Defensive Scheme: We provide the MONEY ZONE

[LuCane]

We're hearing a lot of "D'Onofrio sucks," but we're not hearing "why."

In this thread, we show evidence of why his scheme doesn't work and why it is flawed. This post will be pretty general, but I encourage everyone to post videos and pictures throughout the thread.

The main point here is that he and Al Golden (yes, this falls at his feet), have implemented a particular mentality into the defense.

- The mentality is reactive.
- We not only show the same looks pre and post snap, but we allow the offensive formation to completely dictate what we're willing to do on defense.
- We're playing gap control along the defensive line, but without any LBs shooting behind them or consistent launching points for defensive backs. Want to know what that's like in other terms? You ever watch those Civil War movies and wonder why the **** armies used to line up and fight each other in such a ridiculous way?

- Finally, we're sitting in zone areas without matching up.
- Every opposing team should only need 5 plays to beat Miami: (1) A power run, (2) A play action pass with streaks across the field, including two seam routes, (3) A spread look attacking the slant areas, (4) A flood combination pattern, (5) A counter run out of the spread.

Here's what would be my go-to play if I were coaching offense against us. From this play, if you can't hit a seam, you'll still easily have a fantastic matchup underneath route out of the backfield.



To build a good and consistent defensive scheme, you have to find the right area of the field, identify how you can use certain players or numbers to create.

- We routinely allow teams to spread us out only to smash us inside.
- Because we are clearly fearful of allowing big plays, we stay in a coverage and get gashed for consistent big plays.
- Apparently, Golden and his staff thinks this is the best way to reach their objective.

I think we have the wrong objective. At the University of Miami, no matter how far we've fallen, the objective should never be to "keep the game close." The objective is to win. If you lose big, you lose big. We played to keep it close today, and yet we still lost big.

Things will get worse before they get better.

 

[Biscuits]

I hate this, but you're dead on. We saw this last year.

Most probably hoped this would change this year. It hasn't, and it depresses the **** outta me.

Makes me think Golden's ceiling is Butch, and that may be stretching it.

 

[LexCane55]

Nice job putting it into words. Its ridiculously frustrating

I'd much rather see us make a mistake by being aggressive. We have no idea how to play that defense and it is painfully obviously.


The other issue is we always play 7-8 yards off the line on the slot WR. The bubble screen continues to torture us

 

[mydas77]

I am not sure what I see in ur pic, but I agree with general theme. We are playing scared on D and getting torched for it. They are so concerned about x plays that they are willing to concede 10 yard gains. As if 10 yards on third down is a good thing. No dummy...its a first down!!!!!

 

[LexCane55]

I hate this, but you're dead on. We saw this last year.

Most probably hoped this would change this year. It hasn't, and it depresses the **** outta me.

Makes me think Golden's ceiling is Butch, and that may be stretching it.

Butch is an amazing ceiling imo

 

[LuCane]

I am not sure what I see in ur pic, but I agree with general theme. We are playing scared on D and getting torched for it. They are so concerned about x plays that they are willing to concede 10 yard gains. As if 10 yards on third down is a good thing. No dummy...its a first down!!!!!

In the pic, you generally see a defense line up 4 DL and, even stunting, play relative gap control. You see zero blitzing. You see 7 drop back in coverage to spots. Because zones have a tendency to break down within seconds, you see an impossible zone to cover between and including the seams. All an offense needs to do is throw 4 streaks across the formation and there are going to be some massive gaps.

Worse yet, we're yet to see the counter to that, which is send one crossing route or a combination route between a RB and TE underneath. When you see that (and you will), you'll see RBs and shallow crosses run for 15-20 yards before getting touched.

 

[Bicho]

We have tried to press with tracy howard a few times and hes been getting burned. Im all for trying something new cuz what we are watching is horrific. But pressing man to man coverage with zero pass rush and young inexperienced corners doesnt sound to good either. Bicho has spoken. I would rather give up a 75 yard td and go right back on offense than to die a slow painful death every defensive series.

 

[cinimonBun]

I hate this, but you're dead on. We saw this last year.

Most probably hoped this would change this year. It hasn't, and it depresses the **** outta me.

Makes me think Golden's ceiling is Butch, and that may be stretching it.

Butch is an amazing ceiling imo

That's assuming Golden can recruit and develop one of the most talented rosters in football history. His recruiting appears to be fantastic on the surface thus far. His development at Temple was great, but he'll still have to prove it here. Gameday-wise, Butch was a pretty big disaster, and Golden isn't doing anything to make us think he's not deficient in this area as well.

 

[CaneHammer]

Any idea how many times we threw 8 in the box today?

 

[Bicho]

Bicho was also confused by this. Why when they like to run it down our throat do we always have 5 or 6 in the box? They have more blockers than we have crappy players trying to stop them.

 

[mydas77]

I am not sure what I see in ur pic, but I agree with general theme. We are playing scared on D and getting torched for it. They are so concerned about x plays that they are willing to concede 10 yard gains. As if 10 yards on third down is a good thing. No dummy...its a first down!!!!!

In the pic, you generally see a defense line up 4 DL and, even stunting, play relative gap control. You see zero blitzing. You see 7 drop back in coverage to spots. Because zones have a tendency to break down within seconds, you see an impossible zone to cover between and including the seams. All an offense needs to do is throw 4 streaks across the formation and there are going to be some massive gaps.

Worse yet, we're yet to see the counter to that, which is send one crossing route or a combination route between a RB and TE underneath. When you see that (and you will), you'll see RBs and shallow crosses run for 15-20 yards before getting touched.

Oh I get the basics. Its tuff to look at one still mid play and make deductions. Put some gifs together to support the position. I think u are spot on tho.

There were numerous plays where we dropped 8. The math is simple to me. If u cant get there with 4, don't send an easy 5 to block. That's what I see. Teams know what blitz to expect when we can't get pressure with 4

 

[ScubaCane]

We play like a bunch of scared girls, no fire or emotion on D. We never put pressure on the offense, if we re going to get bet we should at least go down swinging

 

[LuCane]

I am not sure what I see in ur pic, but I agree with general theme. We are playing scared on D and getting torched for it. They are so concerned about x plays that they are willing to concede 10 yard gains. As if 10 yards on third down is a good thing. No dummy...its a first down!!!!!

In the pic, you generally see a defense line up 4 DL and, even stunting, play relative gap control. You see zero blitzing. You see 7 drop back in coverage to spots. Because zones have a tendency to break down within seconds, you see an impossible zone to cover between and including the seams. All an offense needs to do is throw 4 streaks across the formation and there are going to be some massive gaps.

Worse yet, we're yet to see the counter to that, which is send one crossing route or a combination route between a RB and TE underneath. When you see that (and you will), you'll see RBs and shallow crosses run for 15-20 yards before getting touched.

Oh I get the basics. Its tuff to look at one still mid play and make deductions. Put some gifs together to support the position. I think u are spot on tho.

There were numerous plays where we dropped 8. The math is simple to me. If u cant get there with 4, don't send an easy 5 to block. That's what I see. Teams know what blitz to expect when we can't get pressure with 4

Don't have the video yet. Stole that still from the ESPN highlights. The play actually resulted in a touchdown down the right seam.

Agreed with the math statement. I said it in another thread. If offense is about Geometry (how you stretch the formations to maximize the field), defense is about arithmetic and geography (numbers and where they're located). I realize that's oversimplification, but it seems like we don't understand or adhere to those basic concepts.

 

[CANE1775]

**** I was more frustrated last year than I am this year. We played this same reactive passive bullshyt a good amount of the time last year and we at least had some talent on defense.

 

[Bicho]

Bicho will say this...he remembers sitting in the ob watching miami play ucla (yes a win) and watching a very young defense with ed reed out there looking helpless all day. Youth makes things difficult. Ideally we would have redshirt juniors and sophmores playing with freshmen learning and developing physically

 

[CaneDaddy]

I am not saying we should blitz every down but at least mix it up to keep the offense guessing. Also, we do not disguise any of our formations. We are either in a base D or we show blitz, wait for the QB to audible, and then blitz anyways.

 

[Jedi Master Cane]

What bothered me more than anything was how simplistic K State's gameplan was and how "Onfrio" (I'm permanently dropping the "D" from his name) failed to adjust to it.

It was plain to see that Snyder gave Klein specific instructions. I'd be willing to bet that had 4-5 "staple" plays installed for this game. Klein would come to the line and audible to one of these 5 plays depending on how our defense aligned to the offensive formation pre-snap. Those 5 plays were:

1. QB Draw (the Tebow special)
2. Off tackle handoff
3. Slants
4. A "Levels" concept where both the outside and slot receiver run a high/low 5-10 yard in pattern.
5. For some strange reason - a reverse

This is pretty much all they ran in the first half. I can't comment on the 2nd half too much cause for the first time in 30 years of watching the Canes I turned the game off in disgust at halfime.

Klein would basically come to the line, count the bodies in the box, and would audible between the some variation of the plays listed above. I was sitting on my couch calling out the QB draws because they were obvious to any moron with half a football IQ. Newsflash...when the opposing team has a QB who is built like a FB who isn't the best passer in the world and they go Shotgun, empty backfield, 5 wide....THEY ARE SPREADING YOU OUT TO RUN THE DRAW.

I don't get paid to analyze or study this crap....if I could see it what the **** was Onfrio thinking?

The gameplan in general was just an abomination and worse than anything I've ever witnessed.

Onfrio isn't the answer. This has nothing to do with personnel or lack of talent.....I can deal with the shortcomings that result from that.....what I'm talking about here is the man's ability to gameplan and adjust on the fly.

Someone explain to me how we didn't jam and crowd the box pre-snap.....even if we weren't blitzing just to discourage the QB draw and force the pass. You can then back out of the 9 man front and play coverage behind it. Instead Onfrio chose to line the D up in a base look all game keeping both safeties 15 yards off the line treating Klein like he's the 2nd coming of Peyton Manning.

Football 101. We're talking elementary concepts here.

I can't even express how disgusted I am right now.

 

[LexCane55]

Its just amazing passive. And honestly were getting burned in zone not just man so Golden can stop claiming that

 

[LuCane]

Some stats I posted in another thread:

One of the worse things to happen to Al Golden today was the performance of the University of Maine. We allowed BC to rack up 40% more yards, 25% more first downs, and nearly 100% more passing yards last week than Maine allowed BC to rack up this week. Too small a sample size, obviously. Can't really transfer one game to another.

But, it raises an eyebrow. Something is wrong there.

 

[CaneDaddy]

Some stats I posted in another thread:

One of the worse things to happen to Al Golden today was the performance of the University of Maine. We allowed BC to rack up 40% more yards, 25% more first downs, and nearly 100% more passing yards last week than Maine allowed BC to rack up this week. Too small a sample size, obviously. Can't really transfer one game to another.

But, it raises an eyebrow. Something is wrong there.

Just want to say that a lot of teams sandbag against teams like Maine, etc. Same thing KSU did last week (maybe this week, lulz). I know where you are going with this but I dont think it is a good comparison.