especially true on the defensive side of the ball in large part because it has been the same style of defense for nearly a decade.
Meyer should be trusted with his coaching hires. There is also a good chance that with an upgrade at defensive coordinator, perhaps this same type of scheme would work better in Jacksonville.
But that doesn't erase the need for Meyer to move the defense into a new era. If Meyer is to rebuild a broken defense, he should give it a new vision entirely.
