To take it a step further, it's fairly obvious our defense is a "work in progress". Bates himself said recently, it may be several games into the season before the unit comes together. The easier part of our schedule is the first five games and this team needs to get off to a better start than we did last year. We can't count on winning 9 out of our last 11 games, especially with road games against the Eagles, Falcons and Ravens. That being said, I wonder if Bates should throw a few creative wrinkles into his game plan early in the year just so we can get off to a good start and then revert to the vanilla scheme once the players get a few games under their belts. If we can get through the early stretch 4-1 or 5-0, the players will have gained considerable confidence going into the meat of the schedule.
