https://twitter.com/Joseph_Duarte/status/1153696334978977796?s=19
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Not very encouraging words if you read through the coach speak. The question is how long will it take to turn around.
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Yes, disturbing to see what he was “left” to work with. It HAS to be better with injured players returning, some key transfers and some play now recruits. But good coaching trumps all. It is a matter of how far do we climb from the bottom?
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Really truly turn around as in he has the player types he wants, physically and mentally, three years. In my opinion. However, I think we have athletes on the defensive side so a lot depends on how well the coach figures out how to play to our guys’ strengths. I refuse to believe our D will suck this year.
I think we end up, statistically, middle of the FBS pack. Who knows, our conference isn’t all that strong so we could rate higher.
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We have the best Safety duo in the conference in Sprewell and Anderson.
We added Jordan Moore to our Safety rotation.
We have two Juco All-Americans coming in at the CB position. We also added a grad transfer in Colin Samuel.
Chambers and Turner are great pieces on the DL. Hell, Chambers was going to get double digit sacks last year if he didn’t get injured. We added a million juco pieces to the line.
We are still waiting to see if Clemmons, Hypolite, and Jones will be eligible to play this season.
If all three get waivers, I don’t want to hear any excuses.
Even if all three don’t get waivers, we have plenty of talent on the defensive side of the ball to be middle of the pack in the FBS. Add that with what should be a top 5 offense and there is no reason why we should not be competing for a conference championship this season.
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Don’t understand why we have to teach the fundamentals of the game to college kids! Some have been playing football since middle school lol
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I love Glee, but at minimum we don’t have better safeties than Cincy, Temple, UCF, and probably 1-2 other schools in this league based on actual production on a college football field.
I love Jordan too. Its a helluva get any time a 4 star with 4 years of eligibility left chooses this program. I expect he’ll be a great positive in the long term on the field and an exceptional leader off of it. Jordan is also a redshirt freshman who has 4 games of non-meaningful game action under his belt.
He’ll play his first meaningful action this fall and that’ll be tremendously valuable, but almost certainly will come with some growing pains.
Also, we’re not waiting on Clemmons, Hypolite and Jones. Those guys will 100% be sitting out 2019.
I like the talent we’re starting to see on that side of the ball, but the last 2 head coaches have done an absolutely terrible job recruiting defensive players. No matter how much you don’t want to believe it, this isn’t a 1 year fix. The good news is I think even with an imperfect defense and lots of young guys, this group can still create far more turnovers, negative plays and things we saw frighteningly little in the last defensive scheme.
I am sure though after week 4-5 there’s gonna be people on here calling Cauthen the next D’Onofrio and frankly I should just prepare myself for it.
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…Because Coach No D did not have any fundamentals to teach…??!..other than his to get burned on 3rd and 28…grrrrr I still can’t believe that play from the TT game!
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Even if our defense continues to give up yards in big chunks and we struggle with depth on the defensive line (I think we stockpiled secondary), we will be a better unit based on turnovers alone. I expect that to be a bigger emphasis this year. Controlled chaos running around making plays as opposed to soft coverage with no disguised blitz package and little emphasis on stopping the other team. Hopefully open-field tackling improves.
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Wait, what? Cincy, Temple, UCF have better Safeties? According to what? Sprewell and Anderson are all-conference pre-season picks. None of those other schools will have both safeties on a preseason all-conference team. So I am very curious what you are basing that assumption off of.
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Im not concerned at all. He was specifically talking about spring practice, and a lot of the guys expected to contribute didn’t participate. Yes, once all of the recruits get on the field I expect improvements but it’s yet to be seen how much the Juco’s will contribute, not to mention they’re still learning a new system
We haven’t had a D-Coordinator stick around for 3 years since we fired Ron Harris, 2003-05. Good coordinators don’t stay at G5 schools.
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Cincy allowed a lower percentage of completions against them, more interceptions and allowed dramatically fewer yards passing than UH. Basically any stat that can be quantified in terms of pass D, Cincy was better. Oh and they return both of their safety starters, including James Wiggins who was 2nd team All-AAC.
UCF also had a dramatically better pass D than us this year and return a 1st team All-AAC safety (Richie Grant).
Temple is debatable tbh. But I’ve given you 2 schools that I think are pretty clear cut ahead of us going into 2019.
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This is topical.
“It seems lazy to say the whole defense is the X-Factor for the Cougars, but it makes the most sense. Houston’s offense is going to be explosive once again, and the Coguars success comes down to the success of the defense. New starters are needed on all three levels, and there’s really no way to go but up. Many are pegging this team anywhere between 6-6 and 8-4, but an improved defense could help exceed expectations. Dana Holgorsen and his staff brought in a ton of talent on this side of the ball, so now it’s all about execution.”
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Sure. They have really good CBs. I specifically said Safeties. And that also has a lot to do with coaching. Our CBs started 10 yards off of a receiver. We also kept our defense on the field a lot due to how fast we ran our offense. I stand by my statement. Sprewell and Anderson is the best Safety duo in the conference. And I’m not convinced that there will be a safety in the conference better than Sprewell this season.
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James Wiggins and Richie Grant are Safeties. Both of whom were named to All-AAC teams.
I agree with you about Glee. I love Glee and if the new scheme uses him right (I am optimistic about that) he’ll be on an all conference team.
Yes, I know. But they play with better CBs than what our Safeties player with last season. Hence, a better pass D. Also, our DC was terrible. A lot of things went into them being better on the defensive side of the ball.
Watching one of the Hard Knocks series a while back, in camp they had an all-conference Offensive Lineman who just finished college who had won some awards… they cut him almost immediately saying he barely understood fundamentals… so it can happen… Think about it also, the coaching these kids have had the past two years.
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I equate it to like when Dana was here his first time… asked about the receivers he was very negative, saying, we need players who can catch, or something along those lines.
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