It's a weird story that George Edwards was hired last month as the new defensive coordinator for the University of Florida, but his tenure was brief and he's already moved onto the Buffalo Bills. It's also interesting that Edwards plans to install a 3-4 defense in Buffalo:
Shortly after the Bills announced their rather shocking hire of George Edwards, just a month after he had accepted the same position at the University of Florida, Edwards announced that he would transition the Bills to a base 3-4 defense in the 2010 season.
For a Bills defense that had more than its fair share of struggles last year, particularly against the run where they finished third to last, this move makes quite a bit of sense.
If any defense in 2009 played like the Green Bay Packers defense of 2008, it was the Bills. According to Football Outsiders, they ranked the Bills pass defense 3rd best, but the run defense was a lowly 26th. An elite pass defense with a lousy run defense was exactly what the Packers had back in 2008, and the installation of a 3-4 defense turned the run defense completely around while maintaining the excellent (playoff game excluded) pass defense. Over at Buffalo Rumblings, they like the switch but think it might take some time to acquire the right personnel. There were lots of questions about the change in personnel for the Packers, but then they used the 1st round of the 2009 draft to select LB Clay Matthews and DT B.J. Raji (plus 7th round steal LB Brad Jones) to accelerate the process. I'll be really interested to see how the transition goes for the Bills in 2010.