I think we are all falling victim (myself included) to a bit of revisionist history on our defense from past year. It’s not exactly like we were lighting things up. We had the 84th ranked scoring defense and 85th ranked total defense in FBS. I think we had just been so bad for the few years prior that the slight uptick made us hopeful. Couple that with the slew of turnovers we enjoyed in our wins and the inspired play of Thomas and we all thought we had something going. Now I think we’ve regressed to the mean under Thacker. Unfortunately I just don’t feel he’s going to get it done.
Of all the DCs we’ve burned through in the past 15 years I thought Woody in his one year showed the most potential.
Maybe, but Woody’s first year was worse than any of the Ted Roof years.
Funny thing is, UNC hired away Woody’s predecessor at Army, who had their defense humming, and was thought of as an innovator, to be co-DC at UNC. He got fired from UNC because their defense was awful. Woody had great defensive stats at App State, then bad stats here, and now he has good stats at Army. I guess the environment makes a difference.
I think that we looked a lot better on defense last year. We had a good defense. Some of it was having some ballers. Keion White drew double teams and still caused trouble. Charlie Thomas got key turnovers when other teams drove on us and we couldn’t stop them otherwise.
We weren’t great against the run, and we’re still not. We’re worse against the run than we were last year.
On the other hand, Key got the coaches he wanted on defense—or he got pretty much who he wanted. These guys should be able to coach.