The IDP Dynasty Impact of the 2023 Defensive Coaching Changes

The coaching carousel is almost fully rotated this off-season, with most big roles filled and finalized on the defensive side at least.

Buying and selling IDPs in February is always risky given turnover rates, but if you are intent on making moves now, you need to understand how coaches being fired and hired is likely to change systems used by teams, and how individual players will therefore be deployed.

Arizona Cardinals

After the failed Kliff Kingsbury Air Raid era, the Cardinals have done the common thing and gone for a radically different head coach. They hired the Eagles defensive coordinator Jonathan Gannon as the HC, with his old linebackers coach Nick Rallis as the DC.

Gannon has so far shown his style to be fairly vanilla. He’s used a relatively simple spread of personnel packages, he rarely blitzes, and his coverages are unexotic. None of that means he’s a bad coach at all by the way, just conservative. Some of the best defenses in the NFL are that way right now.

But Gannon will take over a Cardinals defense that has been fairly unorthodox in recent years. In 2022 they moved Isaiah Simmons to essentially play full-time overhang (he was in the slot more than playing orthodox LB), and they do a lot of moving linemen from inside to the edge and back. And they invested a first-round draft pick into Zaven Collins which probably needs resolving. All of this means there’s going to be an adjustment at the very least, and very possibly a clash.

At the same time, this defensive roster is in a bad place. One key lineman retired; one is out of contract. Edge is a problem. Both key linebackers are huge question marks. Corner is a talent wasteland. This is a huge turnaround job, and until we see where they deploy their limited resources it might be a situation to avoid.

Atlanta Falcons