By Max Harper
So, Eagles legendary defensive tackle Fletcher Cox laid some wood into defensive coordinator Jonathan Gannon the other day.
Fletch says the defense isn’t aggressive enough, and the money quote was:
“I get paid to sack the quarterback, not to defend screen passes!”
So, what was Gannon’s response?
“He’s got good points. I need to do a better job of that with him. The key thing with that is together, player and coach, coach and player, how we do that and how we go about that.
“He’s had some very good ideas, as our other players have had good ideas, and then it’s up to us as the coaches to get that done and execute those things.
How about relieving Cox of double teams so he can free-lance his talent?
“Yeah, as much as we can, we try to do that. And we’ve got some things in our pocket that we’ve done up until this point and some things that we’re taking a look at to get that done. You always want to try to free up the inside guys so they can play one-on-one with offensive linemen where they have a better chance to win that down.
“People typically aren’t going to let you roll off and play five one-on-ones all day long because they know that our D line, we have an advantage over offenses. So, it’s always a blend of schematically what is this call? Why are we putting it? What situation does this call for? What is the strength? What is the stress? Why are we calling it?
“We can always do a better job of – as working from front to back, how we mix those things together.
