Rewatched Game- Defensive Thoughts

[admo]

Does anyone else think that Bando had just as good a game or even better game than Santos!?

Based on his comment about it, I'd say Pelini thought Bando outplayed Santos.

I thought Santos looked a little stiff out there and somewhat hesitant.

 

[The King]

You mean to say... the sky isn't falling?

Boy, after the game the reactions I was getting from comments made it sound like we were going to be 1-11.

As far as Bando/Santos... I think Bando is slowly going to start seeing more 1st team reps in practice...

 

[Chaddyboxer]

Bando, Zaire and Gerry = SPEEEEEEEED

Funny thing is...if Santos isn't so tentative...he's quick too.

I'd like to see what Afalava can do once he's ready.

 

[The King]

Does anyone else think that Bando had just as good a game or even better game than Santos!?

It seems to me that Bando had a quick first step and was quite aggressive for much of the game. Santos looked a bit tentative...

I saw plenty of good things to like about Gerry as well as far as the LBs are concerned.

Me. Looked like Santos was thinking too much...while Bando did that some, not nearly as much.

Lets be honest... The only reason Santos is playing that position is because he knows the defense the best. He sucks there in comparison to his more natural OLB position.

 

[Warrior10]

Does anyone else think that Bando had just as good a game or even better game than Santos!?

It seems to me that Bando had a quick first step and was quite aggressive for much of the game. Santos looked a bit tentative...

I saw plenty of good things to like about Gerry as well as far as the LBs are concerned.

Me. Looked like Santos was thinking too much...while Bando did that some, not nearly as much.

Lets be honest... The only reason Santos is playing that position is because he knows the defense the best. He sucks there in comparison to his more natural OLB position.

If Bando takes over do we see Santos move to OLB?

 

[TheSker]

Does anyone else think that Bando had just as good a game or even better game than Santos!?

It seems to me that Bando had a quick first step and was quite aggressive for much of the game. Santos looked a bit tentative...

I saw plenty of good things to like about Gerry as well as far as the LBs are concerned.

Me. Looked like Santos was thinking too much...while Bando did that some, not nearly as much.

Lets be honest... The only reason Santos is playing that position is because he knows the defense the best. He sucks there in comparison to his more natural OLB position.

If Bando takes over do we see Santos move to OLB?

I wouldn't think so......Santos would become what we call "depth"

 

[JJ Husker]

1. The windows Brett Smith put the ball into were just insane. He might be the most impressive QB we see this year. EDIT: Just saw a stat that in Smith's last 5 games he has an 17:1 TD/INT ratio....that's accuracy.

2. The last TD for Wyo should have not happened...Moss was bear hugged as he about got by this blocker and was about to get Smith. That was a terrible missed call.

3. Banderas was more aggressive than Santos.

4. There were times we had 5 of 6 guys in the box where guys were first time contributors.

5. Gerry is the athlete we thought he was. When he lets himself play he is relentless.

6. After game was not impressed with Ankrah....but he I take that back now, he played well.

7. Randle was equally disappointing 2nd time....just didn't see "it".

8. Our DE's really got in there, the problem was breaking down and not letting Smith sidestep them as they flew by.

9. Gregory is an athletic force, chasing down WR's 10-15 yards down field.

10. VV show he CAN be the DT we all have been looking for.

Seriously, the pocket presence that Smith showed was amazing. But even more amazing than that was the windows he put the ball in. There were multiple throws (5ish) that if it the ball is 1ft behind or short we are picking it off. And I promise that every QB we face won't be able to put the ball in places he did.

I feel cautiously optimistic after watching the game. The O put the D is some bad spots late in the game.

I also would agree with this. At this point, I really only have 2 3 basic concerns about our D;

1- It seemed like too often we would only rush our DE's, with the DT's being content to push up field just a bit and then appear to only try to contain the center part of the field. I'm not a big X's & O's guy if somebody could explain it. Currently I see the following as being explanations.

A) They were unable to get off their blocks, usually being double teamed.

B) The scheme called for them to contain that part of the field for some unknown reason. Since they were usually being double teamed, can we expect them to shed that and provide run protection if/when Smith turns it upfield?

C) they were being prison rape held more often than I actually recognized.

D) the scheme called for receiver coverage only and there were no provisions for run support.

2- Is kind of more of the same issue. Where/Who was the guy that is supposed to keep Smith from scrambling up field for 15 yards when he leaves the pocket? Seems all they had to do was put a guy in motion and then our middle LB would disappear. Guessing this is a scheme thing so, who is responsible for late run support and where were they? There can't be much more demoralizing than maintaining coverage for 6-8 seconds only to then surrender 15 yards on the ground.

3- I guess one more thing- why didn't we blitz more? I know you can't do it every down and you have to try to disguise it but, seems it worked in our favor whenever we did bring more than the front four. I can only recall one time when we blitzed that Smith torched us with a 15-20 yard completion. But, it was not because we blitzed, he just made one hell of a throw into double or triple coverage. Were we just playing conservative defense and it just kept biting us unexpectedly?

If somebody thinks they have the answers, I would appreciate it.

Edit-I also pretty much freaked out on our defense on initial viewing. After re-watching, I am not near as concerned. If we face another QB that has the game Smith did, it will be well deserved.

 

[admo]

Does anyone else think that Bando had just as good a game or even better game than Santos!?

It seems to me that Bando had a quick first step and was quite aggressive for much of the game. Santos looked a bit tentative...

I saw plenty of good things to like about Gerry as well as far as the LBs are concerned.

Me. Looked like Santos was thinking too much...while Bando did that some, not nearly as much.

Lets be honest... The only reason Santos is playing that position is because he knows the defense the best. He sucks there in comparison to his more natural OLB position.

If Bando takes over do we see Santos move to OLB?

I wouldn't think so......Santos would become what we call "depth"

Pretty good depth to have this year. It's only one game. After the UCLA game we should know a lot more.

 

[Chaddyboxer]

Maybe we'll see Zaire, Bando, and Gerry as the starters when NEB moves to the 4-3. I could see Santos rotating with Gerry.

 

[Mavric]

Does anyone else think that Bando had just as good a game or even better game than Santos!?

It seems to me that Bando had a quick first step and was quite aggressive for much of the game. Santos looked a bit tentative...

I saw plenty of good things to like about Gerry as well as far as the LBs are concerned.

Me. Looked like Santos was thinking too much...while Bando did that some, not nearly as much.

Lets be honest... The only reason Santos is playing that position is because he knows the defense the best. He sucks there in comparison to his more natural OLB position.

Santos definitely let them get away with more zone read than they should have. We'll play quite a few games with only one LB on the field most of the time so Either he'll step up or Bando will be the man. Perhaps later in the year he could move back outside.

 

[Mavric]

1- It seemed like too often we would only rush our DE's, with the DT's being content to push up field just a bit and then appear to only try to contain the center part of the field. I'm not a big X's & O's guy if somebody could explain it. Currently I see the following as being explanations.

A) They were unable to get off their blocks, usually being double teamed.

B) The scheme called for them to contain that part of the field for some unknown reason. Since they were usually being double teamed, can we expect them to shed that and provide run protection if/when Smith turns it upfield?

C) they were being prison rape held more often than I actually recognized.

D) the scheme called for receiver coverage only and there were no provisions for run support.

2- Is kind of more of the same issue. Where/Who was the guy that is supposed to keep Smith from scrambling up field for 15 yards when he leaves the pocket? Seems all they had to do was put a guy in motion and then our middle LB would disappear. Guessing this is a scheme thing so, who is responsible for late run support and where were they? There can't be much more demoralizing than maintaining coverage for 6-8 seconds only to then surrender 15 yards on the ground.

3- I guess one more thing- why didn't we blitz more? I know you can't do it every down and you have to try to disguise it but, seems it worked in our favor whenever we did bring more than the front four. I can only recall one time when we blitzed that Smith torched us with a 15-20 yard completion. But, it was not because we blitzed, he just made one hell of a throw into double or triple coverage. Were we just playing conservative defense and it just kept biting us unexpectedly?

If somebody thinks they have the answers, I would appreciate it.

Edit-I also pretty much freaked out on our defense on initial viewing. After re-watching, I am not near as concerned. If we face another QB that has the game Smith did, it will be well deserved.

1 - They were almost always double-teaming one of our DTs so that was part of it. VV actually still got some push even against a double-team so that was good to see. As has been mentioned, Randle didn't do very much. We also ran a lot of twists with the DT going outside and the DE inside so they were moving away from the QB.

2 - The RB motion was a big problem for the first quarter and change. After that, we quit running a LB out there to cover the motion back so that fixed a lot of the problem. That's a fairly simple fix so I'm not sure why it took so long. After that, it was more hesitancy on Santos' part that let the running game go. He was trying to wait and figure out who had the ball on the zone read and by the time he figured it out he couldn't recover in time. If he would have attacked the running going to his side - whether or not they had the ball - he would have stopped several plays for no gain or a loss. Have to trust the rest of the defense to make plays.

3 - I'm surprised at how many people are complaining that we played a "vanilla" defense or refused to bring more than four guys. I don't remember a game when we blitzed more than Saturday. MIKE blitzes, corner blitzes and at least two zone blitzes. In the past we rarely blitzed but that was definitely not the case Saturday.

 

[blkshrtz]

They were faster than I thought more athletic valentine plugged up the middle on a number of plays. Also i seen him read screen perfectly didnt get the tackle, i guess you can say he got an assist

 

[Chaddyboxer]

They were faster than I thought more athletic valentine plugged up the middle on a number of plays. Also i seen him read screen perfectly didnt get the tackle, i guess you can say he got an assist

He forced the RB back into the inside which Curry laid the wood on him. It was a nice play for VV.

 

[The King]

Does anyone else think that Bando had just as good a game or even better game than Santos!?

It seems to me that Bando had a quick first step and was quite aggressive for much of the game. Santos looked a bit tentative...

I saw plenty of good things to like about Gerry as well as far as the LBs are concerned.

Me. Looked like Santos was thinking too much...while Bando did that some, not nearly as much.

Lets be honest... The only reason Santos is playing that position is because he knows the defense the best. He sucks there in comparison to his more natural OLB position.

If Bando takes over do we see Santos move to OLB?

I wouldn't think so......Santos would become what we call "depth"

This. Unless they plan on moving Mike Rose back over to MLB and then letting Zaire and Santos duke it out. neither Afalava or Gerry could make a move to MLB, but Rose could.

Next year will be very interesting, with Courtney Love and Newby. They could possibly make things very, very interesting.

 

[EZ-E]

1. The windows Brett Smith put the ball into were just insane. He might be the most impressive QB we see this year. EDIT: Just saw a stat that in Smith's last 5 games he has an 17:1 TD/INT ratio....that's accuracy.

2. The last TD for Wyo should have not happened...Moss was bear hugged as he about got by this blocker and was about to get Smith. That was a terrible missed call.

3. Banderas was more aggressive than Santos.

4. There were times we had 5 of 6 guys in the box where guys were first time contributors.

5. Gerry is the athlete we thought he was. When he lets himself play he is relentless.

6. After game was not impressed with Ankrah....but he I take that back now, he played well.

7. Randle was equally disappointing 2nd time....just didn't see "it".

8. Our DE's really got in there, the problem was breaking down and not letting Smith sidestep them as they flew by.

9. Gregory is an athletic force, chasing down WR's 10-15 yards down field.

10. VV show he CAN be the DT we all have been looking for.

Seriously, the pocket presence that Smith showed was amazing. But even more amazing than that was the windows he put the ball in. There were multiple throws (5ish) that if it the ball is 1ft behind or short we are picking it off. And I promise that every QB we face won't be able to put the ball in places he did.

I feel cautiously optimistic after watching the game. The O put the D is some bad spots late in the game.

I also would agree with this. At this point, I really only have 2 3 basic concerns about our D;

1- It seemed like too often we would only rush our DE's, with the DT's being content to push up field just a bit and then appear to only try to contain the center part of the field. I'm not a big X's & O's guy if somebody could explain it. Currently I see the following as being explanations.

A) They were unable to get off their blocks, usually being double teamed.

B) The scheme called for them to contain that part of the field for some unknown reason. Since they were usually being double teamed, can we expect them to shed that and provide run protection if/when Smith turns it upfield?

C) they were being prison rape held more often than I actually recognized.

D) the scheme called for receiver coverage only and there were no provisions for run support.

2- Is kind of more of the same issue. Where/Who was the guy that is supposed to keep Smith from scrambling up field for 15 yards when he leaves the pocket? Seems all they had to do was put a guy in motion and then our middle LB would disappear. Guessing this is a scheme thing so, who is responsible for late run support and where were they? There can't be much more demoralizing than maintaining coverage for 6-8 seconds only to then surrender 15 yards on the ground.

3- I guess one more thing- why didn't we blitz more? I know you can't do it every down and you have to try to disguise it but, seems it worked in our favor whenever we did bring more than the front four. I can only recall one time when we blitzed that Smith torched us with a 15-20 yard completion. But, it was not because we blitzed, he just made one hell of a throw into double or triple coverage. Were we just playing conservative defense and it just kept biting us unexpectedly?

If somebody thinks they have the answers, I would appreciate it.

Edit-I also pretty much freaked out on our defense on initial viewing. After re-watching, I am not near as concerned. If we face another QB that has the game Smith did, it will be well deserved.

On my phone. I'll try to get to this later. Might have a few answers.

One thing I will say is that getting a DT double-teamed is exactly what we want.