When You say it's more valuable for a guy to just stay in his gap rather than make a play on the ball, that is when you take away guys on defense ability to make plays.
In our current system, our Dline is asked to maintain 2 gaps, and basically just occupy the gaps. They don't want our Dline deeper than a yard or two past the LOS. And frankly that is the reason our Dline and Defense sucks. Dline is the most important position on defense (assuming the DL also has your main pass rushers), If you have a dominant DLine, it honestly doesn't matter too much who your LBs are, and it significanly improves the play of your DB's.
The problem is Miami isn't the type of team that gets these bigger Nose Tackle-like Lineman that this two gap system requires. Miami has always gotten the more undersized, quick and fast but still strong Lineman. These type of lineman do really well in a one gap system, where they are given the opportunity to make a play on the ball, rather than just sit and maintain a gap. This is the problem, the type of lineman we can get, aren't built for the defense we currently run, they are built for the defense that we traditionally used to run.
Quite Frankly it shows just how bad this staff is when they are supposed to be defensive coaches (Golden and Donofrio) and they can't even have an actual top 40 defense at THE U!! Plus they absolutely refuse to adjust their scheme.
This is even more apparent with the line backing core. Miami linebackers are typically the athletic undersized guys who can make plays. But what happens when you have a scheme that doesn't allow for them to do that? You fail, and that's what we have done. Our Linebackers should be attackers, but instead they play 29 yards off the ball when it 3rd and 2. Lastly, we need to do more press man coverage, and let safeties roam and make plays.
It just seems Golden and Donofrio take away what makes Miami defense so successful, and get the guys that aren't built for their system to conform, and it just doesn't work. Golden and his defense were built for the B1G or one of the north/northeast schools; NOT Miami. Give me Chudzinski next year as HC, Dorsey as OC, Butch or someone as DC, and everything will look better. Just Keep Beard, Kehoe, Ice, and Hurlie.