Mike LaFleur's "difficult and honest conversations" with Nick Rallis

                                                                 photo courtesy of nfl.com

By Walter Mitchell

Still feeling an utter sense of shock in Mike LaFleur's decision to retain Nick Rallis as the Cardinals' DC, I have been trying to imagine what was said between the two coaches that led to Rallis' return. 

First of all, I think Michael Bidwill and Monti Ossenfort put Mike LaFleur in such an awkward position having to see Nick Rallis in the building every day while the new HC was trying to put his own stamp on the coaching staff. The fact that Rallis was still in the building each day clearly indicates that the owner and GM clearly wanted LaFleur to keep Rallis in the DC role. Above all others. 

Secondly, a new head coach having to walk by a person in limbo every day can easily make him feel sorry for the coach who has the Sword of Damocles hanging over his head. Nick Rallis is a very likeable guy. With each day it was going to get harder and harder to look him the eyes and say, "we're going with someone else and are letting you go."

Thirdly, to this point in Nick Rallis' young career, the only defense he knows through and through is Jonathan Gannon's version of Matt Eberflus' "bend, but don't break, caution and cushion" defense. That's why it was so exciting for fans like me, who have been eager to the point of being anxious to see a whole new defensive philosophy come to Arizona. The mere thought of Anthony Weaver or Karl Scott bringing their version of Mike Macdonald's "Big Nickel --- "attack and swarm the ball" style of defense had me foaming and flailing on the playroom floor.

It's a simple thought ---> seeing how Mike Macdonald in two years has been giving Sean McVay, Kyle Shanahan and Jonathan Gannon fits, how about taking a big, long guzzle of whatever Macdonald, his coaches and his players have been drinking? Why argue with that type of success? After all, the NFL is a copycat league and there is no penalty for plagiarism.

During Nick Rallis' welcome back press conference this week, he never said in convincing terms that he was going to change the overall philosophy of the defense. That's why this (the tweet below) was my initial reaction to what he chose to utter in very general terms. When asked what went wrong with the defense this past season, he gave the kind of general answers that any one of us could have given. In other words, there wasn't anything especially nuanced about his remarks. And to be perfectly honest, he is so chill, softspoken and habitually stoic that it's very hard to imagine him whipping players up into a beast-mode type of frenzy. 

Walter B J Mitchell

@WBJMItch 3:08 PM · Feb 18, 2026

·

137

Views

This is a vague hedging to the question. Rallis does not evoke confidence here. What the players really need to hear is that their first steps this year are going to be forward, and not backward as it has been the last 3 years.

When he said they made changes from 2024 to 2025, if you go back to how the defense played after the bye week in 2)24, that same soft defense carried over into ALL 17 games of 2025.

It is, first and foremost, a necessity for an overall change in philosophy, one that hopefully the Texas DL coach and the Miami CB coach could help to administer --- as long as Rallis is eager to let this defense evolve from

*caution/cushion to aggressive/sticky

*arm-tackle whiffing to hard-thumping, head across, claw-like arm wrapping takedowns

* cushiony soft coverage to sticky "jump the route" man-to-man coverage.

Here's another key question --- are we ever going to see Rallis assign his best man-to-man CB to shadow the likes of Puka, JSN and CMC for extended period of time?

Because in 3 years of 51 games, we have never seen Rallis shadow the other team's best WR for much or all of a game with his top CB, not once, which is most likely an NFL record through 51 games.

Friendly reminder --- Monit drafted 7 CBs, signed Sean Morphy-Bunting to an absurd 3-year contract and claimed Starling Thomas V --- and yet --- which one of them could Rallis put on Puka, JSN or CMC? None of them have been groomed to, have they?

The advantage of doing so is that by the 4th Q the CB has the WR route tree down and can play faster and more aggressive when the team needs it most.

Lastly, if we see Mack Wilson back at MIKE, this defense is already cooked. It would signal another year of zones because Wilson does not have the speed to cover Walker III, Kyren and McCaffrey. Thus, McVay, Shanahan and Seahawks will exploit that weakness over and over as they have ever since Vance thought it was a good idea to make statuesque Jordan Hicks a 3 down MIKE.

In today's NFL the MIKE has to be able to have the speed to cover RBs. It's because of Cody Simon's speed and range in covering Jeremiyah Love on wheel routes that earned him the Defensive MVP of the Rose Bowl when Ohio St. beat Notre Dame 34-23 for the National Championship two years ago. Versus Simon, Love was limited to 2 catches for 5 yards and 4 carries for 3 yards.

-------------------------------------------

High Hopes

What I am hoping is that Mike LaFleur made his conversations with Nick Rallis very uncomfortable by laying it out to him in detail with game film proof of how Sean McVay dropped 82 points and 756 yards on his Cardinals' defense, that in both games was only missing 2 of the team's Week 1 starters. 
If MLF was able to show Rallis what the defense did wrong on the most negative plays and Rallis specifically told him how this year how he would defend those plays differently, then this could turn into quite an advantage for Rallis in that MLF can tell him how McVay and Shanahan are going to game plan against him. In other words, "when you line up in this formation, here's what Matthew Stafford is going to audible and here's how you need to counter."
Plus, MLF should be able to say. "Here were the players we believed we could exploit and here's why. Here are the flaws in some of your players' techniques that we felt we could expose.
It could be great if MLF and Nick Rallis ask CB coach Zac Etheridge and DL coach Pete Kwiatkowski to review one of the same Rams vs Cardinals game tapes to provide specific feedback as to what they discerned as positives and what they saw as negatives (with regard to schemes, stacking, leveraging, gap controlling, pass rushing, edge setting, containing, filling, gap shooting, plugging, blitzing, individual and swarm tackling and coverage techniques) --- to then offer suggestions as to what they would do in terms of improvements, scheme changes and in-game adjustments.
If Nick Rallis is willing to create a new defense that is an amalgamation of what he likes with what has worked best for The U and Texas, then the Cardinals' defense may be able to sneak up on offenses, both literally and figuratively. 
Getting all the coaches on the same page with equal buy-in is going to be the most important task of the off-season. Spending this week at the NFL Combine as a staff is a great place to start. 
A key adjustment could be at times as simple as Zac Etheridge pointing to a play and saying, "Coach, great blitz call, how about we apply sticky man to man behind it? Because the zone there gives the QB and the receivers easy outs via wide open hot routes. How about we clamp down on these receivers instead?"
Please Coach Etheridge finish off by saying, "Oh, and by the way, Reuben Bain will torture Mathew Stafford opposite Josh Sweat and we can stick CB Keionte Scott on Puka like butter on corn."
LFG!