I think Nick was especially good at putting a player in the right position to take advantage of his physical skills. The new DC will inherit Nicks talented players already in effective positions. It will be interesting to see what position changes Pellini makes with the current team and how well he places new players. With a new scheme, some players may find themselves better suited for a different position on the field.
No doubt Bo will benefit from the players already on board. I'm sure that is one of the reasons he is at LSU.
The point i was trying to make is that Deffensive Scheme matters at least as much as the players in it. Lou TEPPER had some pretty good deffensive football players but his deffensive schemes were not very good. Tepper had players such as Chuck Wiley, Mark Roman, Kenny Mixon,and Anthony Mcfarland. as well as young contributers such Ryan Clark, Trev Faulk, Bradie James, and Jarvis Greene, all of whom are currently in the NFL. Thats a pretty impresive list for such a bad deffense, all because his schemes was not good.
TomE I see your point, and I agree that scheme is important, especially when you have a coach that is trying to teach a defense that is impossible to master like Tepper did. I guess I would say that the scheme is not going to make a team a top defense without great players to make it work. However your evidence does indicate that even great players cannot make a horrible scheme work.
someone posted some stats from pellini's last year with the blackshirts a while back, and he evidently likes to be very aggressive. all of the speed that we have on D should play right into that style. from what i've heard, his system is a lot less complex that sabans. therefore, it is very possible that we may not miss a beat, and may even improve, on defense this fall.
