Now that we've all cooled off a touch...

[hammb]

Now that we've all cooled off, I want to vent a little. Yes, this is coming in the aftermath of today's game, but at the same time it's something that's been building for years in my head. Today's game further amplified my feelings, but they've been there for awhile, and it's actually been watching the other games throughout the day that has made me want to speak out.

I HATE BG FOOTBALL

That's right I hate it. Not the Falcons, I love 'em. Not the gameday fun, I love it. Not the success we've had winning games the past few seasons, I love that as well. But I REALLY hate our entire philosophy of football. It goes against everything I've ever learned about the game, and I just don't like it.

I believe you put your best athletes on defense. Clearly BG doesn't believe that. Dan Macon, Corey Partridge, and others are examples of us taking the better athletes away from the defense and putting them on offense.

I believe that you put your defesive players in a position to succeed. You don't ask undersized guys to play DT against Big 10 teams. You're putting them in a situation where they cannot succeed. Don't tell me that big guys are too hard to recruit because we've got some monsters on the OL and I'd bet nearly every one of them played DL in HS as well.

I believe fundamentals are the most important part of a defense. I don't know what our staff has been doing, but we've been a poor tackling defense for years. If you're already out-athleted you absolutely MUST make the plays when you get the chance.

I believe in high value on special teams. Go out and spend a schollie on a kicker. Put starters on kick coverage & return teams. Practice, Practice, practice. We've had issues in kick coverage for the past few seasons as well...a lot of it stemming from more poor tackling.

I believe its defense, not offense, that wins championships. If you line up a top notch defense versus a top notch offense, I'll take the defense every time. The more games I watch the more I realize that the team that wins is usually the one that makes the big DEFENSIVE play. Be it a stop or a turnover it's usually the team making big defensiive plays that comes out on top.


Don't get me wrong, I love winning 9 games every year. And sure I love talking up Omar and our offense. I just don't like the feeling that our entire philosophy is that if our offense is good enough we don't need to worry about the rest of the game. STs & Defense are 2/3 of football, and they're also the sides that can result in the biggest momentum swings. Still it seems as though we don't put nearly enough emphasis on them in our overall philosophy.

I'm over the loss. I was hoping we'd win, and thought we could win. We lost, oh well. I'm not about to start talking about UW as the next great thing, because I don't think they were special, just that their strengths directly countered our weaknesses, and they exploited it. My problem is that I get this feeling that we've seen this before. At some point were going to need a big stop or a big kick and it just doesn't look like it'll be there. I'm tired of being the bridesmaid, and I'm really afraid that until we start putting forth a more concerted effort on things other than offense we'll never be the bride

[Tricky_Falcon]

I think you meant to say BG's style of play.


I agree 100% with your post.

Listening to the game I wish we actually had Chris Speilman as our defensive coach. (Yeah I must be going crazy...especially if I want a buckeye here)


Many people on here say BG gave a great effort and the game was close and we should be happy about that.

I am very pleased that the team gave an effort. That's what they should be doing. The days should be behind us of just saying, well at least we were close this game against a good Big 10 team lets throw a moral victory our way.

That's why people don't consider us big time. We don't consider us being big time if this is acceptable.

Something else I saw was that we won't see another RB like we saw today again on our schedule so we shouldn't be worried. I believe we will see some good runningbacks this year in the MAC. It doesn't matter if they're B10 caliber players or not. I think one decent RB plays for the team up North. We have plenty of work to do this year. I hope our team and coaches don't settle and say atleast we were close.


Then again I just might need some sleep. The loss, the Harris and Magner cuts are getting to me.

[Flipper]

It's tempting to argue that we simply got roughed up by a team that has the many built in advantages that being a solid Big 10 program offers, but we've also seen this type of display against our conference breathern during key road games.

Did Calhoun really look that much better than Garrett Wolfe did last year or Michael Turner did in 2002? Omar and the offense are fun to watch, but they aren't perfect. When you have a defense that can't stop simple running plays with any consistency, you're asking the offense to be just about perfect.

You aren't going to win those games. We didn't win them in 2002, we didn't win them in 2003 and we didn't win them last year.

What's scary is that we really didn't do a very good job of pass defense either. If the Badgers had a mind to, they could have passed us silly. We had very little pressure on the QB and we were again playing well off of the WR's on almost every pass play Whisky ran.

We clearly need to rexamine our defensive philosphy. I know John Lovett is brand new here and it's not fair to expect him to walk into the program after missing spring ball and turn things around in a month. What's disturbing to me is the reality that it's damn near impossible to implement any major changes in the the schemes once the season starts. You simply don't have the time. You can tweak things and try to get guys to focus on technique a little more, but how many times are we going to talk about doing that without actually doing it? The package we're looking at is the package we're living with until next spring. It has been shown to be ineffective at crucial junctures

Whupping up on the likes of Ball State and OU isn't going to cheer me up any. Bend don't break works really well against teams who's offense couldn't break a good HS defense. We've been there, we've seen it and it doesn't mean a damn thing anymore.

[kdog27]

Hammb, I agree with a lot of what you say. It was really discouraging to watch that game. I was hoping they would come out of halftime and do an onside kick because I figured their running game would have it the same posistion after three plays.

As much as everyone around here rips on our secondary, they were the only people out there making plays. Our linebackers were worthless and the D line had absolutely no penetration. At one point I was hoping they would put cornerbacks in at LB because they had no chance at catching Calhoun on the outside. It was the CB's and safety's making all the stops. They did a good job I think because Calhoun did not have a run over 20 yards. All his yards were done by mistackles and pure misses by the LBs. It was pretty sad. Then when they did pass the secondary was pretty much thrown to the dogs because they just watched 13 runs in a row. There was no size and speed in the front seven to play with with their power, speed and depth. It was bad. I was embarassed stading next to Wisconsin fans at times.

Calhoun is a mighty good runner and he will have many other big games. You can tell he is the real deal because the difference between him and stanley was easily noticeable. The cuts and sidesteps he made were awesome.

[Rightupinthere]

I have to agree with Brian on this. I believe the coaching philosophy is favoring the offense too much.

With that said, however, I believe Mssr. Lovett will do good things with this defensive. Unfortunately, it will take him more than just a few months to put his footprint on the d and on the players.
He's made some moves as far as personnel. It's going to take some time to realize any benefit from those moves.

[Jacobs4Heisman]

I have to agree also. That's why I was so pissed when I heard young Magner, who played DB in high school, was being moved to WR. How many freaking wide receivers do we need when we have no defense. This seems like common sense stuff. If we think the kid is going to be a better receiver than d-back tough cookies. We have a year to coach him up and he can play both ways if we really need him at receiver.

When we moved Winovich to linebacker, I thought we were taking a step in the right direction. Now it seems that was more of an aberration than a trend. We have to go recruit defense as hard as we recruit offense. I think lovett can do that, and I think if given time he can turn this defense around. It's just severely disappointing that we may waste the best offense we will probably ever see. If we had UCF...that's right, UCF's defense. We would be in a BCS game this year.

Oh well. Get it together boys and win the MAC. We can still reach all of our goals. I'll be happy if we have a 2003 Miami season.

BG 63 -- BSU 17

[BGSUFootballFan]

I agree, we have given up huge amounts of yards in passing the last couple years but now our run D stinks as well. Calhoun, Williams, and Wolfe have all gashed us for 8-9 yds per carry and thats unexcusable! We need to start recruiting much heavier on D, and also get those players like Dan Macon, Partridge, and Markray on the other side of the ball, Omar doesnt need THAT much help on his side!

[hammb]

I really thought that I'd get a lot of replies about it being sour grapes, I'm glad to see that I'm getting some agreement.

I hope you guys are right. Lovett definitely has a good resume, hopefully given time he can work his magic here. It is not fair at all to judge him after one game, heck one season, when he wasn't even here for spring ball. I just get the overall impression that the entire coaching philosophy we have is let's make our offense unbeatable, and the rest will just take care of itself.

Our LBs were terrible yesterday, where in the past they have been decent. Let's hope that was an abberation. One thing that still worries me though is that the biggest problem they had is that the OL was getting out on them. No LBs are going to be able to take on OL and make plays with any consistency. It's asking too much.

I've heard a few people here talk about the DL getting penetration. Does any one know if our defensive philosophy wants them to get penetration? I'm curious what our exact scheme is, because its very hard to tell. Whenever people talk about the DL you'll hear coach Brandon say that its up to the LBs to make the tackles. That's a fine defensive philosophy, but if you're putting the onus on your LBs to make tackles it is the job of the DL simply to keep the OL off the LBs. With the size of our OL that is simply impossible. If we are going with the opposite philosophy where we want our DL to shoot gaps and penetrate, with the LBs cleaning up the mess, then clearly our DL is not succeeding at that either. Our DL has been so ineffective in the past couple years I'm not even sure which of these is the philosophy we are tryinig to employ.

I guess my biggest beef is that I don't like offense enough to forsake the rest of the game for it. I enjoy watching a 10-6 defensive struggle as much as any 45-52 shootout. It just seems like as a team we've spent so much time oiling and tuning the offensive engine we forgot to even gas up the defense.

[bc ziggy 58]

After cooling off a little from yesterday and gaining some perspective, here is where I see our team today. All of us think back to last year and what happened to our "friends" up north. Minnie and Kansas are NO Wisconsin yet Turdledo was able to regroup and claim what we, in the long run ALL want. a MACC!!

Sure we lost, sure our defense was overmatched (a good point was made by Spielman.....Wisky had 290+ pound on their D-line and were able to rotate people in - we were/are not and got physically beat up) yet the prize is still out there. Our boys have said all year long that the ultimate goal of this team is to win the Mid American Conference Championship. Let us all not loose sight of THEIR goal by placing our dreams and aspirations of an undefeated/BCS bowl type season in place thereof.

Respectfully submitted.

[Rightupinthere]

Many of our good LBs - Hewitt for instance - were recruited by the Blackney regime, if I'm not mistaken.

Interesting how the Meyer/Brandon era is seemingly the antithesis of the Blackney era when Defense was king.

I have a good feeling about Lovett. I just hope he's not going to be "poo-pooed" too much that he'll leave too early out of frustration with "the way things are."*

*I need a rest. That, I believe, was my limit as far as hyphen and quotation usage in a single post.

[MACMAN]

I did not have the good fortune to watch the game...yet...I have it on tvo, and I am getting ready to view it. I can say that from the blips I heard on the raido while I traveled yesterday were mixed...from ME to NH, Ny and PA people...real people were taliking about awsome our O was, how great Omar is...they also said we need to to step on D.....and when you give up 50 pts to anyone you need some serious work....our plan was to most likely hold WI to 34 or so, and if we had we would have clearly won but we did not and we have some work to do....I feel the reporters who think WI will be at the bottom of the Bg 10 are off and that WI will have an avg season...who knows we may just see them again when the quarks are worked out.

Our D will solidify and dont think we have much to wory about, we put on a great game and now we must play the owls...then the Broncos and move into MaC play.

[BGSUFootballFan]

i think some serious defensive adjustments need to be made, we really need to get some kids out there that can take up some space, also we need some people who can tackle not just "wait... dive... grab... and miss" i did take more of a liking to Mayberry and Smith from this game, but other than that i wouldnt see any reason why not to bench the other 9 players and see what someone else can do, it was seriously that bad... and i really REALLY miss Keon and Jovon those kids could tackle through people and also strip the ball! We need to find some new players and better schemes fast!

[Falcon30]

Would we be in better shape if we were NIU?

You are right that balance is needed, but I think being an offense-minded team is exactly how we build this. Would we be getting this much attention or press if we had a great defense?

Build the o first, then get the defense good. Name a MAC champ with a great defense in the last 10 years!

A great offense can win a title just like a great defense, but you need to have at least a good other side of the ball to compete. The Rams were so good on offense that they won a super bowl with an average at best defense. The ravens won with the best defense in the league and a mediocre offense.

We shouldn't have to weaken our offense to strengthen our defense. The problem isn't our philosophy, it is our execution.

is Ohio State foolish for moving Ginn to WR???

[BGSUFootballFan]

yes b/c they already have Holmes at WR, but the thing is OSU is so stacked on D and so medicore on Off that they can get away with switching Ginn to Off, but i think Hammb's point is that we are basically as good as we possibly could get on O, so we are to some extent wasting Markray, Partridge, and Macon and anyone else that would be valuable on D!

[hammb]

Would we be in better shape if we were NIU?

You are right that balance is needed, but I think being an offense-minded team is exactly how we build this. Would we be getting this much attention or press if we had a great defense?

Build the o first, then get the defense good. Name a MAC champ with a great defense in the last 10 years!

A great offense can win a title just like a great defense, but you need to have at least a good other side of the ball to compete. The Rams were so good on offense that they won a super bowl with an average at best defense. The ravens won with the best defense in the league and a mediocre offense.

The Rams had the #2 defense in the league the year they won the superbowl. After that they got offense happy and neglected the defense. It declined, and they were never able to duplicate that superbowl victory.

We shouldn't have to weaken our offense to strengthen our defense. The problem isn't our philosophy, it is our execution.

is Ohio State foolish for moving Ginn to WR???

OSU is in the exact opposite mentality. They bring in studs on defense right & left. In their case they can afford to take a potential star away from their defense for one on offense, they need playmakers on THAT side of the ball.

I don't see how leaving our #3 RB at LB or a guy like Rhett Magner at CB is really weakening our offense any.