The team top to bottom did not put their best foot forward last Sunday against the Seattle Seahawks. Everyone seemed to either be making major mistakes, or getting hurt and walked/carted off the field by the medical staff. This Sunday, September 24th at 1 PM ET, we need everyone in Honolulu Blue and Silver to look significantly better to stop the 2-0 Atlanta Falcons. All of this being said, there is a bit of an elephant in the room, and that elephant’s name is Aaron Glenn.

I’m not trying to say that our defensive coordinator is the only one in the organization with their seat heating up, ultimately a lot of the issues we see fall on the shoulders of head coach Dan Campbell, who obviously hired Glenn 3 seasons ago. Everything at the end of the day does come back to the head coach, but when you’re hired to do a job, at some point you have to show not only some progression, but legitimate results. I’ll be the first to admit that in the second half of Sunday’s game, the offense collectively put the defense in some tough situations turning the ball over on their own side of the field not once, but twice. It’s no secret that if you want to win in this league, you need to win the turnover battle. I’m not going to focus on the score so much, because as I said in all fairness the offense shot the team in the foot more than once. What really kills me is the lack of pass rush, awful coverage in the secondary, and the misuse of the personnel on this roster. This team has played 2 games so far, and our quarterback Jared Goff (behind a top 3-top 5 offensive line) has been sacked 3 times. Our defensive front 7 on the other hand, has produced just 1 sack. A group of guys that includes 2 first round picks, and 2 second round picks, all hand selected by this regime, and under the age of 25. 1 sack in now 8 quarters of football is truly a pitiful number. According to PFF (Pro Football Focus) Aidan Hutchinson leads the league in QB pressures at 13 so far this season, which leads me to my biggest question for the rest of the front 7: what are the rest of you all doing? I understand it’s difficult when you’re the only major threat on the line, your typically going to get all of the double team attention your way, but when 2 guys on a 5 man line are devoted to you, naturally someone else should be breaking through to make a play on a ball carrier and we just don’t see that.

Now when it comes to the secondary, I’m aware that Jerry Jacobs getting 72/72 defensive snaps is more of a liability than a benefit, I’m also aware that Brian Branch is just a rookie and CJ Gardner Johnson was playing on a torn pec for basically the entire game on Sunday. When you combine all of those facts, yes, obviously there will be some miscues, and mental errors that are just the growing pains of a younger defense. We can live with that. What I can’t figure out, or even defend at this point, is taking guys out of position to do things that are outside of their skill set. Edge rusher James Houston was asked not once, but TWICE to drop back into coverage, and run stride for stride down the field with a tight end to play pass defense. I’m no quarterback but I think I could have completed those easy passes to Noah Fant, both of which were on 3rd and long obviously converting and giving the Seahawks a first down. If the one major thing you’re struggling with is rushing the passer, wouldn’t it make sense to have your best pass rusher out there doing just that? Wouldn’t you want the guy who got 8.5 sacks in 7 games last season to pin his ears back and bend his way around a back-up left tackle? I’m no genius, but that sure as shit makes a lot more sense to me, than asking him to cover a guy 3 inches taller and 3 strides faster than him? It’s decisions like this that make me question Aaron Glenn and I can’t help but wonder, if this team has a winning record at the bye week (week 9) and this offense is cranking out roughly 30 points a week, and Glenn’s unit is still struggling to get teams to punt, will he still be employed when they get back from that week off?

I am in no way rooting for Dan Campbell to fire his defensive coordinator. Glenn seems to be a great man that the organization respects a great deal, but he was brought here to do a job, and at some point we need to start seeing some kind of results here. We’ve seen Campbell make difficult decisions before, offensive coordinator Anthony Lynn lost his play calling duties mid year, and was eventually let go following the 2021 season. At some point, you can no longer defend it. In 2021 you could chalk up the bad defense to a lack of talent. In 2022 you could sell to us that Aaron Glenn was still figuring things out and had to over come some major injuries on a still depleted defensive roster. But by now, all the excuses are running out, especially when the other side of the ball is doing a decent job putting up 30 plus points at will, running a balanced offense, and having a killer 4 minute as well as 2 minute drill week after week. After spending millions on free agents and numerous high draft picks on talent, you need to start getting something out of these guys on a consistent basis. I know the tackling wasn’t great, and there were some physical errors, but we can’t just always blame the 11 guys out there playing defense. At some point the guy coming up with the game plan each week needs to answer for the lack of production his unit is providing to this team. We NEED to see a different story on Sunday, and Aaron Glenn’s unit will have their feet to the fire trying to stop Bijan Robinson and the high powered rushing attack of the Atlanta Falcons.