Wow. This is great. Meeks was being considered for head coach in NYJ, and now he is our DC. Anyone know why he left Indy? I couldn’t find it on Google.

hopefully he can get the D turned around.

He has been successful in Indy (that SB win where the D finally woke up late in the season), and he could bring the Tampa-2 to Carolina.

He’s shown a willingness to switch DTs in Indy (Corey Simon to Booger McFarland, which led them to the SB), and has worked well with guys like Freeney, Sanders, Bethea & their LBs.

Though his schemes were nothing special, I do admit they were effective, however that kind of all falls back on the personnel. When the Colts had the right players, the defense was easily top five, when they dont have the personnel, they are average at best. fro example, when we had Ed Johnson at DT and a healthy Freeney and Mathis, the defense played lights out. When Freeney went down, the pass rush went with him. If the Panthers run a cover 2 style defense to the one the Colts ran, you better have a stout D-line that can provide a consistent pass rush and an offense to compliment it. If the offense isn’t their to compliment it, you better hope your D is stout against the run as well as the pass. That might be the difference in how Meeks runs your defense. In indy, he had an offense and the run was expendable to an extent, as teams were forced to throw and play catch up allowing our ends to rush the QB, masking our smaller defensive players.

more scheming should help the Panthers. We’ll need to see if we have the personnel to run it the way he wants to

Lord we need a play maker in the secondary!

asks a pertinent question on his blog:

It will be interesting to see how his style meshes with head coach John Fox’s, as Meeks’ defensive lines have generally been populated by smaller, quicker linemen than the Panthers have employed

.

If its true that Trgovac was unhappy with Fox’ meddling in the defense then that might be an issue at some point. Hopefully Meeks will win out and deploy his scheme and keep Fox from having too much say. I hope they have talked this through already.

I like the selection, but do have reservations on if he can improve the D. They shouldn’t get any worse under Meeks so that is a positive. I agree it does comeback to how much involvement Fox will have.

I just don’t have any sense of excitement about this selection. Zip. And here’s why.

Close your eyes for a moment. Think about the Indy defense. You’ve all seen numerous Indy games. Think back. What is it that gets you excited? Anything? Freeney (one of the most one-dimensional players I’ve ever seen) and his dreaded spin move? Okay, I’ll give you that; ever seen him make a tackle in the running game? I haven’t. Anything else? A run defense predicated on the health of an undersized safety? Really, you get excited about that? Really?

Of course not. That’s my point. There is nothing, and I mean nothing, to get excited about here. Sure, everybody wants to lay on Trgovac for his soft zones and the lack of QB pressure. What people fail to realize is that, during the six year span with him as our coordinator, the Panthers were the fifth best defense in the league. You know who’s not ahead of us on that list? Indy.

I hope all you excited people are ready for soft zones for stretches so long it’ll make you want to punch your momma. And just so you know, Indy has been consistently worse at getting to the QB than the Panthers were, Freeney or no. Over the past three years, we’ve averaged 6 more sacks per season than Indy.

Now, in all fairness, anyone who can make Jason David look like a player deserves a chance. But let’s not get carried away.

If you’ve got something else to get excited about, I’m willing to listen. But right now… color me disappointed.

I was highly excited over the hiring at first and when I wrote my article. Now I’ve calmed down a bit, but I’m still pretty optimistic.

The thing that arrivated me with Trag is that he always seemed to be content with rushing four people. That may have been sufficient when we had four monster D-linemen, but with the defensive line we have now with an unhappy Peppers is clearly not enough to provide pressure to a QB and get him to make a mistake in the passing game. If a QB is able to hang out in the pocket forever until a reciever gets open, than zone coverage makes no sense.

Now what I am worried about is counting my eggs before they’re hatched. Trago may have gone, but there are reports swarming about that John Fox likes to control the defensive game plan. If that is the truth, then will we see more of the same next year? It has always been my personal opinion that the Defensive Coordinator was the man supposed to come up with the game plan, and the Head Coach was supposed to review it, add abd edit plays as necessary as well as brainstorm with the coordinator, and then let the Coordinator call the plays out during the game and overule them as necessary. That’s just been my own basic understanding.

However, Fox is a defensive coach. If he is meddling in the game plan too much due to his own philosophy, than we might see more of the same next year. That’s my biggest and sole worry.

However, if we see more blitzes and the same kind of defense played ahead in the 4th quarter as we have been playing the whole game, then I think this hiring will have justified itself, and our record will reflect just that fact.