Defense

BigRedBuster

BigRedBuster

International Man of Mystery
Pardon me if I missed a thread talking about this. But, it seems like pretty much all the threads right now are concentrating on the offense. Not a problem with that because they definitely had their issues on Saturday.

But, what the hell happened to our defense. We went into the game with a fairly decent defense. We came out allowing them to put up 238 yards rushing, 352 yards passing for 590 yards total and 62 points.

Our tackling was absolutely pathetic and quite frankly reminded me of a Cosgrove defense. Sometimes we were simply out "athleted". But, sometimes it just looked like our players threw fundamentals completely out.

A prime example was the jump pass TD to #4. Our defender was standing in a position that even if he were a total stud 5* recruit, he still wouldn't have been able to make the play. Another one was a long pass for a TD where the safety kind of went up and lightly pushed the guy instead of wrapping up and tackling.

I'm actually more frustrated right now with our defense than our offense.

 
I understand being more frustrated cuz that performance was just so unexpected. but on the other side, our defense has been carrying us for a month. So folks are more apt to give em a mulligan on this one. While the past month's of offensive woes really came to a head saturaday night.

Two of their scores were pick sixes. not a big deal, but just something to keep in mind when railing on the defense.

I'm over discussing this game exlusively. More back on the big picture/program stuff. This game just needs washed and the film thrown in the fire pit.

 
I think this game was some kind of a punctuation mark on Bo's lacking quarterback recruiting (referring *mainly* to how far off Fyfe is even from Armstrong), and a lot of frustration was vented around this.

I don't have any fancy analysis for what happened on defense though. We sucked out loud.

 
BigRedBuster said:
Pardon me if I missed a thread talking about this. But, it seems like pretty much all the threads right now are concentrating on the offense. Not a problem with that because they definitely had their issues on Saturday.

But, what the hell happened to our defense. We went into the game with a fairly decent defense. We came out allowing them to put up 238 yards rushing, 352 yards passing for 590 yards total and 62 points.

Our tackling was absolutely pathetic and quite frankly reminded me of a Cosgrove defense. Sometimes we were simply out "athleted". But, sometimes it just looked like our players threw fundamentals completely out.

A prime example was the jump pass TD to #4. Our defender was standing in a position that even if he were a total stud 5* recruit, he still wouldn't have been able to make the play. Another one was a long pass for a TD where the safety kind of went up and lightly pushed the guy instead of wrapping up and tackling.

I'm actually more frustrated right now with our defense than our offense.
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To be fair, they only gave up 48 points.
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But zero stops! ZERO. Just think about that. Even giving up 408 yards rushing to one player and getting woodshedded by Wisconsin in 2014, we forced 3 punts and 4 fumbles. ZERO STOPS.

 
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QMany said:
BigRedBuster said:
Pardon me if I missed a thread talking about this. But, it seems like pretty much all the threads right now are concentrating on the offense. Not a problem with that because they definitely had their issues on Saturday.

But, what the hell happened to our defense. We went into the game with a fairly decent defense. We came out allowing them to put up 238 yards rushing, 352 yards passing for 590 yards total and 62 points.

Our tackling was absolutely pathetic and quite frankly reminded me of a Cosgrove defense. Sometimes we were simply out "athleted". But, sometimes it just looked like our players threw fundamentals completely out.

A prime example was the jump pass TD to #4. Our defender was standing in a position that even if he were a total stud 5* recruit, he still wouldn't have been able to make the play. Another one was a long pass for a TD where the safety kind of went up and lightly pushed the guy instead of wrapping up and tackling.

I'm actually more frustrated right now with our defense than our offense.
Click to expand...
To be fair, they only gave up 48 points.
default_overhere.gif


But zero stops! ZERO. Just think about that. Even giving up 408 yards to one player and getting woodshedded by Wisconsin in 2014, we forced 3 punts and 4 fumbles. ZERO STOPS.
Click to expand...
...........and 3 less points. f#*k it all.

 
I think our defense had been looking better than they actually were do to playing lesser competition and poor offenses.

We haven't been very good against the run all year - currently #85 in yards per rush allowed.

Out tackling had been OK but we hadn't really faced much for great athletes since the Oregon game.

We had faced the #117, 46, 22, 96, 121, 35, 58 and 101 offenses in the country (average: 74.5) before Saturday and the #22 team (Oregon) was missing their top yards-from-scrimmage player for most of the game.

They had also been helped out by our offense that had been a Top 10 in the country in Time of Possession before Saturday, limiting opponent's opportunities.

But specific to Saturday, Ohio State took advantage of our not very good run defense and soft coverage. As you said, I have no idea why we were playing 10 yards off the receiver when they had the ball on the 2 yard line. Our underneath coverage has been terrible all year - most teams just weren't taking advantage of it. tOSU did. At one point ABC had the graphic that Barret had thrown short (under 15 yards) 30 times and completed 22 of them. At that time he had only thrown deep four times with the 75 yard TD being the only completion. So they knew they could just take the easy underneath throws and move down the field.

Our stats look better in yards allowed per game (#35) but not very good in yards per play (#59). We had been good at limiting teams number of plays (#28 in the country in fewest plays faced) but when we ran up against a team that had decent offensive talent (well above average in this case), we couldn't stop them.

 
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I do not think the defense played well from the start, but you need to also consider a few things.

Our offense didn't move the ball at all after Tommy went down. Our defense basically played the entirety of the 2nd half.

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NU First Drive: Pick 6 on 3rd play.

NU 2nd Drive: 15 plays, Field Goal

OSU First Drive: Starts at OSU 43 yard line. Defense gave up on average 5-yard per play, with big conversions coming on 3rd and 20. TD

NU 3rd Drive: 5 plays, Punt

OSU 2nd Drive: 9 plays, TD. Again, couldn't stop the run. Big penalties.

NU 4th Drive: 3 and out

OSU 3rd Drive: 9 plays, FG. Started at our own 31, so this is actually a good stop.

Score at this point is 3-24 TOSU

NU 5th Drive. We go 3 and out again, but are given a gift from the OSU return and recover a fumble. Tommy drives into field goal range and goes out on the sideline. We fail a 4th down conversion.

At this point, if Tommy doesn't go out, it's possible it becomes a 10-24 ball game. Completely manageable. Instead, we go out on downs on the OSU 15 yards, and they drive 85 yards over 15 plays for a TD.

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I'm sure the defense was pretty deflated at this point. Instead of being down 14 in a manageable situation, we're down 28 without our best play maker on offense.

This also opens up the playbook for OSU. They're basically able to snowball their lead, including taking bigger risk on offense.

I had mentioned earlier in a post last week that tOSU likely features the best offense that we've seen, so I'm not surprised that our defense didn't perform as well as they have been. Couple that with everything else, and yeah, they look terrible.

 
TOP was NU roughly 22 minutes and OSU roughly 38 minutes.........

MRI had his worst game. EVER. He had at least 3 opportunities to tackle and make the stop to possibly force a punt. He got trucked.

No idea why (and we never do) play an aggressive bump and run at the LOS. Did I mention I miss Marvin Sander?

 
The moment was too big for them and instead of rising to the occasion they wilted. We've seen this since 2010, so it's probably not much more than that. The surprise was I thought Riley had gotten them to turn a corner, but I guess some of those self-destructive tendencies linger in their collective conscience.

 
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Our Defense forgot how to tackle. Our Defense was put into positions that made it impossible to make a sound play. Our Defense basically played the entire 2nd half and was gassed from the get go.

 
Bankers defense has always struggled against the spread offense. It wasn't surprising Ohio State ran all over his us. Oregon ran all over Bankers D for the last 7 years while he was at Oregon State. This year, Oregon isn't very good, so we got a few stops. As long as Banker is our defensive coordinator, athletic spread teams will put up big points on us. On the bright side, his defensive scheme works well against pro style offenses. Unfortunately, those are becoming less and less common.

 
Yeah as long as Banker is here well you're going to keep getting what you're (we're) getting. I will say OSU probably put there most complete game together against Nebraska but still.

 
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Mike Rose missed 2 easy plays that resulted in first down conversions that resulted in TD's. This helped open the floodgate. I like Rose and he has made some plays this year, but he struggled against OSU.

 
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