This is another indicator of a troubling side of Doogie's fandom. He LOVES offense, craves it, is obsessed with it. It bothers me about his writing, because basically if the game isn't exciting, it's a failure in his mind. It's got to be an NFL thing from his years at KFART.
BTW Leach would not come here for many reasons, lack of regional recruiting speed, weather, low profile program, MONEY!, and pretty much it's known he's going to Maryland after Friegen is canned this year. He's good buds with the CEO of Under Armor who's a big Maryland alum donor.
As for the D, back on topic,
Just what exactly hasn't been good about our D the last few years, I've seen them play their hearts out, play like their hair is on fire, put up really great games for two seasons under Brewster. This is maybe one of the very few things that has been said and delivered. You should believe because you've seen it already. No reason to think it will drop off. If you really want to check out last year's D coming in, Lawrence was not a full timer in 08, Tripplett was a special teamer, Campbell was back but had switched positions the previous year. Sherels and Simmons were back, so was Theret, Royston hadn't started though, Small and Brown were back but the DE's weren't rock solid starters in 08. That's 6 returning STARTERS, and a bunch of unknown/part timers in their first full gig. Not a big leap to where we're at now.