I haven't finished it yet, but there's an answer that I wanted to highlight (emphasis added):
You talk about guys needing to be better at reading their keys defensively, but at the same time how do you get them better tackling wise?
NARDUZZI: Yeah, that goes with reading your keys. It's about being in position, so if I'm reading you and I don't read you properly, whether you're an offensive lineman or receiver -- we've got guys playing off of guys giving too much cushion, okay, at times. That's going to -- that's fundamentals. We've got linebackers not helping out in coverage when it's clearly a pass or a run, depending on what it is. So all those things, it's being in position to make those tackles, okay.
I can take any one of the Steelers DBs, and if I put them in an open field with a good tailback, they're going to make half those tackles and they're going to miss half of them. That's not good. We'd like to make 85 to 90 percent of those tackles, but it's all about being in position to make those tackles. It's not about the tackling itself, okay.
And then you've got to look at the player and the guy that's making the guy miss, too. But it's being in position to make the tackles, just staying on your feet. But the more space you get because you don't read your key properly, the more problems you're going to have.
Earlier from the same interview there was this response:
NARDUZZI: You can't miss tackles. You've got to read your keys. Like I said, some guys -- and even some guys that aren't so young didn't read their keys. It's like -- and weren't helping. You wonder where it came from. What are you doing? What are you being coached to do? I tell our coaches, hey, what you see is what you coach, so obviously it's not sinking in; how do we get it to sink in? Do we need a sledgehammer; what do we do?
But you know, this is a totally different week as far as what you're seeing, how you're defending the run, where your guys are located. They have some run-pass conflicts. They've got you thinking about some pass, then they run it. As soon as they start running it on you and break one, then you're going, oh, my gosh, what do we get the guy in there. But this is a totally different deal.
He did credit Roof for the D and praised him. However, I think these quotes about his reaction to his own D also apply to how many of us have reacted to ours. To me, I don't agree that you should question coaching for failures in one game to read keys and get into the right positions, but I do think it becomes a live question about coaching when the same things are happening over multiple seasons.
Don't mean to derail, but I wanted to highlight aspects of this week's interview which I found interesting.
