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Do you guys believe playing a soft zone will be good enough to beat Philly or will McNabb pick it apart?

I personally hate it and hope we add the players to our secondary next year so that we are able to play more press coverage.

From what I understand, Deangelo Hall will dictate his own coverage (press or off) this season. He will play man while the rest of the secondary plays zone.

That scheme could prove effective but I'm with you overall on zone defense...

The key will be putting pressure on McNabb. Because if he's given time, he will pick apart our secondary, whether we are playing man or zone.

With our secondary, it'll be zone. I expect the corners cheat in blitz and step into man with cover.

I don't like the zone coverage. It does get picked apart and McNabb will do it too. It lets opposing teams chew up the clock and real estate as well.

I don't like the zone either but with our players I don't see that we have much choice in the matter. Outside of Hall we don't have anyone who I feel comfortable playing man coverage with. Hopefully we will get good pressure on McNabb and maybe force a couple of turnovers.

That is a good point. We would probably get eaten up just as bad playing man as we would zone. Infact playing man would probably yield even more long passing touchdowns. Our defensive backs (save for DeLo) are not very physical. At least in Zone we can still tackle them before they cover the length of the field.

Just like last year. Keep everything in front of us and try to get sacks and interceptions. Bend don't break. As much as I personally don't like that scheme it's our best bet until we get another corner (preferable someone bigger than my 3 year old nephew)

Another thing that kills our pass coverage is an overall so/so coverage instincts on behalf of our linebackers. Including our safeties only DeMo & Carpenter are what I consider to be "ball hawks." Hartwell, Brooking, and Scott are all hitters and have that tacklers mentality. None of them do a very good job sniffing out the pass play and generally allow the reception and then tackle. Which allows teams to hit them middle of the field 5 yards deep all day long. Hopefully the brute force that Hartwell brings will make some receivers think twice about it.

This year we will get to see what happens with this mentality against top quality teams.