The Buffalo Bills’ new coaching staff is coming together, and with Jim Leonhard back in Buffalo for his third stint, excitement about the future of the Bills’ defense is building.
Of course, Leonhard will have much to change about the defense Sean McDermott commanded for the past nine seasons. Leonhard brings in a 3-4 scheme, which presents its own challenges.
Still, Leonhard comes in with high expectations, having quickly risen through the coaching ranks since his 10-year NFL career came to an end just 12 years ago. As Bills Mafia awaits to witness his new defense take the field this fall, Leonhard was formally introduced in his first press conference as the Bills’ new defensive coordinator on Thursday, where he explained to fans what they should expect from his defense this season.
How new DC Jim Leonhard plans to reshape Bills' defense from the ground up
“The other exciting piece about talking with Joe Brady is kinda the autonomy he’s giving me to get the right people in the building, as far as coaches, and let’s create a defense that we can all be proud of, and let’s create a defense that the NFL doesn’t want to play against,” Leonhard said.
From the top of his press conference, Leonhard and new head coach Joe Brady sound perfectly aligned in their vision for the future of Buffalo’s defense. Considering all of the weight put into the word ‘alignment’ in Brady’s introductory presser, fans can at least take comfort in the franchise publicly sticking to their themes.
“We’re gonna be an attacking defense, up front, in the backend, we’re going to attack the football. You know, that’s the biggest stat in football is turnovers. So, we’re going to be aggressive, we’re going to fly around, we’re going to communicate, we’re going to play well together, right? It is team defense," he said. "But, we’re going to cause issues for the offense and we’re going to force them to react to us, right? I don’t want to counterpunch. You know, we want to be a defense that is constantly evolving and growing throughout a game and throughout a season.”
Those are all the things a fan wants to hear from the defensive coordinator in his first few minutes behind a microphone. It certainly helps build confidence among Bills fans that Leonhard can deliver on it, seeing as his defenses at Wisconsin and in Denver were known well for doing everything he described there.
Still, even in selling the vision he has for the defense, Leonhard didn’t sugarcoat the realities of the challenges in flipping the scheme. And with the offseason just getting started, a lot of personnel decisions will be made to meet that challenge.
“There are certain knowns that we are able to gameplan around, then between free agency, between the draft, there’s going to be change on what this roster is going to eventually gonna end up in the fall. So, we have a plan, I mean, we’re going to lock ourselves in a room and just get to work evaluating the talent,” he said.
That doesn’t dismiss the players who will be carried over from McDermott’s defenses. Top players like Christian Benford and Greg Rousseuo still need to be impactful in the new scheme.
“Again, it’s been the same system for a long time here. It wasn’t all broken, right? It doesn’t all need to be thrown out. There’s elements that we’ll be able to build off of. There’s a comfort level from players that you want to maintain, and this is something that will continue to evolve," he said. "It might look a lot different in Year 2 than Year 1, and that’s okay, right? It doesn’t mean that we’re not setting the standards at a certain level from Day 1, right? But it might look– the presentation of it might look a little bit different as we piece this thing together.”
Many coaches win their initial press conference, and Leonhard can absolutely count himself among them after Thursday. Still, it’s easy to sell a defensive vision with his resume. It’s another to come through and make good on the promises of high expectations. All Bills Mafia can do is wait to see the result unfold in the coming years.