I am absolutely sick and tired of this bend and break defense.
The very worst defensive philosophy you can pair with our offense is a bend don't break. Especially when it's consistently breaking.
One of the keys to our offense is to run tempo, ideally to run a ton of plays to get the opposing defense tired. This strategy simply cannot work when the opposing offense dominates the time of possession and keeps our offense off the field. It's like, what's the point of running tempo if we never have the ball for enough possessions.
So rather than our tempo benefiting us, it actually hinders us because it just helps to keep our defense on the field longer. It's much preferable to let the offense score fast than score slow.
Am I asking to just blitz every time? No.
My biggest problem with the defense is our mentality. This mentality that we just need to do enough so our offense can win the game. THis loser mentality that we should just concede yards for fear of the other team making a big play. Playing passively or timidly is no way to play defense.
So we play our safeties deep and play our corners 10-15 yards off the line and put 6 people in the box. And we just hope that the other team makes a mistake.
We are basically telling the opposing team, go ahead....do whatever you want. Take 5-6 yards at a time. We won't even try to stop you. But just don't beat us deep.
Late in the game, it was like 3 and 4 and osu just needed a single first down to win the game. Instead of pressing the receivers, we played our corners 10 yards back. I'll repeat, osu needed 4 yards to win the game and we were playing our corners back. Predicably osu ran a little wr screen which would have easily worked if he didn't just drop the ball. So basically, our defense conceded the first down so we could defend the deep ball?!?!??
If we are playing against a top notch offense or a top notch qb, then I get that type of strategy. But when we are playing crappy offenses with crappy quarterbacks?
Rather than just conceding yards, why can't we dictate the terms. Force the offense to do things that they are uncomfortable doing. If the opposing team can only hurt you on the ground and throw short passes, then take that $hit away. How hard is that to understand?!????
Put some numbers in the box. Stop the run. Play the corners up and force the qb to throw the ball down the field. And by playing the corners up, you also have more defenders closer to the line of scrimmage to stop running plays.
Zone blitz. Show 8 in the box and drop everyone back into coverage. Corner blitz. Do something other than just running your base defense every single godamn play.
Change the mentality from passivity to aggressiveness. Force the opposing qb to make plays rather than just handing them yards on a silver platter.
If you get beat deep on occasion, you get beat. But you much rather get beat by the opposing team doing something they suck at rather than just conceding 5-6 yards at a time and HOPING for a penalty or turnover.
And please, don't tell me it's a personnel problem. Cause if we had Idaho states defense, we win that game handily.
Look, I don't think making these simple changes is going to make our defense into a juggernaut. But I'm positive that playing more aggressively will at least produce more than two godamn punts and probably cause more turnovers. And at the very least, it gets our offense back on the field and our defense off. The very worst thing our defense can do is to give up long sustained to scoring drives. And that's exactly what our defense is designed to do.
Oh and last thing....when everyone in the stadium knows that you are going to run qb read option.....I don't know....maybe put a spy on the dude?
The very worst defensive philosophy you can pair with our offense is a bend don't break. Especially when it's consistently breaking.
One of the keys to our offense is to run tempo, ideally to run a ton of plays to get the opposing defense tired. This strategy simply cannot work when the opposing offense dominates the time of possession and keeps our offense off the field. It's like, what's the point of running tempo if we never have the ball for enough possessions.
So rather than our tempo benefiting us, it actually hinders us because it just helps to keep our defense on the field longer. It's much preferable to let the offense score fast than score slow.
Am I asking to just blitz every time? No.
My biggest problem with the defense is our mentality. This mentality that we just need to do enough so our offense can win the game. THis loser mentality that we should just concede yards for fear of the other team making a big play. Playing passively or timidly is no way to play defense.
So we play our safeties deep and play our corners 10-15 yards off the line and put 6 people in the box. And we just hope that the other team makes a mistake.
We are basically telling the opposing team, go ahead....do whatever you want. Take 5-6 yards at a time. We won't even try to stop you. But just don't beat us deep.
Late in the game, it was like 3 and 4 and osu just needed a single first down to win the game. Instead of pressing the receivers, we played our corners 10 yards back. I'll repeat, osu needed 4 yards to win the game and we were playing our corners back. Predicably osu ran a little wr screen which would have easily worked if he didn't just drop the ball. So basically, our defense conceded the first down so we could defend the deep ball?!?!??
If we are playing against a top notch offense or a top notch qb, then I get that type of strategy. But when we are playing crappy offenses with crappy quarterbacks?
Rather than just conceding yards, why can't we dictate the terms. Force the offense to do things that they are uncomfortable doing. If the opposing team can only hurt you on the ground and throw short passes, then take that $hit away. How hard is that to understand?!????
Put some numbers in the box. Stop the run. Play the corners up and force the qb to throw the ball down the field. And by playing the corners up, you also have more defenders closer to the line of scrimmage to stop running plays.
Zone blitz. Show 8 in the box and drop everyone back into coverage. Corner blitz. Do something other than just running your base defense every single godamn play.
Change the mentality from passivity to aggressiveness. Force the opposing qb to make plays rather than just handing them yards on a silver platter.
If you get beat deep on occasion, you get beat. But you much rather get beat by the opposing team doing something they suck at rather than just conceding 5-6 yards at a time and HOPING for a penalty or turnover.
And please, don't tell me it's a personnel problem. Cause if we had Idaho states defense, we win that game handily.
Look, I don't think making these simple changes is going to make our defense into a juggernaut. But I'm positive that playing more aggressively will at least produce more than two godamn punts and probably cause more turnovers. And at the very least, it gets our offense back on the field and our defense off. The very worst thing our defense can do is to give up long sustained to scoring drives. And that's exactly what our defense is designed to do.
Oh and last thing....when everyone in the stadium knows that you are going to run qb read option.....I don't know....maybe put a spy on the dude?