Rather have High Risk/High Reward Defense

Gibbs and Orlando both played high risk, high reward D.

Yes, we would bring a DB and LB regularly. Sometimes we would get burned. But even with D’ofrio’s low Takeaway numbers last year we still have more Takeaways than any team over the last five years.

When you get the ball you get more scoring opportunities, the other team deflates, and the D stays fresher.

With the Briles O I think it is even MORE important to play Takeaway defense. Otherwise our D will be on the field for 40 minutes per game. But mid-year they will be beat down.

If we get burned, fine, but more likely we get several more takeaways giving the O more scoring opportunities.

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I couldn’t agree more.

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i agree

What he said…

How’s that working for UT and TT? At the rate they are going, they will both be available after this year.

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both of them are better than our current DC. Orlando will be a HC real soon. Hate of them you want but their defenses were legit here.

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Ive been saying this. I hate the B12 defensive scheme approach.

texas defense has actually been extremely touted under herman… their offense is what has been trash

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I dread the passive pass D against UA.

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something i want to note…there is a very common assumption here that we dont blitz or bring pressure often under coach d

Without looking into it, it would feel that way because in our games opposing qbs rarely every get pressured… but when i rewatched the game, i kept track of the blitz…we actually blitz A LOT

on most of those 3rd downs every LB was blitzing, sometimes DBs

Opinion: i don’t think its a “lack of aggressiveness” that is our issue, that many here believe it is…I think its the lack of creativity/disguise … what made Orlando special wasnt that he blitzed a lot but that you had no clue where the blitz was coming from…examples: 3 LBs would be looking like they would be about to blitz but would drop into coverage and a random safety would sneak from behind and blitz…or sometimes he would have all the dline not in stance, with no clue who theyd attack…or have crossing blitz etc…those disguises gave us a lot of free lanes to the qb

in the rice film we blitzed but it was obvious when it was about to happen and where it was coming from…and rice’s o-line stalled long enough to give him time to pass

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Agree, but we need to combine with tighter coverage on the wideouts to limit the QB options.

We absolutely did blitz often. But it just looked like we blitzed without purpose.
It was like we were just sending another guy to send another guy. It fooled nobody. Most were picked up.
I rewatched the game and do not remember us overloading a side prior to the snap…or dropping people back into coverage.
The DBs don’t look to cut off the path of the ball. Seems they play a trail technique.
Safeties McDonald and Stuart, back in the day jumped the crossing routes instead of going for big hits. Sometimes they got beat, but those two took a ton of balls away. QBs did not even want to throw to the middle of the field.

Both also turned into fantastic run stoppers.

Going back to the original idea…I prefer a D that takes chances. 40 minutes on the field against any team is way to long, even if you play up tempo.

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I miss guys like Roberts and Mathews blowing up running plays for five yard losses.

For anyone that is happy with the current D. Go back and watch us when we played Penn State. Go back and watch us when we played FSU. Go back and watch us when we played OU. We need that back!!

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Well said, and I agree with most of the points here. I rewatched most of the game and noticed our guys rarely came out of their stances which basically makes the defense predictable. That’s why they were able to burn us time and time again. Our guys were just sitting there with almost no movement.

With Orlando guys would approach the LOS then back off so the offense never knew what was coming, which made it hard for the opponant to dictate the game. Rice’s offense was dictating everything. They would basically watch our guys line up and then audible from the sideline to burn us.

Also, our blitzes were so vanilla, typically with five people up on the LOS. With Orlando the LB’s and DB’s would run to the LOS to show blitz, then drop back in the coverage with someone spying the quarterback.

I freaking hate this kind of defense!

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Hopefully, we weren’t showing our hand with Rice. Seems like we should save those exotic packages for bigger statement games. Maybe they will show up the next couple of weeks.

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To say UH didn’t blitz or pressure is not accurate.
Their QB released very quickly on several of those completions.
People here seem to have very low expectations of or DBs. They we’re beaten in man to man coverage.
I don’t exp t them to be perfect but they need be able to cover.
That is what almost everyone on here screamed for!
Even our safeties played man yesterday. And they were ok. The corners are another story.
At the end of the day if Sprewell hadn’t blown a coverage and Egbule on goaline…there wouldn’t be such an uproar.
Sprewell was in zone btw when screwed up.
I watched each defensive play numerous times. We blitzed a lot.
Another thing to consider…,.this team ran from tight formations…3 TE and 2 RB. Lot play action. It’s not easy to get sacks.
UH is not going to see another team that runs this Stanford offense.
CMD had player combos on field that we will probably not see again as well. It appears that he had to try and do a balancing act… have players on field who could play the run…3 TE & 2 RBs…,and could also Cover vs the pass in play action.
The safeties Davis and Anderson were lined up on edge LOS very often and were blitzed vs run and pass.
Joell Williams played man vs slot and also played safety in Cover 3.
The snide LBs played every play…I think Darrion Owens played 11 snaps before going out…Robinson and Brown played every down. They overall played well. Brown made some mistakes in pass coverage. Which you might expect because he’s played little.
He probably won’t be on field much in pass situations going forward because other opponents will be in4 WR formations as opposed to 3 TEs etc Rice used.

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Thank you for your insight Manster. I was noticing the personnel looked a little different and I didn’t realize until you said that Rice used 3 TEs. That definitely effects who you put on the field. Similar to how we have to run a specific package for Navy. Overall your analysis is spot on and much appreciated.

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This was the double A Gap look out of the Nickel, but it was also more susceptible to giving up more runs. The problem I have with CMD is that he has been using a 3-3-5 to play soft coverage with the line backers, and doesn’t deviate from it much. If he’s going to do that then he needs to employ a 4-3 look from time to time, especially when the opposing offense is running 11 man personnel. In other words he’s utilizing too many bodies to give up short yardage passing plays. This can be a issue with depth going forward as well. Going to a 4-3 against 11 man personnel will allow more pass rushers to get on the field. Teams will continue to double Ed and with 3 down linemen against 5 and a TE and a running back that will chip, we will lose the numbers game. That’s 7 on 3. That’s why teams with terrible QBs have time to attack our zone scheme, we’re outnumbered and they have all day to pass.

Seems like we went high risk in Rice’s second TD, where we loaded the box and went all in on a run. The TE fake blocked and ended up being wide open.

Also, in Rice’s first TD, the safety didn’t switch when Rice’s WRs crossed.

Most of what I see is execution, not blitz calling, etc.

This still goes back to the coaches, but I don’t see the blitz packages being the problem.

I was expecting our offense to sputter most of this season and for our D to be the backbone of this year’s squad. Seems like the offense might be a whole lot better than I thought, and the defense will hopefully start jelling soon.

Brad
The goaline TD isn’t a result of a “sellout”. It’s the result of one of two things. It’s 99% that Egbule had pass responsibility for the TE that caught TD.
He “zoned out” . He never looked at TE. If you are a non blitzing LB…meaning you don’t have a predetermined blitz called for you…you probably have a pass coverage responsibility.
This means you have to make a read…run or pass…and you CANNOT commit to run until you’re sure it’s not a pass. Egbule guessed. The other 1% possibility is that Davis was supposed to cover him but decided to blitz on his own…don’t think this is case because he was aligned on los and outside TD and wouldn’t be asked to cover TE from that spot.
On the other TD…TE seam down middle…the Juco transfer Sprewell came into the game…he was derp with Anderson…Davis was in game on edge line of scrimmage .
Was zone coverage and we were fine. They ran TE and WB both vertically up seam. Sprewell was ok and I Johnson was bracketing outside guy…so both receivers were between our 2 defenders.
Then…inside vertical turns toward flag…Sprewell forgets he’s in zone… and goes with him.
Johnson continues to play zone…so we have 2 guys covering 1. The WB who was originally runnning wide seam slips to inside, where Sprewell should have been. He’s wide open.
They ran a 3 man pattern…TE to short side ran seam and Anderson picked him up.

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