There was a ton of confusion and missed assignments earlier in the year.
I'm not trying to be all Marcus can do no wrong, but he's the HC not DC anymore. I think the true fault lies here. We got a new DC, the choice drew a lot of questions, they played the 'hes not changing anything' card publicly WAY WAY too much...................he OBVIOUSLY changed the way they were doing things, it was plain as day and it took them a bit to get up to speed (also interior DL is not a strength for us, yet)
I get why MF would publicly say we're not changing things to ease concerns, but I also get why he'd let Ash run his defense his way...if you recall, Golden didn't have the masses convinced early on, but then he did. So long term, letting Ash run it his way may have been the right move, despite the early bumps in the road