When newly-signed safety Tyrone Carter held forth at length the other day about the importance of communication to the defensive backs in a 3-4 defense, I used it largely as an excuse to make an outdated Fred Smoot joke. But as I’ve talked to a few of the cornerbacks and safeties about Carter’s comments, I feel like I may have rushed to glibness on that one.
“Your communication,” Carlos Rogers says, “the back end with the linebackers, linebackers talking to the line, it’s all about communication, ’cause if you don’t, the total defense could mess up.”
Reed Doughty agrees. “Any team that blitzes a lot has to communicate really well.”
And LaRon Landry is even franker: “It’s definitely all about communication,” Landry says, “most definitely.”
It’s a good thing he feels that way, because, Rogers says, much of the discussion around communication has revolved around Landry himself.
“The thing that coach most wanted to work on is communicating with LaRon,” Rogers explains, “getting him to talk. So now that he’s able to talk and get out there and make calls and talk a lot, our defense’ll run much better. Because most of the time it was really one guy that was talking, LaRon’s more of the quiet guy. Now he’s talking — and he’s GOT to talk.”
The idea of LaRon Landry — he of the occasional taunting penalty or enthusiastic celebration — being considered the “quiet guy” on the field may sound bizarre, but Rogers makes a firm distinction between what Landry says to opponents and what he says to teammates.
“He gonna jaw on the other guys,” Rogers says, “but that’s not helping us out. When you got guys rotating and defense changing … this year, from OTAs they’ve been saying, ‘LaRon, you make the call. Reed, Kareem, y’all be quiet. Let him make the call.’ In this defense you’ve got to do that, and everybody got to talk.”
DeAngelo Hall says that it’s all part of Landry’s growth as a player. “He’s becoming more comfortable,” Hall says. “I think we as a staff and players are demanding a lot more out of him. We don’t want him to just come out there, play ball, and hit. We want him to come out there, learn the defense, talk, communicate, make decisions, make adjustments. He’s at that point in his career where we feel like we can put that kind of pressure on him and he can respond.”
And Landry understands the importance of his new responsibilities. “The more vocal you are,” he says, “there’s great chances that everybody’s gonna be on the same page and big plays are gonna happen. Not just coming from me, but from the defense as a whole.”
In fact, he sees this change as a natural consequence of the new defense. “Man, I’m just playing football,” Landry says. “Love the game, got a passion for what I’m doing — and I always did, but I feel comfortable with this defense, and that enables me to just play and have fun. So of course I’m gonna talk a lot and be talkative, let guys know things I see, just be more vocal. It ain’t all about bein’ a leader, I’m just communicating.”
So it looks like Tyrone Carter was onto something, and maybe I really shouldn’t’ve just gone to Fred Smoot jokes. Or maybe I should’ve, but let Carlos Rogers tell them.
“Smoot did talk,” Rogers says. “See, that’s a guy that would just talk. You know, it don’t matter, Smoot could say anything. Call could be wrong, but he gonna talk it, he’s gonna alert something.”
