The Oakland Raiders fired Ken Norton, Jr. (10 months too late) and replacing him with John Pagano, who joined the team this past offseason as an assistant head coach for defense. No, we still don’t know what that title means other than the obvious fact that it was a defensive coordinator in the waiting role.
Before joining the Raiders, Pagano spent his entire NFL career with the San Diego Chargers where he started as a quality control coach and rose through the ranks until he was named defensive coordinator in 2012. He remained in that position until being fired in 2016, resulting in a move to Oakland.
So, now that the Raiders have finally decided to part ways with the man who failed to improve the defense in three consecutive seasons, what can we expect out of the interim DC?
The short answer is not much. Pagano isn’t exactly being put in a very favorable position. Considering how late it is in the season it is, there really aren’t many chances Pagano could implement at this point. So rather than seeing a John Pagano defense, we will see a Ken Norton, Jr. defense that will be tweaked slightly.
So the question becomes, what tweaks or changes can Pagano make quickly enough to implement right away?
First and foremost will be blitz packages. This was something that Pagano started to install into the defense during the offeseason. We saw a decent amount of it in the preseason but once the regular season started, the blitzes began to fade. We saw them every now and then but not at the rate we expected and not at a rate where they have had much of an impact.
The only other significant change I can imagine Pagano implementing right away is along the front seven, and the defensive line in particular. Under KNJ, the Raiders rush was pretty straight forward. Four guys trying to get to the quarterback. You didn’t see guys being moved around much. You didn’t see varied looks at the line of scrimmage. You didn’t even see simple things like stunts very often.
With Pagano, I would expect to see a front seven that looks similar to what we saw when Jack Del Rio started influencing the defense at the end of KNJ’s first season. If you recall, the Raiders started giving new and odd looks at the line of scrimmage, including what was deemed to be basically a 5-2 formation.
Aside from that, I wouldn’t expect a lot of changes because making big changes this quickly is more likely to result in confusion and poor play than improved play.
So overall, I think we will see a defense that isn’t nearly as simplistic as what we saw under Norton, but I wouldn’t expect anything dramatic to happen.
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