Through 3 FBS games (FCS games excluded), Miami ranks 9th in scoring defense (10.7 PPG) and 10th in yards per play defense (3.9). Lance Guidry met with reporters to discuss the defense and the upcoming game against Virginia Tech:
On Meesh Powell: He's played really well. He's graded out well each week. Tackles well. Seems to be always in the right spot. Kind of calms the storm. Came up big with an interception at a crucial time. I think him and Harris are really playing well together.
On D’Yoni Hill: He came out of fall camp with a little bit of a hamstring, and he's back healthy again. He was flying around out there, and he'll continue to get better. This game means a lot to him. You can tell by the way he plays.
On the second half adjustments: We didn't do too much things different, really. In the first half, they were doing some things where they were rubbing us and picking us, and so we started switching some things off with the motion coming across. It's like playing against basketball teams. So if they got guys that shoot from three-point land, you can't play zone. You’ve got to go play man, because you’ve got to take it away. With that, you're going to get screens. So are you going to switch and go over the top of the screen, or are you going to switch the screens off? So it was a little bit of that, a little bit of a chess match. They kind of figured out what we were doing, and they countered, and then we had to counter back.
The biggest point was our D-line started to wear on their offensive linemen, and we started getting back to the quarterback. I think that affected them. We had a good game plan. They know what to go to when they see it. But a long time ago a coach told me, if you took a formation, you draw it right down the middle, you’ve got to have enough guys on this side to defend and enough guys on this side to defend. As soon as you don't have enough, they're going to get you in the run game.
So it's the same thing the other night when they spread us out real wide. We had two guys covering, and we had a post safety, and everybody else was in the box, because you’ve got to stop the run first. We knew they wanted to run the football. That's kind of where they start, so we had a bend but don't break mentality on the back end with the passing game. We gave up 15 points. I wish we could have played a couple routes a little bit different, but the guys got a little tired. I thought we put up a good effort.
On whether “halftime adjustments” are overstated: This is what I’ve found. Through my years – this is just my experience, not anybody else's – but you look at film and you watch it and you have a plan of how you're going to stop it. And when you come out to play against them, they're not going to do that. They're going to have something else. So you have to be able to fix the problems before halftime. If you fix the problems before halftime, they'll probably go back to the things you saw on film. If you haven't stopped the problems, then your job as a coordinator is to fix the problems at half, because they're coming back to it.
Once you fix the problem, they'll go back to what you've seen on film. And to me, that's where you make your money as a coordinator. You don't make it on the weekends. You have to be able to game plan, but you also have to be able to adjust in-game and know exactly what to go to by what they're doing. And a lot of times that comes from experience of just seeing it. To tell you the truth, my high school experience has probably helped me more than any of my college experience. Because you start off defending option football, Wing-T, empty, you see everything in high school. Everybody copy cats, and you'll see one offense one week and you never see that offense again. So that's kind of where you cut your teeth as a coach, I found. That's my track, anyway.
On Rueben Bain: Rueben's getting close, and Rueben's a good leader. He's very mature. He wants to get back, and he's seeing a lot of guys play, and when he gets back healthy, he'll be back in the mix like he's supposed to be. I can't wait to get him back. I think he'll come back at the right time. When that is. I don't know, but he's getting closer and closer.
On Virginia Tech: They're dangerous. The quarterback's a really good athlete. He can throw it deep. He can also run. The running back, number 33 (Bhayshul Tuten), is really fast. He breaks tackles. He's a short guy, but he's really strong. They have a wide receiver, 83 (Jaylin Lane), who can really run. The tight end, they involve him in a lot of the passing games. So they have four guys. They have more than that, but those are the four focal points of their offense. They do a lot of quarterback run stuff. We’ll be a little bit different this week because they present different problems. We're trying to work through that right now.
On whether USF’s running QB helped them prepare for VT: It's totally different. They're not a spread-type offense like the Baylors of old. They're more power read, a lot of motions involved, play action off of it. It's a different formation. It's a little bit tighter sets, not as open. It's a little bit different strategy on offense. So, we have to be a little different on defense.
On the improved communication in the secondary: They're familiar with the system. Even though Meesh came in and had to learn the system, it was like something else he had learned. Of course, Harris was his second year in, Markeith, Porter. Corners don't have as much to learn as the safeties. But then you have the backers, that's the brain trust as well. So we have more guys familiar with the defense than last year, and that plays into it.
The first year is always tough, because not only what you put in and install, each week there might be a wrinkle, and sometimes that's tough. I just think we know the defense a little bit better. So we're able to look at the offenses and really diagnose what they're doing. Don't have to think about what we're doing as much.
On whether the communication is as clean as it looks: Sometimes it's fooling, man. Sometimes you think, “God, that was a great play. God, he messed up. That wasn't even it.” It's kind of like the Harris play against Florida. Everybody thought he was wrong, but he was covering the man tight end. Our backer didn't come off the edge, so he looked like he made a mistake, but he didn't.
You look at every year at the end of the year, you look at cut ups and you look at your calls that you made and you try to find calls that look right. There's always something wrong with a call. But that's defensive football. If you play hard, sometimes you're supposed to be in a gap, but the ball didn't go there. You get out of your gap and you run. I always say the ball is the issue, and it's like that forever on defense. Your guards will take you to a play, but you can't go until the running back goes there. They’re just an indicator which way you should go.
On how they were able to get a third-quarter shutout: Communication. We probably solve problems a little bit quicker on defense, and that's not just because of experience with our players or me. Our coaches also know what we're doing. There's not a lot of times we have to meet together.
Jason knows exactly what we're going to do with the defensive front once we put the game plan in. D-Nick knows exactly what we're going to do with the linebacker position. And then he says, Lance, “What if they do this? Can we tweak it like this?” I say, “Yeah.” Chevis has been with me before, so we know the defense better as a staff, which helps us on game day be able to change at an instant like that. JT said, Lance, “How about this?” I said, “Go with it. Let it play.”
So it's just kind of how we communicate now because they know what I want and what my vision is, and they work from within that. Plus, their experience from being other places has also helped me as well, putting things into my system or our system.
On the third down defense: We're able to do a little bit more than we did last year, just from the personnel we have. Last week was probably our hardest. We got in a lot of third and mediums because of their tempo. I thought they had a really good third down plan against us. We were a little bit simpler on third and medium. The key is to get to third and long. Third and long, a little bit better. We gave up a big one. We were supposed to be in a certain coverage, and we blew it, which got them down there, but we ended up stopping that series.
But I think that we're able to do a little bit more, and we'll be able to communicate a little bit better this year. So we'll see down the stretch. We hadn’t even gotten to conference play yet, so it's our first one, and we need to play well.
On defending USF’s slot receivers: When a guy moves, you can't press him. Sometimes you'll look at film, you say, “Oh, he can't get off a press.” But sometimes if they feel like a guy can't get off a press, they'll back him off and let him be the motion guy where he won't get pressed. So he has more access to get releases.
[Sean Atkins] was really good. I felt like he was gonna get some plays, but if we got him down and made him restart again, eventually they would run out. And as you saw, once he got closer to the goal, they ran out of space, and they had nowhere to go. They kept drowning out on their series and kicking field goals. Guy hit every dang field goal, it seemed like.
But yeah, that was our philosophy. Stop the run, keep the ball in front of us, and tackle. And we knew it was gonna go fast, but you cannot simulate that speed. You can't simulate how tired you're going to be and when you're going to be able to get off the field, because you can only get off the field during a dead ball or when they switch personnel. So sometimes the D-line was looking to the side, it wasn't for the calls, it was, “Coach come get me.” So it was fast, but I thought we did a good job. Playing those type of offenses is like an option. You can't simulate it until you get out there and get in a rhythm and start playing against it.
On Myles Mooyoung’s interception: It's awesome. I'm a former walk-on. Probably a lot of people don't know that. I walked on at McNeese in my second year. I was a starter, so I ended up starting four years, and I was a walk-on. When a walk-on comes in a game and makes a play, I know exactly how it feels. Everybody was excited. You could tell how everybody was excited because that guy puts in a lot of work, and he's made plays at practice. So we were all excited for him.
On the impact of USF’s pace: What they were doing, you can't get a guy off. You can't get them off until it's a dead ball or they throw the ball out of bounds on their sideline where they're supposed to stand over it. That was the only time you could get them off. So you’re stuck in those series. Everybody used to have a big, big, big nose tackle. Now, because of the way the game is played, you don't need that big guy because it's hard to get him off the field against a team like that. So there's really no place for them. Now, you need them against the 12 personnel teams and things like that. But it's hard to get guys on and off when they're going that fast.
On the importance of the home crowd: It’s always good when you're home. Of course, you want to play in front of big crowds (like the last two road games), but you just play different at home. You play with more emotion on defense. You tend to play with a little bit more pep in your step. You tend to run harder to the football. We usually hear them on third downs. So it's always good.
It's harder for us to communicate sometimes on third down to make checks. But it's always good to play home, and it's good to play in front of a packed house. I'm sure the more we win, they'll keep coming. We’ve just got to do our part as coaches and players and just keep winning.
