Our defense is awful...

Yjacket82

Georgia Tech Fan
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Location
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I don't think anyone wants to fire anyone. But ask yourself.... Can we stop Pitt, UM, Vt, UGAG, UNC, or Clemson playing like we have so far? I'll be the first to say I hope we improve and go back to the ACC CG.

Don't know because we haven't played them yet. I prefer to jump on the train after the games.

Are they actually going to get the opportunity to play the games. I guess we should go ahead and forfeit now.

What a miserable way to go through life. 20 pages of this...
 

tech_wreck47

Helluva Engineer
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8,670
Don't know because we haven't played them yet. I prefer to jump on the train after the games.

Are they actually going to get the opportunity to play the games. I guess we should go ahead and forfeit now.

What a miserable way to go through life. 20 pages of this...
Yet you felt the need to comment on these 20 pages lol.
 

elwoodgt

Jolly Good Fellow
Messages
136
I held off until that 20th page - I am proud of myself. lol

I hear ya. Maybe some are being doom and gloomy, but I'm not. I'm actually pretty positive about the season, I love our team, and will continue to hope for the best. Just thought this was an interesting discussion about defense, something I don't know much about.
 

slugboy

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PPD allowed vs Pwr5 (BCS AQ) under Johnson (rankings are of FBS teams playing more than 2 pwr5 opp's):
Wommack
2008: 1.88 (#38)
2009: 2.28 (#57)

Groh (Kelly at end of 2012)
2010: 2.49 (#58)
2011: 2.42 (#52)
2012: 2.34 (#51)

Roof
2013: 2.20 (#49)
2014: 2.46 (#54)
2015: 2.47 (#54)​

Last year BC was #1, 1.19 ppd and Vandy was #14, 1.56 ppd)
At the time, I thought Wommack's first year was saved by players who already knew what they were doing.
 

YlJacket

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I'm not itching to fire anyone either. This is the first time in years I've really gotten into a thread, digging up old stats and whatnot. I've even learned a good bit about the defensive schemes we have run.

The fact is, we have never recruited dominant DL talent. Probably never will, for reasons we don't need need to rehash. To say our current (last few years) mediocre performance is due to a unusual lack of talent is to obscure the problem. We have to play defense with the players we have, not the players we want.

The scheme that has been most successful since I've been a fan (1992-), by YPP and PPD stats as well as my non-expert eyeball, is the zone blitz under Jon Tenuta. It relied on smart, quick linemen who could drop into coverage and quick, rangy linebackers who could time the snap. It didn't require a dominant nose tackle like Groh's 3-4, or dominant 2-gap DT like Roof's 4-3. It made stars out of guys like Michael Johnson, a converted tight end.

Now you can say it's not coaching, it's execution, but if the coaches are asking our players to do things they can't do, then it's coaching. Just like Paul Johnson's offense is a great fit because it can perform well with the players we actually have at Tech, we need a defensive scheme that can perform well with the players we actually have.

Again, Boomer, I'm not talking about these first two games. Trying to look at the last several years.

Interesting that Tenuta never really had success after leaving GT - or at least the degree of success he had here. I think he is out of football now after getting axed at UVA. Makes you wonder if Gailey had more to do with the defense than folks realize or give credit to. Or if Tenuta was just that much of a problem with relationships/team unity everywhere else too? I don't claim to know. I do know Johnson tried to get him to stay at GT. Always wondered how that would have worked.
 

dressedcheeseside

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If a team marches down field on you all day but the kicker shanks chip shots, does that mean the D was solid?


Use your eyes and football IQ, not stats.
Just the fact that we forced a field goal means we got a stop in the redzone. I'll trade td's for field goal attempts all day. Bend don't break means you force them to slowly march the entire length of the field, making them be perfect on third down the whole way, which very few teams are. Then the field shrinks in the redzone and defense is easier and you force field goal attempts. Don't give up the big play, don't give up the easy score. Not a bad plan when you have the personnel we have if you ask me. Sometimes you make mistakes and still give up the big play, but it's far less likely than when playing a high risk defense.
 

Boomergump

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My position on recruiting is this: if you bring in players and after good coaching and player development practices they turn into studs, then you have recruited well. I understand that is not how many view it.

A hypothetical question:

Coach A recruits a class full of nothing but 5 star players, but none of them pan out. Coach B recruits nothing but 2 and 3 star players and 2/3rds of them turn out to be high caliber performers. Who recruited better?


To me, you judge recruiting 3 years down the road after the rubber has met the road and not from the flaky star rankings from some geek before the kids ever see a college snap. Of course my hypothetical question is crap because no class with all 5 stars is going to totally flame out, but many do to a certain extent, whether for grades, behavior, crappy work ethic, or just plain being overrated.
 

AE 87

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My position on recruiting is this: if you bring in players and after good coaching and player development practices they turn into studs, then you have recruited well. I understand that is not how many view it.

A hypothetical question:

Coach A recruits a class full of nothing but 5 star players, but none of them pan out. Coach B recruits nothing but 2 and 3 star players and 2/3rds of them turn out to be high caliber performers. Who recruited better?


To me, you judge recruiting 3 years down the road after the rubber has met the road and not from the flaky star rankings from some geek before the kids ever see a college snap. Of course my hypothetical question is crap because no class with all 5 stars is going to totally flame out, but many do to a certain extent, whether for grades, behavior, crappy work ethic, or just plain being overrated.

Thanks for dividing paragraphs and a clear post.

Fwiw, I thought your position was clear in your last post. I still disagree with the hypothetical which assumes development and use are not also variables between coach A and coach B. I repeat myself because you didn't address this critique in this post.
 

Boomergump

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@Boomergump, I appreciate you brother, but I disagree with your "End of Story" and think it's contradicted by what you say next, iiuc.

Performance on the field is a result of the talent you come in with, how it's developed, and how it's used. To suggest that you can bracket out the latter two components by saying, iiuc, that performance is a direct indicator of recruiting is wrong. Making NFL camps is also a talent indicator which in the case of GT tells a different story than performance of our D.

Our O has been more efficient than many factories, but I don't think anyone would conclude that we recruited better.
OK. I think I understand your concern a little better, now that I have read through the last page or so a second time, and specifically your last post after this one. My position is that targeting players to recruit, bringing them in, signing them, and subsequently developing them are inextricably linked and the end result is how well you have recruited.

I would also say we have recruited better than the factories on offense for many recruiting cycles in fact. It would be hard to argue against that given the historic performance of our 2014 offense, which basically rewrote the record book in terms of offensive effectiveness.

I can see how you feel I contradicted myself in transition of a long paragraph after my BC comments. Let me try to clarify. BC is a defense stacked with more talent than we have. We are not bereft of talent. We have talent in places. In some places it is established and in other places it is emerging. I am still trying to get a handle on where I think we are, but it is certainly behind BC, who has recruited (according to the star gazers) about on par or worse than us. Defensive team stats, like the yard per play metric (in which we don't rank as well as total defense) is a complex web of many factors, in which overall talent level (recruiting) plays a role. However, opponents' offensive style and proficiency, schematic choices, quality play calling, weather, difficulty of your schedule, and just plain luck all play a major role too. I hope this helps.

Overall, I am trying to make the point that not enough water has gone under the bridge to justify any solid position about the 2016 defense yet.
 
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tech_wreck47

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My position on recruiting is this: if you bring in players and after good coaching and player development practices they turn into studs, then you have recruited well. I understand that is not how many view it.

A hypothetical question:

Coach A recruits a class full of nothing but 5 star players, but none of them pan out. Coach B recruits nothing but 2 and 3 star players and 2/3rds of them turn out to be high caliber performers. Who recruited better?


To me, you judge recruiting 3 years down the road after the rubber has met the road and not from the flaky star rankings from some geek before the kids ever see a college snap. Of course my hypothetical question is crap because no class with all 5 stars is going to totally flame out, but many do to a certain extent, whether for grades, behavior, crappy work ethic, or just plain being overrated.
I get where you are coming from, but I will have to respectfully disagree. What if those 5 stars would have been coached by the one who coached the 2 and 3 stars? How do we know they all wouldn't turn out to be studs? There's just so many questions, but I personally know form experience, that coaching can change the ability of a player majorly. Take Jim Harbaugh, QB's want to play for him because he's knows how to coach them, and he can probably take a duplicate of a kid at another school and coach him up better than most other QB coaches. Some guys just have a nack, they see mechanics in kids form better, they can diagnose things better, and they have a way of just getting guys to understand things better. This is why I say it's coaching. I'll go back to Don brown if the recruiting was so good at Boston college and it wasn't his coaching then how in one year did they go from being ranked in the 90's on D and a year latter in the top 15 with most of the same guys? That just doesn't add up imo, or else they would have been better with the old D coordinator. All the things you mentioned in devolving players ect, is not part of recruiting but it is coaching.
 

lv20gt

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I don't think anyone wants to fire anyone. But ask yourself.... Can we stop Pitt, UM, Vt, UGAG, UNC, or Clemson playing like we have so far? I'll be the first to say I hope we improve and go back to the ACC CG.

The same can be said for our offense so far as well.
 

dressedcheeseside

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AJ Gray. PJ Davis. Just to start.
Ok for non factories. If you are claiming factories, who would they be starting for?
FSU? No.
Uga? No.
Clemson? No.
Bama? Hell no.

AJ, maybe later, but not now. Maybe by the time he's a jr or sr.

We have nobody that would be starting for BC and that's Boomers point about who has recruited D better. They have. By a long shot.
 

tech_wreck47

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Ok for non factories. If you are claiming factories, who would they be starting for?
FSU? No.
Uga? No.
Clemson? No.
Bama? Hell no.

AJ, maybe later, but not now. Maybe by the time he's a jr or sr.

We have nobody that would be starting for BC and that's Boomers point about who has recruited D better. They have. By a long shot.
I don't think those guys would be starting either, but how do you get Boston college recruits better and it's not just the coaching? Idk if you read my other post but Don Brown took over in 2013 and they ended up being ranked in the 90's one year later they were in the top 15 with pretty much the same players unless he played all his freshman recruits. So how do you go from 90's to top 15 and it not be coaching. I just don't see how we say that's recruiting and not coaching, and every time I mention this it gets ignored.
 
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