DL was in shambles especially DT. Back 7 had to adjust to seeing seeing actual route concepts and techniques. The former is something we are finally get squared away. The latter shouldn’t take 3yrs
I’m not sure what I’m missing, but I’d think that the back 7 would at least get up to Ted Roof levels on a per-possession basis in 2020 based on technique, scrimmaging against RPO, S&C, etc.
Didn’t we have at least as much talent as Ted had in 2016-2017?
You might just mean that the DL was in shambles in 2018 and that’s what Collins inherited, but was the DL (and front 6) that much less athletic than what Ted had up until 2017?
Collins said he was focused on culture, but if I was a defense-minded HC in 2019, I’d have looked at the defense and said “I can get a quick win there and make it a lot better”. As a coach, you need all the wins you can get.
In the ACC, only Duke gave up more points than us, and I think that’s because they got worse from last season to this season.
It’s not just a “ball control offense kept the number of possessions down” difference. We got worse on each possession, and our picks are down—you’d think if the other teams are getting more possessions, we’d get more picks instead of less.
If Collins was focused on HC work and culture, and left assistants in charge of building the defense, it doesn’t take 3 years to figure out that the defense is going backwards or treading water. He couldn’t have thought that he could wait to fix that, could he? It doesn’t take 3 years of a team looking great Monday-Friday but not on Saturday to figure out that you have a problem.
My really naive guess — and this is speculation — is that he thought he had cover to get to the end of his contract and fix it eventually during the 7 year contract period and that he had bigger fish to fry.