The Dolphins haven’t officially acknowledged that they’re switching from a 3-4 defense to a 4-3 approach, but they are.
And linebacker Karlos Dansby likes it.
Sliding from inside linebacker in Mike Nolan’s 3-4 to middle linebacker in Kevin Coyle’s 4-3, Dansby thinks he’ll be even better.
“Without a doubt,” Dansby told The Finsiders, an arm of the team’s official website. “In this 4-3 defense, just a half a second. That’s all you really need, and you can make a lot of plays with that half a second.”
Dansby says Coyle has been leaning on the two-time defensive captain to show the rest of the unit how to run the defense.
“He’s putting a lot of pressure on me right now to make sure I do it the right way,” Dansby said. “That’s always a good thing, especially being a vet at this level. If [your] cup is never full, you can always learn something.”
And while Dansby doesn’t expressly criticize the approach under Nolan, it seems like Dansby wasn’t completely on board with the approach last season. “It’s going to force guys to really have to be on point and really have to study and make sure they understand the concepts of the defense,” Dansby said of the new defense. “That’s something I was asking for last year, but we couldn’t get certain guys on that page. It’s growing, it’s learning. The guys are more mature now and they really understand that the NFL is not for long, for real.”
Dansby has shown that, for him, it’s a little longer than “not for long.” And that attitude will keep him around even longer.