Playing zone obviously works for many teams. For a variety of reasons we absolutely suck in zone. It doesn’t take a statistician to say if we are a bit more aggressive the odds of us getting a stop increases We are worst in the nation in terms of getting stops after all
As I posted above, if you want to talk about being easily readable by the QB and HC/OC, then that is fine by me. If you want to say that it appears as if Marshall is a better "in-your-face" man defender than a read and react zone player, then I say I think there is merit. But if you are in agreement with the idea of just blitzing and playing man and all our worries just go away, well then, I guess we also have great, unpaid analysts on the defensive side also. Good to know. We are bad for a reason. And yes, being easily readable is a bad place to be. Can we at least wait until we see what the coaches have decided after the bye week? Or are you prepared to be The Savior for free?
All of our worries wouldn’t go away. Blitzing all the time is a bad strategy. It just would cause some issues for the offense. The point is constant blitzing would take us from say dead last to 75th percentile. Constant blitzing even with a fantastic D isn’t a recipe to be top 5. But we aren’t aiming for top 5. We are aiming for bad
Shane said our dbs plays were fine. It’s just we couldn’t pressure the qb. No dbs can hold it up forever.
I actually kind of feel like what you said is exactly what we are doing. It just doesn’t work in the SEC. In other conferences, you don’t have skill guys all over the field and good quarterbacks who can deliver the ball like you do in our conference. Out of our 7 games, we have likely played 3 for sure and possibly a 4th NFL quarterback. These QBs have been around a while, know the offense, have good systems and are very accurate. P Toney has had a very tough task this year with facing Cam Rising, Levis and Hooker. Daniels might also make an NFL roster for his athletic ability. Our defense is not running anything elaborate. Guys are just lining up and blowing assignments with bad technique. There are no stunts, there aren’t any elaborate blitzes and nothing extraordinary. I kind of think our defense is running a very vanilla system, and we are hoping the other quarterback and receivers can’t execute, relying on the other team to make mistakes. When I rewatched the Ragin’ Cajuns defense from last year, they were playing lots of man, stunts on the Dline and blitzing quite a bit. That is not what we are doing. It’s just gonna take time to install the system, and like you said at the end, recruit, recruit, recruit. just my two cents.
They need to blitz more!! I would blitz every down, play press coverage with a 1 high safety. We’ll either sack the QB/tackle for loss, force a bad throw, or give up a big gain. At the end of the day for this defense to be good or sufficient we need to stop the run. If we suck at stopping the pass and run then we’ll always struggle. Focus on being good somewhere and then baby steps!!
I don’t quite get this thought in bold. We have failed miserably on 3rd and long (8+). We aren’t getting eaten alive on play action on 3rd and 4 or less. We are getting gutted for huge chunks of yardage on 3rd. It’s almost comical the yard to gain distance is never too far. 3-15 let’s surrender 17, 3-22 no problem give up 25. This happens several times a drive. Hence all the angst
Yes, but if you blitz then you force the QB to throw earlier instead of having all day to find the guy open for a long completion. We’ve hardly blitzed all year.
Granham liked to blitz and Toney does it less. Maybe our players are not as good as last year. We had carter and Kaiir Elam last year.
I understand the idea behind blitzing I just don’t think we are weak against the run. We get the other team in 3rd and long, we are definitely historically bad against the pass in 3rd situations
If I may assist, blitzing means you are putting more emphasis on rushing the timing of the QB presumably passing the ball (this isn't a running play blitz) so that it is either incomplete, sacked, or intercepted. The reason why you do NOT blitz is because there is wisdom to the makeup of a defense (4 rushers, 3 LBs, 2-3 receiver defenders, and 1-2 safeties (meaning SAFE)). You hope that it works well, but if it doesn't, you have Plan B (usually the LBs) and Plan C (the safeties) to make sure it isn't a REALLY BAD play. Once you have taken one (or even two or three) players away from Plans B and C, you have increased the potential for those to fail...IF the blitz does not succeed its goal. I am reminded of those passes where the receiver is open and the ball goes to the receiver, but the throw is just a bit off. Essentially, the defense dodged a bullet when there is nothing but a LOT of land in front of the receiver. Did the blitz work? Sure, but not without a chance that it blew up badly. It is a risk, albeit a calculated risk, if you are a quality coach. And as we should all know based on Grantham's "skills", you need to have an element of surprise to it, otherwise the offense has the upper hand. I just don't see where our blitzing makes a BIG difference in pass rushing, especially when we seem to 1) lose contain or 2) be afraid of losing contain (via coaching demands) and don't make much of an effort getting pressure on the QB. We have a leaky pass rush. It doesn't look fixable this season, unless we can make the opposing offense pay for double teaming Dexter. And to Plan C - the safeties (read SAFE) - does anyone honestly believe they are going to be prudent in their playing? Not that I have seen. That is a HUGE problem.
Not by a long shot. The simplest change we could make is more man and less zone. A more risky change would be challenging receivers at the line. Not sure that either one will be of much benefit moving forward, but both would have been invaluable against an offense like LSU's.
Basic tackling but some folks around here think the are tackling fine and we are being overly critical....basic tackling would have won us the UTk game!
As someone else stated in another thread, for the people that claim its mostly a talent issue how do we get into 3rd and long with such terrible talent?
Of course blitzing can give up big plays. But it increases variance for positive outcomes too. Regardless who cares about big plays if the alternative is they just play catch 10-15 yards a time until the end zone?
