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McVay, Shanahan, Lafleur on which defense gives them problems




Came across an ESPN article from August of 2019 by John Keim that interviewed the three former Washington Commanders assistants who are now head coaches in the NFC, Sean McVay, Kyle Shanahan, and Matt LaFleur. Here was one of the questions that was asked of each of them:

Which coach's defense is the toughest to read and attack?

Interestingly, all three of them answered with the same name first, that of the former head coach and long time defensive coordinator whom the Seahawks will seemingly be drawing inspiration from for their defense moving forward, Vic Fangio. Early offseason in-house promotion to defensive coordinator Clint Hurtt as well as newly hired associate head coach-defense, Sean Desai worked together under Fangio in Chicago.

LaFleur: There are so many guys and every system is different, but I look at Vic Fangio. Just the fronts and the multiple looks you get from him. That's incredibly difficult. Shoot, Indianapolis last year we knew exactly what they were going to do to us and we didn't have a lot of success because they were so sound. They stuffed the run out of a two-safety defense and played extremely fast.

Shanahan: My hardest has probably always been Vic Fangio. He does so many things with his personnel groupings that he puts you in a bind with protections. He ties a lot of stuff together. Playing against him, I feel he packages stuff very similar to how I would think. [Bill] Belichick is very similar. They do it in a different style. You know they don't just run their defenses. They figure out what you're doing and then they think about how to stop what you're doing and that's very similar to how I am. I don't just run my offense. I have no idea what I'm going to call until I know what defense I'm visualizing and trying to attack. It's fun.

McVay: For us, I think Fangio and the Bears did an outstanding job of a sound scheme with versatility mixed with great players. And clearly what New England did down the stretch was impressive. Those are the two defenses that gave us the most trouble. I thought the Saints were excellent as well.

https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/27447121/mcvay-shanahan-lafleur-qbs-playbooks-learning-dc