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So I went back a watched the first half

dk72 said:
That's the only play he made. Any time a receiver takes any sort of angle or makes any move, Richards ends up a few yards away from the WR without the speed or skill to get back into position
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Thank god he took the holding late in the game or Brooks walks into the end zone.
 

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Agree he needs to simplify. I think it’s the donofrio thing where it’s so complicated that they do nothing well. They bust a lot and young guys can’t play it mentally.

Problem is I don’t think he can. The strength of the defense is its multiplicity. When Shannon struggled in 2004 he went back to cover 2 man and righted it. I don’t know that this defense has a front/coverage that can be their anchor. They haven’t proven to be good at anything.
 
Pennmed Canefan said:
Agree he needs to simplify. I think it’s the donofrio thing where it’s so complicated that they do nothing well. They bust a lot and young guys can’t play it mentally.

Problem is I don’t think he can. The strength of the defense is its multiplicity. When Shannon struggled in 2004 he went back to cover 2 man and righted it. I don’t know that this defense has a front/coverage that can be their anchor. They haven’t proven to be good at anything.
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Nice to see you still on the board, Penn. ... Question, why not go base 4-3, cover 2? Essentially Shannon's favorite defense. Use stunts and blitzes on a more targeted basis. Feels like we're getting too cute by half.

Not saying to implement this vs. FSU, since their QBs are so bad the eye candy should work. But I'd prefer a much more conservative look after next Saturday. Thoughts?
 
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simplycanes said:
FSU OL is terrible, just go man under 2 and remove the complexity, we really won’t need it.
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As I just posted above, the irony to me is that this is probably the one week I wouldn't shake things up, because I think the FSU QBs won't have the field awareness to pick up the blitzes and stunts we do.
 
Redmen7805 said:
I think Harris is by far the biggest issue on the team. Not necessarily disagreeing with your analysis. You need a safety that can make-up for mistakes, but with Harris it feels like we are playing ten guys on defense. I like how Roman breaks down film and in the clip below shows what Harris is not doing. Patterson needs to get more reps.

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PennsylvaniaCane said:
Agree. I was focusing more on the front 6. Terrible angle and slow read on that run. Bad read by Wes as well. Saw Patterson got 20 snaps, most of them in the second half I’m assuming.
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Fully agree with your initial post. I've been similarly frustrated by Guidry's instance on near-every-play blitzing and stunting with the front seven because he likes to play pressure defense and get into the backfield, while leaving our weakest unit (DB's) exposed. Among other issues is we get less drop from our LBs than any other defense I watch because one or both of our LBs are generally up at the line of scrimmage trying to get into the backfield. And this puts pressure on the DB unit.

Even this play Roman broke down makes your point. Both Baron and Kiko went into the B gap. That's Guidry's high pressure style of defense where he overloads a gap in hopes of getting a free runner into the backfield. And Louisville burned us with a quick play to the outside.

I have the highest respect for Roman, but I disagree somewhat with him on this play. Jaden Harris certainly didn't play this well, but he was put into conflict. Roman noted that Baron and Kiki both filled the B gap and that left the C gap open. It made the C gap Harris' first responsibility. We can see from the video that Harris made his first move looking to control the C gap but UL's very fast RB bounced it outside our CB making for a high degree of difficulty assignment for Harris. Essentially Harris had C gap responsibility and also outside which is where the play went. That was his conflict. Our DB's aren't capable of making high degree of difficulty plays like this, but that's the position they're regularly put in.

The weakest unit on of defense is our DB's. Yet Guidry's defense puts the most pressure on our weakest unit.
 
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PennsylvaniaCane said:
And I’m not advocating to just line up in a base cover 2. You can blitz and bring some pressure. But his tendencies seem to be figured out.
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I agree 100% that changes need to be made

not sticking up for him or the staff - I will say to me personally, Cal and VT were infinitely more worrisome than yesterday

yesterday there was a kickoff return TD, a fake punt that led to points, an OPI on the goal line that they scored on, a fumble by Fletcher that gave them the ball on our 26, and a bogus PI late in the game when we were playing prevent defense that gave them another score

i think with the context of who we were going against (my personal opinion he's close / equal to ryan day, Sarkisian, kiffin, etc. in play calling) yesterday was pretty good

defense did their part and held them to 38, could have been 24 without that gimme TD fletcher gave them and that bogus PI late in the game on hill that caused them to get a score in garbage time while we were playing prevent
 
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Redmen7805 said:
I think Harris is by far the biggest issue on the team. Not necessarily disagreeing with your analysis. You need a safety that can make-up for mistakes, but with Harris it feels like we are playing ten guys on defense. I like how Roman breaks down film and in the clip below shows what Harris is not doing. Patterson needs to get more reps.

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Williams and Patterson need to get the starts at safety for the rest of the year.
 
grover said:
Nice to see you still on the board, Penn. ... Question, why not go base 4-3, cover 2? Essentially Shannon's favorite defense. Use stunts and blitzes on a more targeted basis. Feels like we're getting too cute by half.

Not saying to implement this vs. FSU, since their QBs are so bad the eye candy should work. But I'd prefer a much more conservative look after next Saturday. Thoughts?
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Because that’s not them. Those old Shannon teams played that to exhaustion and basically perfected it. It had its own issues but that was their foundation. This team doesn’t seem to have a foundation. They could switch and play that but it won’t be great because it’s not what they do. Their strength would be their diversity but it’s not working. I think they’re stuck now because they decided to go at it this way.

They can still scale back but they’re going to be average.
 
Pennmed Canefan said:
Because that’s not them. Those old Shannon teams played that to exhaustion and basically perfected it. It had its own issues but that was their foundation. This team doesn’t seem to have a foundation. They could switch and play that but it won’t be great because it’s not what they do. Their strength would be their diversity but it’s not working. I think they’re stuck now because they decided to go at it this way.

They can still scale back but they’re going to be average.
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Good to see you Pennmed.

I'd take avg now! Among ACC defenses we've been not been avg. Approx halfway through our ACC schedule we are 17th out of 17 ACC defenses in scoring defense against in-conference opponents. Getting up to 8th or 9th would be awesome!
 
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He needs to just go back to basics. The front four is elite and doesn’t need all the extra blitz help. Keep it simple. Play lots of quarters zone and keep the linebackers in the middle of the field (given the offensive formation).
 
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Great read
Kiko is a phone booth LB. Needs to play more traditional MLB and less edge. Yes, he will have to cover sometimes, but minimize that. Popo and Wesley are more than capable of getting in the flats and seams on rb/te
Someone mentioned more zone and 2 deep safties to minimize damage. This could work as well.
Yesterday, missed tackles cost us 10s of yards, maybe 100+ total, the outs were open every play and when we pushed our secondary towards the boundaries, the middle was incomprehensibly open. Insanely open

I like more basic 4-2-5
2 high. Kiko between tackles going downhill filling gaps but sometimes getting depth to get a body in the middle.
Zone underneath w nickle support in deep middle

Honestly I don't know
Coaching and scheme has been poor
Responsibility football has been atrocious
And missed assignments and tackles are just exacerbating it.
 
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