What design element accounts for missed tackles and our DL being manhandled at times. Come on! Our Tackle got tossed like a rag doll. Our kids just have to get better. We’re in a race to get better. That’s it.
Convince me that I'm wrong: Our defense has been bad
- Thread starter Morrischiano
- Start date
Yeah, but that didn't keep us from losing those games! Oh, wait.......................
People are acting as if we lost to VT and Washington. Strange.
Bend but don’t break eventually breaks if we don’t get turnovers. The Washington game is such an anomaly because they outgained us by 200 yards and committed zero turnovers, yet they lost.
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And knelt down inside the 5 or so to end the game at VT...
The VT and Wash QB are supposed to be the darlings of CFB- and we held both to their lowest scores. Let's do the same for Nebraska and see where it leads us
I think I saw somewhere Washington had more than 2x the number of 4* and above players than we had. Have not confirmed that stat though.
They had some very talented players. The QB, WRs and RBs were all really good. GS pointed that out in his pre-game press conference, and he wasn't blowing smoke up our butts about that this time.
we had the usual idiots saying washington sucks schiano blowing smoke and he could make little sisters of the poor sound tough to beat. he has lost his share of games so he is not blowing smoke.
Anyone that watched the game has the eyeball test- Washington has a very solid team.
I expected U-Dub to be one of the worst teams in the B1G this year, not because they have lousy players. They have a new coach and massive player turnover.
I give the Huskies a ton of credit - they were a lot better than I expected. However, they committed a bunch of penalties as would be expected by an inexperienced crew.
I give the Huskies a ton of credit - they were a lot better than I expected. However, they committed a bunch of penalties as would be expected by an inexperienced crew.
It's a misleading stat. They were playing from behind and pushing, we were playing with a lead and being conservative (e.g. punting on 4th and 1 on their 49). We clearly decided we weren't going to get beat deep which opened up the midgame. The yardage stats include two drives where we went ultra conservative to kill the clock at the end.
Take away a couple of breaks, spot UW a score early and take away one of ours, and we start taking chances and they go conservative.
It wasn't a great performance by our D. But it wasn't terrible and I think people are overreacting to the yardage numbers in particular.
Tech only scored 23 on us and 34 against Miami a likely playoff team?
i think people forgot that we won. reading the comments you would think we lost.
Washington did a good job moving the ball on us, and it wasn't just total yardage. They averaged 7.1 yards per carry and 8.5 yards per pass. They got themselves into scoring position several times and came away empty after their kicker went 1-3 inside of 50 yards (career average coming into the game was 86% from <50)... and they gifted us an extra 7 points after we got our FG stuffed at the end of the 1st half.
Washington was a very good team that had a handful of high impact moments go against them. I'm glad we don't have to play them again.
I didn’t read all the responses to the OP so I apologize if any of this has been said but….. our defense is definitely not what we expected. I do think the redzone defense has been good but it’s because all of our defense is condensed at that point and the secondary is closer to the LOS. When we’re in the middle of the field I feel like our DB’s are just preventing big throwing plays….. I think our real issue is the D Line isn’t getting penetration and when they do they’re missing the tackle for the sack. I saw Lewis attempt to sack Rogers and narrowly missed him. That woulda been a huge sack for a loss. Then the QB finds a receiver and they get a 1st down. I think the D Line getting penetration is the main issue, and not the secondary….
Aaron Lewis is playing good, the personnel we have are capable of playing better. They just have to execute. I hope Rutgers can get a good pass rush right away vs Nebraska, and mess with their QBs head to see a pass rush when it isn't really there. Have to make him misfire on throws.
Not exactly. The problem with the defense is too many quick outs by our offense. Once we had leads against VT and Washington the offense turned even more vanilla and predictable. As soon as the D got off the field they often came right back on.
I apologize if this was already discussed, but I think the issue in defense struggles can be summed up in two words...Mo Toure! His absence has drastically weakened our defense. I rewatched the bowl game vs Miami. Mo seemed to be in every play and tackle. He was a menace to Miami. Put in a healthy MO and our D would be top notch.
I agree with all of this in terms of our D, getting lucky on the FG misses (this was their first game in a hostile environment so that might have had an impact), and getting another change on the FG block (getting the TD).
Oddly (for us), the misleading part of the yardage disparity was on offensive production, not the D. We stopped throwing the ball and played to “not lose” when we started the second half up 14-3 and then again when we took a 21-10 lead. Had we been playing from behind in the second half we would have almost certainly netted significant lay more yards.
We’re winning because our offense is effective and we have only coughed up the ball twice in 4 games.
Time of possession was virtually identical.
And against Tech, it was nearly the teams all time high.
They shouldn’t be gassed.
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In the end it was. Not in the middle when the comebacks happened. Someone else posted that there was a stretch in the UW game when we were outgained 290+ to 7 yards. Take a guess how long each team had the ball during that span.
I don’t know the exact numbers but in terms of the win probability - there is some ESPN stat circulating around about us winning despite a metric probability of 3% to pull it off. The D was anything but pretty; however, at the same time, I do think the context of blending the full game stats together are somewhat deceiving. Our odds of winning the game were very high at the point in time when the disparity in yardage built up. We had an 11 point lead and then when it dwindled down to 3 the game was winding down. It’s also misleading to bunch the last FG “miss” with the others as it was a 55 yard attempt. Making it from that far out is a long shot for any kicker. That miss itself wasn’t “bad luck”. Washington should’ve tried a Hail Mary IMO.
On that Hail Mary- I can’t see how so many think VT guy had that ball in control.
There was a play earlier where they did make a bogus holding call on the OL that called back a TD though. I think I saw that somewhere.
VTech and Udub have very good offense! That is why RU defense doesn’t look as good! D will be fine
From a strategic standpoint I had a great conversation about how Rutgers purposely played very deep to give up underneath routes to areas that they could swarm. Essentially they rotated coverages in order to forces passes to an open man they wanted the ball to go to.
We missed some tackles in the run, but the run did not kill us. In my opinion 3 plays kept them in the game offensively. The missed tackle underneath for the long Boston TD, the blown coverage on the other Boston TD and the beautiful completion to the vertical down the sideline.
We missed some tackles in the run, but the run did not kill us. In my opinion 3 plays kept them in the game offensively. The missed tackle underneath for the long Boston TD, the blown coverage on the other Boston TD and the beautiful completion to the vertical down the sideline.
I wonder if we'll see the same coverage approach this week. Because Nebraska has some very big WRs. Wouldn't want to regularly let them get behind our DBs or things will get ugly fast. Especially if we continue to struggle to get to the QB.
And due to size/weight differences, our DBs might have a hard time jamming them at the LOS, which seems like it would be the opposite end of the spectrum insofar as strategies to contain great WRs.
I am honestly expecting to see more blitz and stunts than we have seen all week with help over the top. A lot of their offense is jump ball verticals and not necessarily check down reads. So the faster we can force the ball out of their QBs hands the better. I also think their OL will be significantly worse than Washington.
Raiola is legit, but he is still a freshmen. He diagnoses things really well so my goal would be contain him and punch him in the mouth and make him beat me with dink and dunk and underneath stuff.
That used to be a favorite approach of GS's defenses, so I won't be surprised to see it happen. But isn't the risk of that approach that (a) other coaches also know that GS used to really like doing that so, (b) opponents will game plan plenty of short slants, crossing routes, and screens to make us pay when we do it?
I have a crappy memory. But I recall some games in the GS1 era where being super aggressive on D helped us to crush other teams' offenses for wins. And I also recall some games where we were super aggressive on D and the opponent used it against us very effectively.
So my question is, doesn't being very aggressive about going after the QB put added pressure on the LBs who have been a bit off their game so far this season?
As a Nebraska fan, they have done a lot underneath. Nebraska does a lot of shallow crosses that have been successful when they don't get picks called. Many times they run them behind the line of scrimmage and run a pick route. The ball comes out very fast. You see a lot of the deep stuff on highlights but they run a ton of touch pass slants also.
Wait so we are only good if TOP is 45 a game? Every time the offense in on the field, they need to drive down the field? Be realistic.
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