Rich Campbell at the Chicago Tribune explains Leonard Floyd‘s further evolution this season:
“[Floyd] recently dug into his game video archive.
“I … wanted to go back and grab something that I did consistently,” he explained.
Floyd’s search took him back three seasons to his decorated career at Georgia. Between all the snaps on which he dropped into coverage, Floyd recognized he had pass-rush success using an inside move, not just an outside speed rush.
Ummm… shouldn’t his coaches have noticed that a long time ago?
Floyd had some notable success with the move in his brief playing time in the Aug. 9 exhibition game against the Bengals.
Brandon Staley is the Bears outside linebackers coach but its well known that Vic Fangio likes to coach them himself. Fangio, however, has a lot on his plate as the defensive coordinator and its fair to say he can’t devote all of his attention to coaching the players at this one position.
Either way, you’d think someone on the coaching long before this would have looked at the video and said “Hey, he’s always moving to the outside”. Instead, its something Floyd had to figure out himself by going back to look at college tape when, presumably, someone taught him how to be a more complete rusher, at least in terms of this particular aspect of his game.
It looks to me like somebody may have dropped the ball here.