Well, happy trails for Steve as he adds to his resume by getting an official DC job.
If there is one thing that I both loved and hated about his Dad's regime here is that we were not
an open book when it came to who did what. That and the fact that Bill had a bit of a problem with
designating his Coordinators the way everybody else does. This meant we had to really pay attention
to try and figure things out, but still couldn't be sure who should get the credit when things went well or
vice-versa. I really don't think the media really knew the answers and sometimes tended to make shit
up in order to sound intelligent.
Nobody ever really laid out the way Mayo and Stevie B. divvied up the responsibilities as far as
who developed the defensive game plan and in-game adjustments. For the most part, Jerod was
up in the booth and Steve worked the headset, and he was generally thought to be the defacto
DC, but last season Mayo also worked the sideline, so......yeah. It was one or the other or.....both of
them really working well together.
The point of this is that our D was far better than the stats may show because they were on a
fucking island all season long with little to no complementary support from the other two phases.
We lost our two best players a month in-- along with a promising Sophomore in Marcus Jones which
was followed by a slew of other injuries and off-field stuff with the rest of our Cornerback crew to the
point where we were starting Myles Bryant and Shaun Wade, who could realistically have been our 5th and
6th best players on the depth chart out of camp , yet no matter how many combinations we were forced to use the
coverage was noticeably cohesive. The tackling very good. We knew what were doing out there, for sure and
gave opposing QBs a lot of problems trying to read what we were doing. Our D eventually played better than
when we still had Judon and Gonzalez.
I've tended towards being a little skeptical of Steve, never being quite sure of who he was, but what I saw this
season changed my opinion. Our Defense played a hell of a lot smarter than what I've seen out of a lot of teams in
the postseason. We were coached very well.
I wish him the best of luck out on the West Coast and hope he is very successful standing on his own two feet and
as his career progresses.
