FanPost

The Importance of Personality



Despite Herr Goodell's fervent attempts to stomp out all evidence that his employees are human beings who experience actual emotions, personality remains one of the most important facets of any NFL team, and this especially holds true on the defensive side of the ball.

Look at the NFC's best defenses, each one has a unique personality that suits its defensive style. The Panthers are the dead eyed veteran who just returned from his third tour of the Middle East where he may have (probably) burned down a village for selling him a ton of bad hash and is currently thinking of fifty ways to kill you with a garden hose and some duct tape. Luke Kuechly has seen some things, man. And I'm not saying sailors in Iran whisper tales of Greg Hardy dragging an oil tanker to the bottom of the Persian Gulf with his bare hands, but he's nicknamed The Kraken for a reason.

The 49ers are a "vee vill bury you" Stalinist war machine that seems bound and determined to reenact the Battle of Kursk every week, with Patrick Willis as Field Marshal Zhukov and Aldon Smith as the vodka swilling war hero who starred in every Soviet war movie ever made (if you don't mind subtitles I highly recommend The Fate of A Man, if only for it's legendary drinking contest scene). Also I'm pretty sure Justin Smith was a IS-2 heavy tank in a past life.

And as for the Seahawks, their personality consists of MAINLINING ALL THE RED BULL FOREVER. They're hyperactive, hyperagressive, and probably have an Adderall vending machine installed in their locker room, right next to the Gatorade cooler filled with a combination of Jaegermeister, liquid cocaine, and some mysterious red stuff that Pete Carroll assures us is totally not chupacabra blood. I mean its not like he knows a guy who knows a guy from his USC days who could get that sort of thing, and its not like that guy is Lane Kiffin.

Meanwhile, what's the Redskins defensive personality? Is it DeAngelo Hall making a breathtaking play on an interception and then getting 30 yards of unsportmanlike conduct fouls in the next series? Is it the dried out husk formerly known as London Fletcher actively disintegrating before our very eyes? Is it an exasperated Ryan Kerrigan wondering when his rookie contract is up? Is it Jim Haslett standing slackjawed on the sidelines while Christian Ponder (CHRISTIAN PONDER??!?!) throws all over his unit? Is it Reed Doughty?

Its Reed Doughty isn't it? And by that I mean an anonymous incompetency that can't get off the field because there's no one better to be found. That HAS to change this offseason. The secondary in particular is a cobbled together Frankenstein's monster of a unit, and the only thing Raheem Morris has given his players is a sense of extravagant failure. I'm talking Great Leap Forward levels of apocalyptic doom here. Mass starvation, labor camps, cats and dogs living together, mass hysteria.

Our whole team needs a retooling, that much is obvious. But the only time depression is a good look is in a black metal band, and self-pity has never won anyone anything (cue Cleveland fans nodding vigorously). We need a dynamic defensive leader on the field and on the sideline. We need confidence. We need power. We need to kidnap a Ryan brother and break the laws against human cloning. We need to break into Cyberdyne Systems and steal the blueprints for the Saban 9000. We need to be willing to try anything to give this defense a personality that doesn't resemble the Maginot Line.