Problem with our defense

[kg01]

Man, y'all gotta realize our efensive rankings put us pretty much the worst in college football. Is our talent that bad? No.

Look at places like freakin' TCU, Arkansas St., Baylor, UConn, BostonCollege, UtahSt. and the like in the top 50 in the nation in total defense. Do we out-recruit these places? Yep.

Look at our defenses under Joe Ham and look at us now. Not markedly different results.

 

[midga fan]

i would be interested in hearing from Coach Roof and what his plans are. i think we can all agree something needs to be done, whether it is scheme or personnell changes something needs to be done. I agree there is no way the talent is that bad to be pretty much the worst defense in the country! If it is flip some offensive lineman or do something. The offense is rolling, if the defense could just be below average and not terrible we could play with and beat most teams.

 

[jeffgt14]

Regardless of whether you have talent or not, you still have to try and play defense. Right now the scheme we are playing is a sad excuse of trying to play defense. I don’t think Roof is a bad DC at all but I think he’s too worried about our lack of talent to run a real defense because he doesn’t want to give up big plays.

I think what hurt us the most was losing JHD. I think if we had someone of his talent and experience on the line, we’d be a much different team. Out of all the offseason losses, that was the one that I knew was going to hurt. I just didn’t think it would be this bad.

 

[midga fan]

i agree 100% the loss of JHD hurt the most also Whitehead not making it and the other losses that have been documented, but there is nothing we can do about that.
i want to hear from Roof or CPJ about what they plan to do about this year! i am worried about stopping anybody at this point.

 

[GTJake]

Go ahead and gamble on defense and give-up the big plays, that way we get the ball back quicker and can play defense with our offense holding the ball (time of possession) .... instead of a fast-break offense we'll have a fast-break defense (sic) !

 

[slugboy]

Man, y'all gotta realize our efensive rankings put us pretty much the worst in college football. Is our talent that bad? No.

Look at places like freakin' TCU, Arkansas St., Baylor, UConn, BostonCollege, UtahSt. and the like in the top 50 in the nation in total defense. Do we out-recruit these places? Yep.

TCU's head coach is basically the DC, they redshirt like crazy, they can admit almost anyone, and their academics don't really interfere with practice. I'd expect TCU to be top-25 or better in defense. For a while they were top 10. Aside from BC, the rest of those colleges are in the same position in terms of academic load.

You can't really say we're out-recruiting those schools without looking at all the talent we lost in the off-season. Factoring that in would drop our recruiting score way down. How many kids are on scholarship this year?

 

[kg01]

TCU's head coach is basically the DC, they redshirt like crazy, they can admit almost anyone, and their academics don't really interfere with practice. I'd expect TCU to be top-25 or better in defense. For a while they were top 10. Aside from BC, the rest of those colleges are in the same position in terms of academic load.

You can't really say we're out-recruiting those schools without looking at all the talent we lost in the off-season. Factoring that in would drop our recruiting score way down. How many kids are on scholarship this year?

I certainly hear you re. TCU and clearly our hurdles at getting guys in can't be ignored. That said, there's still no excuse for us to be as awful as we are. None. Northwestern outranks us as do NDame, Stanford, Duke and many other places that actually ask guys to go to class.

You're telling me we can't be slightly below average? That's all I'm asking for at this point especially considering the issues you mentioned.

 

[GTFLETCH]

Again does anyone know why the Austin twins did not play against UNC? They have proven earlier in the season they can tackle in space. The nickle against UNC could not make a tackle?

 

[jeffgt14]

Again does anyone know why the Austin twins did not play against UNC? They have proven earlier in the season they can tackle in space. The nickle against UNC could not make a tackle?

The Austin twins are terrible in coverage IMO (right now at least). Demond tackles well from his spot. His problem is coverage as well but from what I’ve seen he covers better than the twins. My biggest concern in the secondary is Milton. I don’t understand how Lynn has not overtaken him at this point.

 

[Jackethawk]

I disagree with this, there is no way this is a 100% talent-only issue ... we are wayyyyy too bad on defense for this to be true.
IMO, a combination of coaching, youth with a percentage of lack of talent issue's.
By coaching, I mean the whole deal from initial talent evaluation in recruiting to strength and conditioning to scheme and play calling.
I like CTR, but hopefully he didn't come home just to collect a paycheck ... he needs to majorly get after it.

I meant scheme vs. players. If you have the players, then most schemes will work.

 

[slugboy]

I certainly hear you re. TCU and clearly our hurdles at getting guys in can't be ignored. That said, there's still no excuse for us to be as awful as we are. None. Northwestern outranks us as do NDame, Stanford, Duke and many other places that actually ask guys to go to class.

You're telling me we can't be slightly below average? That's all I'm asking for at this point especially considering the issues you mentioned.

Being slightly below average is totally reasonable, but there are definitely reasons this year to be poor on defense.

I just wouldn't have picked the teams that you did (or Troy or a lot of other schools). Some schools out there aren't even glorified community colleges. I also wouldn't have picked Notre Dame or Duke--they have easier times getting the full allotment of practice time--but I agree on Northwestern and Stanford.

One issue is that we're not really getting more out of our players than other schools--we're just slightly above average when you compare our record vs. our recruiting rankings. I also see comments about our front 7, but I see our back 4 making a lot of mistakes too. I think we're giving our DL a hard time considering they're hard-hit by attrition and the other 7 may not be even doing as well as the DL.

I'll take the INTs we've been getting. We've been short on them the last few games, though.

 

[slugboy]

I meant scheme vs. players. If you have the players, then most schemes will work.

Comparing to the Falcons again: I heard a quote about Mike Nolan's coaching that "you can scheme around to cover one weak spot, sometimes two, but never three". How many spots does our scheme need to hide?

 

[jason]

I think we have talent on defense but nobody can stop a quick pass playing off 15 yards and nobody can cover as long as we have to with no pressure on the quarterback
Our problems start with the front four not being able to get any push at all. But our biggest problem is tackling and has been for years it seems.

 

[jason]

I know you cant compare our team now to Florida State, Alabama and teams like them but when you watch those teams play and the quarterback rakes of running their linebackers and ever their defensive ends are cutting them of in a flash. Watching the FSU-Notre Dame game FSU's linebackers are so fast that even rolling out you have to get ride of the ball fast. We dont have that speed. And that makes our dbs look worse than they really are.

 

[GTFLETCH]

The Austin twins are terrible in coverage IMO (right now at least). Demond tackles well from his spot. His problem is coverage as well but from what I’ve seen he covers better than the twins. My biggest concern in the secondary is Milton. I don’t understand how Lynn has not overtaken him at this point.

I am not sure what game you watched but #12 Demond Smith & #14 Corey Griffin missed several tackles in space on third down. This new 4-2-5 that replaced the 4-3 requires Demond Smith/Corey Griffin to be the best In-Space tacklers ( as they replace a LB) they have clearly missed on a bunch of tackles (Duke and UNC)

While the Austin twins may struggle in coverage they have shown they can tackle in space from previous games this season. I would put one or let both play that Nickle/LB spot in this 4-2-5 as we need sound in space tackling. All we needed against UNC was 1 tackle in space from the DBs and we got a bunch of arm tackles and whiffs. The Austin twins can not be worse then what we have had/seen in the last two games from that Nickle/LB spot.

As far as Milton goes I agree...Lynn or Nobles may be better.

 

[Wrecking Ball]

We really need to be in a 3-3-5. We need to have Gotsis-Green-Freeman, then Nealy-Marcordes-Davis, then best 4 in secondary.

 

[jeffgt14]

The thing with our DB’s missing tackles is our entire “scheme” relies on our DB’s being so far back and when someone throws a quick screen we need our DB to be able to run full speed straight ahead at the WR to make a solo open field tackle. ANY decently quick WR can elude those tackles at least 50% of the time. We’re setting our DB’s up to fail and hoping they can make a very difficult play.

 

[kg01]

Anyone know why L. Griffin is so deep in the bee's nest (can't disrespect our guys and say they're in the doghouse)? Paging @Leonard Larramore ...