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Thoughts on the D

If you run every scheme don't all players fit your system?

I know it's a rebuilding process but D'Onofrios defense is fvckin god awful. Downright terrible.

Only reason it even improved at Trmple is because 1) Temple moved to the MAAC and 2) they had a really good RB that helped them move the chains and burn time of possession.

We score fast. But we scored fast in the 80s and early 00s as well (usually as a result of our defense, not in spite of it)

Dorito sucks.
 
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DeadPoets said:
Only reason it even improved at Trmple is because 1) Temple moved to the MAAC and 2) they had a really good RB that helped them move the chains and burn time of possession.
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I'm not going to defend Coach D'Onofrio because he needs to start showing us an effective D starting this year (or at the very least, marked improvement), but it's generalizations like this that aren't very accurate and only twisting an argument in one's favor. The reasons Temple improved had everything to do but the coaching... right...
 
Some of the reading comprehension on this site is just deplorable.

No where did I say that playing a 2-gap system is wrong. Nor did i say the scheme doesn't work. In theory it does, and in the NFL, it would probably be very effective.

But these are not professionals. They have to learn their positions. And if you give kids too many things to master, they end up being mediocre at everything. It's simple a fact of time. And so what we have seen in an inability to do anything at a high level bc guys aren't developing quickly as they are having to master too many things at once.

I'd have no issue running a base 3-4 2-gap system. I'd hav no issue running the Bill Young 4-3 zone blitz. But asking kids to do both??? It's absurd.
 
Lets say the defense shows no.improvement. If Golden decides to part ways with Coach D, what D coordinator would you like to have? How about Bud Foster?
 
bAMACANE said:
Lets say the defense shows no.improvement. If Golden decides to part ways with Coach D, what D coordinator would you like to have? How about Bud Foster?
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While Bud Foster would be the greatest coaching coup in history, and I'd fap till the end of time, there is absolutely no way in **** we'd ever get him.
 
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DeadPoets said:
GoldenShowers said:
bAMACANE said:
Lets say the defense shows no.improvement. If Golden decides to part ways with Coach D, what D coordinator would you like to have? How about Bud Foster?
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While Bud Foster would be the greatest coaching coup in history, and I'd fap till the end of time, there is absolutely no way in **** we'd ever get him.
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Ummmmm why? That's a dumb comment.
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Foster's been at Virginia Tech forever and he's reportedly been offered head coaching jobs numerous times in which he's turned them down. He may be a coach in waiting at VT after Beamer leaves. Why would he turn down head coaching gigs left and right then take an assistant job at Miami?
 
LOLOL @ being a dumb comment that Bud Foster would ever leave VT for any other job than what he has. Do you follow this sport at all?
 
GoldenShowers said:
LOLOL @ being a dumb comment that Bud Foster would ever leave VT for any other job than what he has. Do you follow this sport at all?
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Do you? Crazy **** happens every year in the coaching merry go round. To say Bud Foster would NEVER come here is retarded.
 
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DeadPoets said:
GoldenShowers said:
LOLOL @ being a dumb comment that Bud Foster would ever leave VT for any other job than what he has. Do you follow this sport at all?
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Do you? Crazy **** happens every year in the coaching merry go round. To say Bud Foster would NEVER come here is retarded.
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Right, never say never. Let's hope Rex Ryan can coach our D after bud Foster becomes our head coach. Hopefully he'll bring Butch to coach DL, and Ray Lewis to coach LBs!
 
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DeadPoets said:
NVA CANE said:
This is Goldens defensive philosophy as well. It's not all on Dorito
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That's scary to think about.
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Golden had a top 20 defense at Virginia. He had the same with "Dorito" running the show at Temple. Both teams showed huge improvement in their third year. ****, they've already had a top 20 defense in their first year here, and I think they're bringing in more talent than we had in 09. They've both proved they can produce with suitable talent/experience. Lets be patient and not buy into message board coaching gurus just yet.
 
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I guess it's not too difficult to see how we could go from 17th to 83rd in scoring defense losing these guys from 2011:

Vernon
Ojomo
Regis
Robinson
Smith
Forston
Spence
Futch
Nicolas
Armstrong
Williams
Chambers

The talent wasn't there in 2012, but the scheme didn't look great at times. There were major breakdowns everywhere and not a ton of improvement from September to November. Still, it would be foolish not to expect a significant spike in production in 2013.
 
GoldenShowers said:
What I'm really seeing from this D is that we are jack of all trades master of none.

Our front is asked to do so many different things, that they don't excel at any of them. I heard people constantly say "I want to see an attacking DL"...."play single gap".

But when we do exactly that, we don't execute. We are slow to get off, and don't exhibit any speed.

When we play two gap, we mostly just create a wall right in front of the pocket, but we leave massive cut back lanes and no passrush.

I get that NFL teams do both, but honestly only the very best ones do, and those who do usually do it with sub packages on third and long.

Constantly switching fronts down after down is just not something I understand anymore.

Take that Duke big run. What you see there is a 4-3 under, it's really a 2 gap 3-4. And what you have is every DL crashing, leaving an OLB on an island with the TE. McCord is so concerned with contain that he allows a massive cutback lane. But bc we are in a 4-3, it's not an ILB asked to fill, but a freaking flat footed CB who stands zero chance.

Now we can say "well they had a guy to make the play", but it's a nonsensicle way of defending the run.

Want to play 2gap? Run a 3-4, keep it simple. Want to play single gap? Stop wasting precious practice time on 2gap principles and get guys to get up field! These aren't professionals.
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IMO everyone needs to have ALOT of patience when talking about the defense..... I was hard on D'onofrio last year too but I think he knows what he's doing. The OP said he believes the defense is too complicated which I agree with but i think about how beneficial that will be in the long run. When it's time for a lot of these guys to impress NFL teams for a job our players are going to already come in knowing what those coaches are putting in front of them.... unlike what the Packers DB coach said about Sam Shields when he 1st got to Green Bay. Now as far as the kind of success this defensive approach is going to have on the college football level goes, i still think the best is yet to come.

Obviously D'onofrio's defense needs to show significant improvement from last year, which i think it will.... but dont expect a top 25 defense. Reality is UM's defense is probably 2 years behind the offense.... Golden's "1st" class are Juniors and if you want to be technical about it, the current group of sophomores was his real 1st recruiting class. When you mention the top defenses in CFB the main thing they have is veteran talent. 95% of our recruiting class last year would've been redshirted if this was Bama. Most of the elite defenses have redshirt Seniors and Juniors who are there best players and every time they matriculate it's another redshirt junior there to fill the spot... that's why i agree that yeah it's true the only way D'onofrio's defense is going to work is with a majority upperclassmen defense, but that is also the reason it's going to work. If the juniors on this team all comeback for their Senior years this defense can be a top 10 unit, IMO.

Also let me say what seems to be lost in all this fuss about how certain ppl look or the team looks in the Spring practices and Game is the actual point of it all.... the point is about individual player development and team development. This time last year Miami looked like it was headed for a winless season.... this team looked like **** on a wall during the spring. But then the players took from that and made substantial progress before last season started. It's all about progress I feel really good seeing that this team already looks better then last years (7-5) team and they are going to be even better by the time football starts back up in the summer. Miami is know running a real football program where guys are being held accountable and know what they need to do to continue to push forward.
 
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I think it's less complexity than it is talent.

DL talent last year was 30-year bad. Will be interesting to see if/how much improvement occurs this season.
 
From what I saw of this defense, I thought there were two major coaching errors. One was the desire to do too many things as has been discussed in this thread. The second is a desire to play too many guys. Donofrio seems to be hellbent on being multiple defensively which is fine by me. However, I do consider it fairly mandatory to be good at *something.* Whether that's Stoops' spin zone or Saban's cover 1 or Shannon's 2 deep man or quarters or whatever you want, you need *something* that you can apply week to week and rely upon as a base. If you don't have that, you have nothing and offenses will spin you out of control while you call more and more crap. Donofrio didn't have that last year--I guess the closest thing to it seemed to be cover 3 which was painfully stoic and bland because guys weren't that good at it. Had they really focused on this as their primary defense, they probably would've gotten better at reading route combinations and squeezing lanes making it harder on the offense through repetition. Regarding the latter issue, it's fairly inexplicable why every game featured mass substitutions **** near all the time, and it likely stunted the growth of some young guys that could've used the reps but instead were watching the Cornelius and Highsmith's and Telemaque's of the world toil around. I understand the idea of subbing in for tired players, but that is not what we did. We subbed massively even in the first couple drives of the game, indicating that we were subbing because we WANTED to and not because we NEEDED to. There's not a great rationale for that IMO.

This is not to say that we should've had some top 20 defense absent the coaching--talent was the biggest problem. But, I would've liked to have seen some improvement such that by the end of the year teams like Duke weren't scoring 50 on our defense. As we move to this year, it's the same old thing. I think that it's an error to try to apply more and more and more things because the guys are "experienced" because they still haven't proven to be good at anything. Last I saw it our defense sucked, so I can't figure how we can start doing a bunch more things. I would also hope that they shorten the rotation. Guys like Perryman and Bush and their #1 corner and Pierre don't need to come off the field every 2 downs just because it looks pretty.
 
Pennmed Canefan said:
From what I saw of this defense, I thought there were two major coaching errors. One was the desire to do too many things as has been discussed in this thread. The second is a desire to play too many guys. Donofrio seems to be hellbent on being multiple defensively which is fine by me. However, I do consider it fairly mandatory to be good at *something.* Whether that's Stoops' spin zone or Saban's cover 1 or Shannon's 2 deep man or quarters or whatever you want, you need *something* that you can apply week to week and rely upon as a base. If you don't have that, you have nothing and offenses will spin you out of control while you call more and more crap. Donofrio didn't have that last year--I guess the closest thing to it seemed to be cover 3 which was painfully stoic and bland because guys weren't that good at it. Had they really focused on this as their primary defense, they probably would've gotten better at reading route combinations and squeezing lanes making it harder on the offense through repetition. Regarding the latter issue, it's fairly inexplicable why every game featured mass substitutions **** near all the time, and it likely stunted the growth of some young guys that could've used the reps but instead were watching the Cornelius and Highsmith's and Telemaque's of the world toil around. I understand the idea of subbing in for tired players, but that is not what we did. We subbed massively even in the first couple drives of the game, indicating that we were subbing because we WANTED to and not because we NEEDED to. There's not a great rationale for that IMO.

This is not to say that we should've had some top 20 defense absent the coaching--talent was the biggest problem. But, I would've liked to have seen some improvement such that by the end of the year teams like Duke weren't scoring 50 on our defense. As we move to this year, it's the same old thing. I think that it's an error to try to apply more and more and more things because the guys are "experienced" because they still haven't proven to be good at anything. Last I saw it our defense sucked, so I can't figure how we can start doing a bunch more things. I would also hope that they shorten the rotation. Guys like Perryman and Bush and their #1 corner and Pierre don't need to come off the field every 2 downs just because it looks pretty.
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Standing ovation for this post.

As an add on, I believe the substitution craze is the direct result of the desire to be so multiple on every **** down. They have a million packages. Every package they are trying to fit different personnel into. This is very familiar to me from the NFL.

As a (unfortunate) Jets fan, I've watched what an NFL multiple defense looks like via Rex. It's obviohsly a stout D, but these guys are fully developed pros with a million coaches and practice hours, run by a guy whose dad invented the overload blitz and "safety in the box".

It's not working here. It's like when Charlie Weis thought he'd outscheme everyone with an NFL playbook. What ended up happening is his teams were overwhelmed and never played fast within the system, rendering it useless.
 
South Florida kids are built for m2m defense. Great coaches would adapt to that (similar to how Erickson did when he got on campus)
 
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