If giving Manny way to much credit. I mean way to much. I mean, after seeing a bunch of 90th and 80th ranked defense I guess the first guess DC who manged to put us back in the top 40 on defense would be crowned the goat or something. Keep in mind most of Randy Shannon's defenses were in the top 30 and your praising someone who fields a statically worse defense then Randy did.
Our defense was average overall in most categories. We're only good at getting TFL and sacks because of Manny's reckless blitzing. Being a top QTR defense in the SEC is something but the ACC? Stop.. There is only 4 teams in the ACC that's capable of fielding a good defenses (Us, Clemson, FSU, and VT) on a yearly basis.
This defense is not a championship defense. You only make the championship with this defense if A) Your schedule is hot garbage or B) You have Oklahoma's offense last year. See Wisconsin, see Virginia, see Toledo, see Bethune Cook-man, see Pitt, see Clemson. ****, Clemson should of made it perfectly clear our defense was average at best. What happen when we weren't sacking the QB? We let a QB who had only thrown 11 TD going into the game look like Deshaun Waston. Then when that same QB played a real defense he looked like division 3 QB. Manny's defense got Benkurt on an NFL team because he was meh at best but he torn up Manny's defense then went on to play like dog crap vs VT (didn't even score a point) and Navy (only scored 7)
I'm not to sure about the developing either. I've only seen 2 guys somewhat develop last year. McCloud has regress like no other player on the team. Shaq and Pinckney were running into wrong gaps until it was finally corrected by game 6 in their SECOND year. We've heard nothing about the guys behind them. We don't teach our LBs to reroute WR/TEs like any LB coach would(same can be said about our CB). We don't get enough proper depth in our pass coverage (which is why the middle is so open). We line up our safeties in key west effectively leaving the middle of the field wide open for exploitation.
Your overrating Manny as a DC because he isn't throwing out 90th ranked defenses out there.
