if you are the head coach ultimately the product on the field is your responsibility. we spent forever lining up 10 yards off the WRs and paul could have fixed that at any point regardless of who put the dc in place
And he said as much in post game interviews even when we won. He did fix it with wommack then fired him when he started doing it again and let georgia run all over us. He fired groh when he couldn't make a change. But truthfully he had his hands tied with roof. If you don't see that certain boosters were being absolutely ridiculous. We are just back to the age old ignoring the facts.
So of johnsons 4 dc's at tech. He Was forced to settle for wommack. Fired him after we won an ACC championship in spite of him. Hired grow. Then fired him after he refused to change what he was doing leading to horrible losses. Wanted to hire Charles Kelly. Was told he had to hire roof. 2013 was actually not a bad defensive year. and 2014 was turnover heavy. Then when roof started to go off the rails he did in fact constantly say he was trying to get things fixed. and roof left after the defensive collapse against duke in 2017. Because he was going to be fired. Woody was left with a bunch of kids that had a lot of work to do as roof phoned it in in 2017.
He fired 2 out of 4 outright and basically fired the last one.
Johnson did take responsibility for his defenses but cooardinators have to be allowed to coordinate. You can't do everything. Even Saban doesn't "take over" his defense when things are going south. He seeks to correct it and I have remember for the past couple years him complaining about needing to play better there and defensive let downs. Yet he keeps the same Coordinator. What likely happened with roof was week to week he had a good game plan. Something spooked him and after 2014 was so successful on the bend don't break side of things he chased that.
Its entirely possible the miss on woody (who wasn't a miss army managed to have a great defense under him) Contributed to him deciding to hang it up.