Buffalo Bills defense to be 3-4 hybrid?

by Steve

Per Chris Brown:

Talking to Bills DC George Edwards, who was kind enough to carve out some time in his busy schedule, it’s clear his coaching background has prepared him well for adjusting to the strengths of the players he has at his disposal. Having been through scheme changes before like the one the Bills are about to undergo in just over a week’s time when OTAs begin, he sounds like he has a firm grasp of how to begin to implement the 3-4 scheme, but not at the cost of reducing the playmaking ability of some of the players at his disposal.

“It’s like coach (Gailey) said when we came in here,” Edwards told Buffalobills.com. ”We’re going to implement the basic fundamentals of the 3-4, but we’re also going to do what the skill set of our players allows us to do.”

Translation, if alignments and assignments have to stray from the core principles of the 3-4 in order to maximize a player’s effectiveness we’re going to do it. It’s just encouraging to hear coaches being open to maximizing player strengths instead of pigeon-holing them into a system.

Makes sense to me. The team doesn't have much talent and it will be a struggle going from a 4-3 to 3-4. Mixing it up and putting players in different alignments hopefully will give a bit of a crutch to the players. For everyone to assume that a 4-3 DE can just become an OLB in a 3-4 has never made sense to me. Maybin was never projected as an OLB. Kelsay and Schobel have never played OLB in the NFL. The same goes for our 3-4 DEs. They'll have a bigger learning curve than some think.

There are a ton of question marks surrounding this defense. OTAs and training camp will be that much more interesting with all the changes in the front 7.