Sentinel Defense Story

[hammb]

Could you be more right?

I probably could be

I'm just saying what I'm seeing, and its nice to see that the coach is also seeing that our defense was severly lacking most of this past year. It also in some way validates some of my opinions, because whenever I question something I get at least one reply of, "They're coaches and been doing it for awhile, I'm sure they're right and you're wrong."

I'm not a coach, nor do I claim to be, but I sure as heck watch a lot of football. What I saw and heard from coach's reactions after games was a defense that was not playing to its strengths.

For instance, sometimes when things have gone poor in the run defense and you question the DL size they say that its not the DL's job to tackle the ball carrier. It is the job of the LB to get to the ball carrier. Well that scheme is great, and can work quite well, but doesn't fit with the personnel model that we appear to follow. We recruit smaller DL players, that are supposed to have a quickness advantage against an OL in the trenches. That is great if you're playing a scheme where you want your DL to each shoot a gap, create penetration, and disrupt the run in the backfield. However, if you're playing a scheme where you want your DL to eat the blocks so your LBs can make plays you would prefer to have a larger DL to take up more space. I have preached countless times that we need more size up front, but I really have no problems with a single gap attack style defense. But running what appears to be a 2 gap defense with the smaller players is just a total contradiction in yourself. What happens is then good OL players aren't held up by the smaller DL, and some of them are free to get to the second level and lay a block on the LBs, who can then not make the play. If you want smaller, quicker, DL then you must put the onus on them to create disruption in the backfield...that just didn't seem to happen for us too much last year. That sort of defense also relies on your MLB to have good instincts to diagnose a play and get to the ball carrier. If that sort of defense is working well your MLB should lead you in tackles over a season for sure. Jovon was a good player. He was a great blitzer with good sideline speed who could lay the wood on someone. What he was not was a great wrapup tackler nor a great instinctual player.

These are not the only things that were wrong with our defense this past year, but these are some of the things I see wrong. All I know is that there are countless areas where it looked as though our players were either not very good or not well suited for the things they were being asked to do. It is definitely a combination of recruiting, teaching, and scheme, IMO. Hopefully they can get that shored up, but at what point to do you make a change on your coaching staff when it is consistenly one unit that is holding up your ability to win championships?

[1987alum]

I'll repeat this again - we have very good reason to be very concerned about our defense in 2005. We were able to simply outscore a lot of folks last year and made it to a bowl through a mathematical anamoly.

[Flipper]

I'm going to play wait and see. Hood, Dozier, Goodwin and Waldron are going to add much needed depth to the secondary. If Crossley is gone, they can slide Williams to DE, that may actually improve our run defense a little. That opens opportunities for Davis, Curtis and Monty Cooley on the inside. We better hope that nothing happens to Thaler though.

Brandon Mack could be a key player in all of this. If Williams stays at DT, Mack will have to step in at DE. The alternatives are fellow redshirt freshman Joe Schaefer and Diyral Briggs. I don't know a thing about Schaefer. Unless Briggs has gained 30 lbs over the past year, I don't see him being a 4 down DE at 210 lbs.

We may have a better defense this year even without Crossley. There's enough "new" talent (mostly RS freshmen) on the depth chart that we may very be better able to handle 60 minutes of football.

[1987alum]

Flip:

Agreed that we potentially have the pieces in place to overcome the problems ahead.

I'm concerned, though, that some folks seem to have taken the last two years or so for granted and just assume that we're going to be even better next year and, of course, go to another bowl game. None of that is automatic. Even with Crossley (and Perry) coming back, we needed to make significant improvements on defense to get to the "next level." The task just became a bit more difficult.

Again, not saying we cannot do it - actually, I expect us to - just saying that it bears watching. And hoping everyone keeps their expectations grounded in some sort of reality.

[Flipper]

Yeah, it would be nice to have the kind of defense that actually shuts a good team down once in awhile. They did a pretty good job in the second half against Memphis. If we can get that kind of effort (without relying on the opposition's best player breaking a leg) for 11 games next year, we'll be playing a 12th game no matter how many bowl elegible teams there are.

[kdog27]

I'm going to play wait and see. Hood, Dozier, Goodwin and Waldron are going to add much needed depth to the secondary. If Crossley is gone, they can slide Williams to DE, that may actually improve our run defense a little. That opens opportunities for Davis, Curtis and Monty Cooley on the inside. We better hope that nothing happens to Thaler though.

Brandon Mack could be a key player in all of this. If Williams stays at DT, Mack will have to step in at DE. The alternatives are fellow redshirt freshman Joe Schaefer and Diyral Briggs. I don't know a thing about Schaefer. Unless Briggs has gained 30 lbs over the past year, I don't see him being a 4 down DE at 210 lbs.

We may have a better defense this year even without Crossley. There's enough "new" talent (mostly RS freshmen) on the depth chart that we may very be better able to handle 60 minutes of football.

We might have to pray for no injuries on the defensive side or its going be looking like the second half of 2002 did next year. We were pretty fortunate last year to have very few injuries and nothing real notable. I'm worried about next year to say the least.

[kdog27]

Flip:

Agreed that we potentially have the pieces in place to overcome the problems ahead.

I'm concerned, though, that some folks seem to have taken the last two years or so for granted and just assume that we're going to be even better next year and, of course, go to another bowl game. None of that is automatic. Even with Crossley (and Perry) coming back, we needed to make significant improvements on defense to get to the "next level." The task just became a bit more difficult.

Again, not saying we cannot do it - actually, I expect us to - just saying that it bears watching. And hoping everyone keeps their expectations grounded in some sort of reality.

You are right 1987, until we have a defense that can win us games when the offense takes the day off there is no way we can talk about going 13-0 or even 12-1. There are always going be games(NIU) or halves (UT) in the course of the season where the offense come out flat. The only way we have a better team next year is if the defense improves. It's going be hard to improve on 44.5 ppg or whatever it was so the offense can only get minutley better. If our defense is the same or even worse than last year then we are probably looking at 3-4 losses next season.

[BelieveNBG]

As someone stated earlier, we did a much better job in the 2nd half against Memphis. Guess what, that didn't take different players...it required a different scheme. That scheme was not the same one ran against Toledo and the coaches were smart enough to take a serious review of why we were failing and make changes. In the first half of the Memphis game, players were still adjusting to playing in a different manner/scheme. By the 2nd half, they fixed it and adjusted. The players were making the tackles and their were no long plays/deep balls.

The only thing that is shameful about the defense is that it took too long for the staff to realize that the scheme did not work. It would have been nice to have made those adjustments prior to the UT game.

Last, you can expect teams to score on our defense because they spend alot of time on the field. When an offense is explosive, they score quickly and often, which sends the defense right back on the field.

[hammb]

I'm sorry BelieveNBG, but I would argue that the biggest, and possibly even the ONLY, reason why we were able to stop Memphis in the 2nd half is because their best player broke his leg.

Even broken bones weren't enough to help us in the 2nd half of the UT game

[BelieveNBG]

I believe he was running just fine in the 3rd quarter. Also, in the first half, we were hurt by more than just his running. We were more severely hurt by the pass. First half, Williams ran for 87 yards with 31 coming on one play. Take away the one big play, it's not that bad. A good back of Williams caliber is gonna get 100 plus yards a game, especially when the offense is centered around that run. Actually, he ran for 100 plus yards in 24 consecutive games. Without the big play, he would have had 56 yards, so it wasn't total domination. I bet he also runs for 100 plus yards in the pros.

Mr. Wolfe gave us fits, but we weren't prepared and had not schemed against the 3rd string RB that no one had yet to see. He's vert tough to stop, but even tougher if you have had absolutely no preparation of what he brings to the game. Also, he made his blast in the 2nd half, so we didn't even have the half time to quickly throw together some type of scheme. We were totally caught off guard and prepared for something different.

Anthony Sherrell of Eastern killed us 2 years ago with 187 yards, but we were prepared this year and he got 28 yards.

[Flipper]

In fairness to Sherill, the year he got 187 against us he was the featured componenet of that offense. Last year, they went to more of a spread attack that placed more emphasis on passing than running.

Sherill became so disenchanted with his reduced role that he xferred to Delaware State.

We were able to stop Memphis in the second half before Williams broke his leg, but I'm skeptical of the idea that we would have continued to do so had he not been injured. It's not at all fair of me to say that...but what can I say, I'm feeling a bit cynical today.

[BelieveNBG]

Interesting thing about Sherrell. EMU seems to have a way of reducing the roles of their best players. I simply don't understand it. They don't have a lot of players of his caliber, so they should be finding ways to utilize the talent they have.

[Schadenfreude]

I'm sorry BelieveNBG, but I would argue that the biggest, and possibly even the ONLY, reason why we were able to stop Memphis in the 2nd half is because their best player broke his leg.

I don't agree at all. Not at all.

[orangeandbrown]

Maybe not the ONLY reason, but the MAIN reason. This is pretty much verifiable. Once the RB was out, we could rush differently, cover passes differently. We played better on D than we had against NIU and UT--that's true. But, he was running like crazy on us when he was in the game.

[Warthog]

I'm sorry BelieveNBG, but I would argue that the biggest, and possibly even the ONLY, reason why we were able to stop Memphis in the 2nd half is because their best player broke his leg.

I don't agree at all. Not at all.

Hammb, I do agree. I do agree completely.