This is the madness it’s personnel and depth and talent of the top 26-30 players on defense that’s basically 1/3 of the roster This this should give clear context to the extent of our defensive issues as it’s acknowledged the the previous staff was… ahem…. deficient at recruiting in general and borderline criminal wrt to the defense
Great observation that the game has evolved into fireworks for the sake of eyeballs and to hell with the rules
Everything you list is possible, basic defense 101 but not with our personnel and depth #21 ain’t twisting or stunting we don’t have the depth to physically exert ourselves given the number of snaps over the game I agree situationally these are possible BUT until players recognize if they and blitzing and a man crosses their face their blitz is off and the FS busting coverage every game covering the dig route with a CB already in the pocket of the receiver before the ball is thrown leaving the backside post open unattended we got major issues with football IQ currently
Open field tackling is actually better this year as a group in the secondary there are some misses on angles I blame game reps and adjustment to the speed as the reason especially for some of the younger players unfortunately that isn’t wholesale defensive improvement we are looking for
Pretty sure the game plan was not to have Miller in coverage, but when Burney went down early, we had no other choice.
There is where talent vs coaching is an interesting topic. Miller is a pretty good but flawed player. He has deficiencies, mainly in coverage. A good OC will try to take advantage of that. Does that mean Miller doesn’t have “talent”? Of course not. I put that more on coaches. Why would you let Miller cover? Stop switching. Keep James on the back or TE. Our D is definitely above average talent (probably top 30) with a couple below average spots. It’s up to the coaches to put those players on positions to succeed. If you allow the OC to take advantage of their deficiencies then that’s on you
Our defense the year we almost made the CFP with Trask was the worst defense ever. Squandered the best offense college football seen since the Burrow's LSU CFP champion team. Had we even had UAB's defense, we would have gone undefeated.
We did not have a great defense in 2022, but by almost every metric this year's defense is worse. The only edge 2020 had on 2022 was passing yards per game. Total yards, rushing yards, total first downs ... pretty much the rest 2022 is much worse.
No. Wait until we play UGa. THEN it will be the worse we have seen. Patience! And then against aTm, South Carolina,...
In the post game press conference BN had it right, it's all of the above. It's a talent issue, it's a scheme issue, it's bad play calling, it's lack of effective coaching/holding players accountable like one particular safety. Still, it's the coaches responsibility to teach, coach and hold players accountable. Toney has been with this team since spring. We have played 7 games and still not really an ounce of improvement overall. In my book that points to coaching. We have become so predictable we have made it easy for our opponents OC to develop a game plan that works and o does it work. Reason? Same tendencies. Soft zone, soft coverages, poor techniques. I'd love to play qb against our D, and I'm not very good. Talent will come but it will be green. Unless a DC can develop a plan to get teams off the field, we may very well have a similar issue going into next year. It can't be worse than this year because this year is almost to the bottom. Also, don't we have like lots of paid advisor coaches and aren't they supposed to help make things better? Either they are making suggestions that aren't listened to or maybe they're spending time in the new swimming pool or playing pickle ball.
I am not saying I am correct, I just think that the staff, besides fighting the "theoretical versus actual" in how the team actually plays versus practices and seems to get it, has to be in a mode that is preparing for the next opponent rather than going back to "this is a football, find it and own it." This next game after the bye, even though it is against the supposed #1 team, will tell us a lot about how they can make real adjustments. I hope they pass the test...or that the vets don't try to triple down in their attempt to "stay the course."
There is considerable evidence that Grantham basically refused to recruit during his tenure here. That is a good reason why the defense has fallen off a cliff the last few years. We just don’t have talent or depth in the front seven that we did in the past. No scheme is going to save this defense. Napier must recruit his way out of it. Watson has no business getting the number of snaps he does, Dexter has been very disappointing so far and after that we fall off a cliff. McClellan has shown promise but he’s a freshman and we have no defensive end star quality outside of Cox.
