It has become obvious that Herman did a terrible job recruiting linebackers and DB’s in his two years here. Added that he took a few of the recruits with him to UT and the cupboard has been bare for Applewhite to fill. D’nofrio is not a good coordinator. A good D coordinator might be able to mask some of the limitations but at a point, a bad defense will start showing when there is a lack of talent at linebacker and secondary. We run a 3-4 defense where such a major influence on linebacker play. Your linebackers in a 3-4 are the players who should be ideally leading the team in sacks and TOL. If linebackers do not produce there will be big issues. We have not filled the wholes left by the good linebackers of the last few years.
As great as Oliver has been, a DT talent like him is actually better suited for the 4-3, which is where he most likely will get drafted to play in the NFL. Imagine what Oliver could do when he is not the sole clog in the middle getting double and triple teamed to free up Defensivs Ends.
For all the love people of this board give for Herman it turns out he was not that great of a recruiter. He parlayed Levine’s recruits into a job a UT and took a few good ones he had besides Olivier with him. D’nofrio needs to be gone after the year unless he costs us a couple of games in conference play. Then id fire him during the season. Applewhite is a first-time coach and Orlando recommended D’nofrio to Major. Applewhite like a lot of young coaches needs to learn from mistakes. He has fixed his mistake on offense. Now he needs to fix the defense.
But applewhite always wanted Briles from the get. Maybe the mistake wasn’t letting him bring in briles last year. There are very legitimate reasons why the university might have balked at that.
Didn’t Applewhite say that Judas used quotas by position, e.g. we need this many LB recruits, we need this many RB recruits. Instead of going after the best players we could get, he would go by the best player we could get at a certain position. My understanding is we missed out on some good recruits with that system.
Either way CMD isn’t developing what we have very well. Here’s to hoping at least a little progress is made in the next two weeks before conference play.
Losing Herman killed our class that year. Lost a few guys who might have been studs here. That KILLS depth.
The margin for error is small without the depth. But agree not sure that Coach D has shown me much in his time here. Not sure they’d want to pull the trigger mid year if they don’t right now but it’s looking pretty probable he’s gone after this year at this point.
CMD isn’t responsible for developing DBs and DL.
He’s the LB coach. And Hines became all conference under him and Robinson is a former QB that has come a long way. And we lost Darrion Owens 11 snaps into year and Roman Brown had to start with no experience. Gooden has been coming in for him in passing situations and has less experience. Brown did well vs Rice against run but liability vs pass. this being said doesn’t excuse him CMD for D as whole.
Do we blame Blum for DL not being better at pass rushing? Let’s be honest, UH hired a HS coach in order to make sure ED was happy and didn’t leave.
I have no idea if Blum is a great coach or not.
Regarding the CBs…they have had 2 coaches and still can’t cover. Ones a converted WR and other was walk-on for a reason. I like Myers…he’s got balls and hits but limited coverage wise. I thought Watkins would be better. He played and was coached at ND so gonna blame our CB coach for him?
I posted earlier that a defense is good for about 65 plays. Maybe 72 if they skew more defensive players.
Our lack of depth was exposed in 2 areas, defense back 7 and wr . Tech ran 100 plays. The more plays they ran, the more missed tackles. Our wr’s were totally gassed at the end of the game as well. Even more remarkable was #10 running all over the field at the end. They did a good job of rotating but you could see our pass pressure mitigate as the plays piled up. 59 pass attempts will wear out any dline