Oh, noes! It's a process: Spags first conference call with local news outlets.
https://www.kansascity.com/sports/nf...226522090.html
Switch to 4-3? Chiefs’ Spagnuolo preaches ‘physical, competitive defensive football’
BY BLAIR KERKHOFF
FEBRUARY 20, 2019 02:15 PM
In his first interview as the Chiefs’ new defensive coordinator, Steve Spagnuolo said he wants to evaluate personnel before he discusses alignment.
“We’re not going to get hung up on scheme right now,” Spagnuolo said. “What we should first do is find out what we have and how they fit then decide exactly what the scheme is.
“I do think today things are a little overblown. Let’s all recognize that in today’s football they put a lot of wideouts out there, so we’re in a lot of sub packages.”
And sub defenses are less about a 3-4, which the Chiefs used as their base under former coordinator Bob Sutton, or 4-3, which Spagnuolo traditionally had run in his years as a head coach with the Rams and coordinator with the New York Giants and New Orleans Saints.
When it comes to personnel, many decisions await a team that finished 31st in yards allowed despite tying for the NFL lead in sacks.
Much of the speculation has focused on how some of the team’s veterans, such as 3-4 outside linebackers Dee Ford and Justin Houston, will fit a base scheme that operates with two ends and two tackles up front.
A 4-3 would seem a better fit for the skill-set of Breeland Speaks, who lined up as an outside linebacker as a rookie but seems more like a natural 4-3 end.
Spagnuolo, who has met some but not all of the team’s defensive players as he begins to put in office hours at the team’s training facility, said it’s too soon to start fitting players into positions.
“You just get your best pass rushers out there and your best coverage people,” Spagnuolo said. “So once we get that figured out, we’ll start slotting people into where they should go.”
Don’t look for answers any time soon.
“This is a long process to figure out who and what we have, how it fits,” Spagnuolo said. “One thing I’ve always said, especially about defensive football, is you don’t really get a good assessment of your players until you put pads on and watch them play real defensive football, and that doesn’t happen until the end of July.”
But the mission is clear. Two days after the Chiefs failed to stop the New England Patriots in their AFC Championship Game loss — New England won the overtime coin toss and ended the game with a touchdown — Sutton was fired. And Spagnuolo was announced as his replacement before the end of the week.
Spagnuolo is charged with improving a defense that shares a locker room with an offense that led the NFL in yards and scoring.
“We’d like to think that can happen,” Spagnuolo said. “But this is process. There are no quick fixes. One person or a new staff coming in here doesn’t assure success.
“But I will tell you this. We will do everything to put something together that we are playing aggressive, challenging, physical, competitive, defensive football. That’s the goal.”