Ravens defensive coordinator Dean Pees has lost his defense

A lot has been written about Baltimore Ravens defensive coordinator Dean Pees and his ineffective defense in the media including here. I'm not going to talk about what plays or what down and distance situations are his fault. Right now that is irrelevant.

The plain and simple truth about this defense is the fact that Pees doesn't have control of this unit anymore. Whether Pees is making things complicated for this defense and the players just don't understand it I don't know. Whether the players are not put in the right decisions is up for debate for some other time.

The players on defense, especially in the secondary, do not seem to be listening to what Pees has to offer. This defense is not improving and in some ways it feels like they get worse week after week.

Yes, injuries have played a role in this debacle of a season for the Ravens in all three phases of the game: Defense, offense and special teams. But there seems to be something wrong internally with this defensive unit.

On offense, the Ravens have had their issues with injuries but the team is still averaging 21 points a game from that unit alone.

This defense has fell off in the passing department and nothing is being done effectively to change it. There is a lack of tackling, lack of technique and a lack of discipline across the board.

Those things for the most part fall on the players because they know their mistakes when they watch it in the film room every week and they still seem to get it wrong.

But ultimately the blame will fall on Pees for that whether that is right or wrong.

Pees will probably be the defensive coordinator for the rest of the season. But going forward if things don't change significantly for the rest of the season on defense, I don't see how it is reasonable to keep Pees as a long term solution as a defensive coordinator.

First off, you can't replace every single player on defense. The Ravens have made so many changes since they won the Super Bowl in 2012 that it is hard at this point to keep changing core pieces over and over.

But it is easy to replace the defensive coordinator.

And for the people who believe that Pees should stay long term, my only question is, why did former Ravens head coach Brian Billick get fired after a 5-11 season in 2007? It was because he lost the locker room. It wasn't that he was a bad head coach, but his message was getting old at that point. Injuries on defense in 2007 played a role back then too.

But Billick ended up getting fired.

What makes Pees so different especially if the performance of the defense doesn't improve for the remainder of the season? It's not different at all other than the job title.

Players don't seem to listen to Pees. If they did, we wouldn't be having this discussion right now.