At least Michael admitted the mistake in hiring Wilks & moved on quickly.
My problem is that Michael & Keim deserve a lot of blame as well. Why didn’t Bidwill & Keim as Wilks during the interview process he wanted to switch to a 4-3 defense? That’s on them!!! Michael acted like he didn’t know the defense was switching philosophy by his words when asked about it. It should’ve been one of the first questions imo.
Some people here are saying that Wilks said he intended to switch to a 4-3 from the start. I didn't remember it that way, so i looked back at the media reports on Wilks' introductory press conference and found
this on PFT [emphasis mine]:
On defense, Wilks said the “personnel is there” while adding that teams need to “evolve” every year to stay competitive. He ran a 4-3 base defense in Carolina, but said he wasn’t locked into any particular scheme because he has worked with various approaches and believes in an adaptable system.
I also remember the expectation for some time after Wilks was hired was that not much would change, that "all defenses are hybrids of 3-4 and 4-3 anyway", and Wilks would play to the strengths of the players. Then eventually it came out that Wilks thought the personnel better fit a 4-3 and that he'd be switching to 4-3 as the base defense.
Seems to me that during the coaching search and interview process, Keim and Bidwill misjudged Wilks' ability to evaluate the players and running anything other than a 4-3. Likely Wilks overrated his own ability in that regard as well.
I highly doubt that Bidwill and Keim didn't ask, or that they asked and Wilks admitted that he could only run a 4-3 and that's what he thought best fit the personnel, so that's what he was going to run... and then they hired him anyway!
...dbs
EDIT: I posted this before seeing that a couple others have pointed out the same thing!