First, scheme is crucial when you talk ILBs. Wade's scheme would require more manning up and the ILBs as a result need to be more fleet of foot. Which is why he tends to favor the SS types and it's not a bad approach when you consider that SS types proliferate just about every draft. But the tradeoff with this is your ILBs tend to be crappy at filling holes downhill in the run game.
McVay went out and hired a Fangio disciple to get that defense's advantages. Which includes more drops and reaction off the drop, and in turn allows for some bigger guys who can fill downhill at your ILB spots. Problem is they don't really have good ILBs to play it. Kiser has been the best but he's probably just a guy tbh.
Second, this past offseason the Rams had to look past the other positions of need they knew they had in order to ensure McVay had enough to run his offense. So they went out and got a strong side edge OLB (who has been fantastic btw) and bit the bullet in replacing two key offensive starters. Translation here is that Staley will almost surely get more pieces in the front seven (where his defense is weakest) in this next draft but until then what we have is a defense whose roster quality is mostly on the back end.
And lastly with Fuller getting hurt it's gonna be rocky for a few weeks in coverage. No way around it IMO. You'll have a few busted coverages per game you wouldn't have otherwise. But as long as Fuller gets back for the stretch run and we can stay healthy I think we're a top half of the league type defense, and probably going to be closer to 10th than 15th because teams will have a hard time throwing on our secondary.
