There is a problem! Coming of our exciting Super Bowl win, we have an abundance of holes opening up on our defense.

Nose Tackle was a problem even last year.

At Inside Linebacker, we lost the greatest ever, our #2 Danell Ellerbe is hitting Free agency while his stock is up, possibly pricing him out of our range, and our primary backup, Jameel McClain is coming off an injury and it is unknown when he will be back.

In addition, we are definitely losing our pass rushing specialist, Paul Kruger, who enjoyed much success coming off the edge opposite former D-POY Terrell Suggs last year. We have an in-house replacement in Courtney Upshaw, albeit an unproven pass rusher.

So what do you do when you don't have a reliable nose tackle, 2 starting caliber ILB, and good pass rushing OLB's?

It came to me like a thunderbolt this evening....

YOU SWITCH TO THE 4-3 BASE DEFENSE!!!

Starters:

Defensive Ends: Pernell McPhee and Arthur Jones

Defensive Tackles: Haloti Ngata and Terrance Cody

MLB: Ellerbe

OLB: Upshaw and Suggs

We would have all our starters on the roster, and only need to bring in some more depth! Cody's job description would change and hopefully he would have more success. Ngata hopefully would become even more of a pass rushing terror from the interior. This would give us the opportunity to put both McPhee and Jones in the starting line-up, as they have both shown us that they are worthy of being starters. It also leaves us without a hole at ILB, and puts less pressure on Upshaw as a pass rusher. All we would need to do is bring back Ellerbe, and we would be set on defense (except safety, where we would still need to solve the Reed question).

It would probably take some time to transition, but it could be worthwhile. It doesnt mean we would never go 3-4, but remember most of our success in the playoffs, and our only way of stopping the hurry-up offense was with 5 defensive backs on the field. For those downs, we could just pull Cody or McPhee/Jones and put our 5th DB on the field, and our line-backing unit would stay the same.

Is this a horrible idea, or a brilliant one?