Frogcrates
Active Member
With all of the threads covering the offense (and whether what we saw was the first sign of the apocalypse or a genius ploy of vanilla play calling to throw Purdue off the scent), I have barely seen anything on the defense.
So... thoughts on what you saw on Defense?
Personally, I didn’t see a whole lot of room for concern but I wasn’t blown away either. I know it’s early in the season and the D always takes a few games to gel, but one thing that has been a persistent concern of mine over the past several years (specifically in a post-Bumpas era) is the overall lack of aggression and, to a lesser extent, physicality on D. It’s been less of an issue among the linebacker corps, but more so on the D-line and secondary. We’ve had trouble the past few seasons getting pressure on the quarterback and the lack of containment or leverage on the ends was a real concern against UAPB. In the secondary (not sure how much of this is the result of rule changes), it seems like the overall mentality is to just try to bat the ball away and catch-tackle the receiver versus attacking the ball and punishing the receiver.
Obviously you’re not going to run a whole lot of blitz packages and stunts against UAPB, which is why any lack of pure angry aggression (with hopefully some textbook LHCGMFP discipline along with it) is going to stand out even more as you are just lining up head-on out of a base defense.
Has the D become overtaken by the bend-but-don’t break adaptation that has allowed GMFP to swallow up spread offenses or is the killer instinct still there?
Just curious to get folks’ observations on that other phase of the game.
So... thoughts on what you saw on Defense?
Personally, I didn’t see a whole lot of room for concern but I wasn’t blown away either. I know it’s early in the season and the D always takes a few games to gel, but one thing that has been a persistent concern of mine over the past several years (specifically in a post-Bumpas era) is the overall lack of aggression and, to a lesser extent, physicality on D. It’s been less of an issue among the linebacker corps, but more so on the D-line and secondary. We’ve had trouble the past few seasons getting pressure on the quarterback and the lack of containment or leverage on the ends was a real concern against UAPB. In the secondary (not sure how much of this is the result of rule changes), it seems like the overall mentality is to just try to bat the ball away and catch-tackle the receiver versus attacking the ball and punishing the receiver.
Obviously you’re not going to run a whole lot of blitz packages and stunts against UAPB, which is why any lack of pure angry aggression (with hopefully some textbook LHCGMFP discipline along with it) is going to stand out even more as you are just lining up head-on out of a base defense.
Has the D become overtaken by the bend-but-don’t break adaptation that has allowed GMFP to swallow up spread offenses or is the killer instinct still there?
Just curious to get folks’ observations on that other phase of the game.