I'm not as confident about us rolling. I'm a nervous idiot so I listened to more Nebraska post game coverage than I care to admit. Yesterday put me in a bad way.
ARKST thrived on the short passing game (8.6 ypc/6.1 ypa). Seem familiar? If we try to out muscle their OL for the first 2 seconds of every play we'll make the game unnecessarily tight. Yesterday was the first time since he's been here that I can say Manny didn't seem to adjust to his opponent. He's had a bad half before, but he almost never has a bad game. Everything B-C did ok (I can't believe I'm saying that) ARKST will do much better. Every weakness we showed yesterday will be magnified against them.
I expect it starts off badly. We get punched in the mouth a few times. Then it'll be on this over inflated D to act like champions and not just talk like them. Because yesterday was silly and concerning.
Arkansas State isn't BC. Yesterday, those short passes were walking BC down the field - and we'd have one DB covering two receivers! Quick pop, first down.
Since Arkansas State can't run - guess what they'll be doing - especially since BC just showed them yesterday how to go down the field?
Manny needs to get off the stick, our defense needs to take better angles, and then tackle.
I'm not sure what I was seeing on our defense yesterday. Not a clue.
You were seeing a veteran head coach make a wise decision to rotate a ton of guys through our base defense, and get them some game reps that we can study on tape to learn from and improve on. CMR understands that as the season grinds along, we're going to have to lean on some of our younger guys to step up and play well for us from time to time. Jonathan Garvin is a third string DE and his name was being called in the first quarter.
I am supremely confident that had we wanted to, we could have limited rotation to the ones and twos for three quarters and won this meaningless game by 60.
Well, I'm not.
I think we forget that even in our glory days, we'd go into late quarters behind on the scoreboard. Really close games that never should have been close.
I understand the young guys, but we didn't make any adjustments to shut off those quick slants and bubbles. None.
We'd have one corner out against two receivers. Not once. Not twice - lots.
That's what's troubling.
I'm going to borrow an explanation from another page because it was better stated than anything I could put together. [MENTION=6888]vivijane[/MENTION] was explaining the similarities in our defensive looks this past Saturday and the FSU game last year:
"I think what you are looking at here is a Matchup Zone defense (a mix of man and zone coverage)........
1- the CB to the trips side i believe is Corn Elder , his responsibility will be as a flat player and sit play the flat hard look in play QB
2- safety over the
#2 wr i believe is R Jenkins his responsibility will be to get over the top of corn look for the Vertical or play the flag his marker will be the sideline into the Hash
3- the linebacker to that side will buzz hard to hook to curl and be force player for the bubble
4- the safety playing over the QB in CF i believe it is Jamal Carter will rotate and replace R Jenkins who is going over the top of Elder ....Carters responsibility would be from hash to hash and would look for the Vertical or the Post
5- the CB to the single WR side i believe is Malek Young and he would be Man to Man w/ his wr
........therefore to the multiple WR side conceptually you will have 4 defenders covering 3 wr's ( Elder , Jenkins , Carter and Playside LBer on the LOS ......this would be the ZONE side and the other side would be the MAN side ........therefore you have your Match-up Zone"
Basically, the plan is to confuse the QB and make him think he has a hot read and an uncovered receiver, when in reality, there's more defenders than receivers on that side of the ball. The problem was that many of our guys just flat out didn't tackle and others couldn't shed blockers. IMO, much of that had to do with playing a lot of young guys who were getting their first live game reps.
Another way to look at it, because I noticed that Diaz kept us in base 43 a lot when nickle would have been a better personnel match up; Perhaps we know we're going to be playing two tempo teams in Arkansas State and Toledo who also like to shred you with short passes. Against tempo, you don't always have the luxury of subbing in the best personnel packages, so the guys on the field need to also know how to best utilize what they have.
Anyway. My two cents. Completely respect yours, though.
