People keep shit talking Barry, but remember how reliable his defense was in year 1. People forget that. 

Last year, I felt like they gave up on the season, started playing not to get hurt. Suddenly they start winning again, get a shot at the playoffs, all of a sudden they start coming together as a unit. 

Not saying saying I want Barry in a chess match, but let's give credit where it's due.

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Absolutely that's a mistake as well, and I was very happy to see Gute say they think Douglas can play anywhere, but his best spot is CB and they're keeping him there this season.

Fan wrongly assume if you're a large CB you can automatically play Safety.

Douglas is at his best when playing games with the QB in zone coverage as an outside CB, pretending he's not covering a guy shallow, and then jumping the route.

Safeties don't have as much freedom to mental play games (or they're leaving a gap open if they do). And they need more speed as deep Safeties sticking in zone coverage.

ZONE coverage outside CB is Douglas clear best role.


Absolutely, there have been some. But I can't think of a single one of them that have Douglas physical skill limitations.

And all of those CBs that turned into great Safeties could play zone or man coverage very well, Douglas is limited to zone coverage.

CBs can become great Safeties, but I don't think Douglass is one of them.

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Barry was extremely too slow is making adjustments last year and I read that early and often. I understand that he has the fear of over adjusting and opening up what they schemed to stop all week, but there is a chess game with calling plays and I feel like Barry either doesn't mentally get the chess game, or he's calling plays scared.

Yes, if the defense adjusts to the offense, the offense will then adjust and maybe go back more towards what you originally game planned to stop... but you as a play caller, need to take some risks, and stop what the offense is currently doing, and maybe take some educated guesses of when they might be adjusting to something else.


That being said, I felt like there was some type of feud going on between Barry and the defensive players... as reporters suggested they were openly talking to media suggesting they need a change. And this only increased with the Packers DB coach leaving and sounded like DB coach and Barry had disagreements and it sounded like the DBs were being the most vocal on the Barry issue (though DBs are usually the most vocal in general).


Also, I'm not totally sure what changed, other than some reports the defensive players finally got Barry to listen and simplify things, to just let the players think less, and go full speed more, but the defensive front seem to pick up after losing Gary and Lowry. Also seemed like Reed was at DT more and Clark at NT more. Also some weaker OL opponents helped, but it was clearly more than just that.



I'm wondering how much infighting or disagreements lead to the Packers defensive struggles last year.

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