Corey Heatherman revisited..

[Allabouttheu95]

There’s no picture changing. What you see pre snap is what you see post snap. The DL has been very inconsistent but alot of the reason for lack of pass rush is everyone knows where they’re going pre snap. They rarely guess wrong. Things are very predictable. You rarely see patting of the ball by the qb , leaving the pocket early or choppy feet. Which tells me they’re trusting their eyes. They’re very decisive.

This nails it. On top of having no pass rush what so ever. All of us on here have been fans for a long time. I’ve never witnessed a team stop the run at such an elite clip like we do but yet can’t rush the passer to save our life. I’ve never seen it before

 

[Roe 15th00]

There are several problems with this defense, and the blame doesn't fall solely on Heatherman. The tackling has been awful. We swarm to the ball, but too often the first defender misses. We're also overly aggressive at times, which leads to bad angles and lost leverage. One quick sidestep by the ball carrier, and our guys are left grabbing air. We also give receivers far too much cushion, making it easy pitch and catch for opposing quarterbacks. Is that because we're missing our top cover corner? I don't think so. O'Connor could start for most D1 programs, and Lucas was one of the top freshman corners in the country a few seasons ago. Will things improve when OJ and Antoine return? Maybe, but I don't know. What I do know is that these issues go beyond Heatherman.

A lot of those issues are coaching or the lack of coaching….

 

[hurricaneman]

I'm just gonna say this:

Xavier Lucas, Lightfoot, Wilson, Fitzgerald, Dunnigan, Scott, Moten, Blount...these are extremely talented players. Maybe they're not all at the level we thought but there's a ton of talent there. They're certainly not, "give up a TD on every single drive" level of talent.

It's coaching. Whether you're running a scheme that these specific players struggle with or you're just not doing your job teaching or scheming, these guys should not be swiss cheese against a very average offense.

 

[mossmadness]

The issue is coaching.

Would tackling help? Sure.
Would getting healthy help? Sure.

But F+ has UNC’s offense at 63 coming into this game.

All the teams on their schedule up to this point have just been great at tackling with great pass rushes? And you’d gladly trade secondary talent with all of them?

If the answer is “no,” then why have they found the UNC offense so easy to defend and we made them look unstoppable?

 

[Stingarov]

Seems like he didn’t make many/any adjustments and was outcoached by Petrino.

He panicked & threw in some cover 2 man late.

At the wrong time & situation of course, so the mouthbreathers were like "dur hur theres your c2m" in the game day thread.

He was exposed hard and either improves or gets Guidryed & replaced by Klanderman or Aranda this offseason

 

[oso4lyf]

He panicked & threw in some cover 2 man late.

At the wrong time & situation of course, so the mouthbreathers were like "dur hur theres your c2m" in the game day thread.

He was exposed hard and either improves or gets Guidryed & replaced by Klanderman or Aranda this offseason

Or Venable

 

[90scane]

We are missing 5 NFL types, 3 starters. Those spots have been filled by JJ, Lightfoot, Blount, Smith, and Fitz (but Poysner is playing 8s roll). It's a mix of talent and bad fit compared to last year. Blount isn't Bain but is banged up. Lightfoot has played the best out of that group but is undersized and asked to play coverage when his best skill is meeting at the QB. Smith isn't as fast as Wesley which is why 17 got snaps. I'd like to see more of Wilson and less of Blount. I'd like to see Fitz deep and Poysner in the box (less room to cover, less thinking...)

The rest of the D hasn't lifted their floors. CB room has been missing OJ, Antoine, Lucas for most of the season. Brown may have been hurt, too. The DTs have to do more and aren't. Our portal DTs haven't produced as much as Simpson...

Heatherman & staff have to find answers and get more out of the kids.

 

[TaylorWalls]

A lot of those issues are coaching or the lack of coaching….

You know it's an emotional fan board when people are claiming that everything comes down to coaching. Like the #1 team in the country doesn't have coaches who know how to teach high school-level tackling.

It's okay to say sometimes that the players just aren't that good.

 

[mossmadness]

I don't hate the strategy. When you have your own explosive offense, take away their run and make them throw underneath and kick FGs. It does require being able to tackle though.

It’s not a good strategy.

You’re playing into what the less talented teams want you to do.

UNC is not an explosive offense. They don’t want to have to make big plays.
They want to play defense. Shorten the game. Be efficient and methodical on offense.

And we let them do that.

When you are the better team, ANY strategy that shortens the game by limiting the number of possessions run in the game, is a dumb strategy.

It reduces your chances of winning.

Think Lincoln Riley at Oklahoma. Ideally he would have built a defense that could get stops. But he couldn’t. So he built the team around turning it into a shootout. And they ended up winning those shootouts. Frequently comfortably. Yeah the opposing team was scoring 35, but it didn’t matter because he was scoring 56. It was a comfortable win despite the amount of points given up. Because of the number of plays being run in the game allowed his team to get 3 TD wins.

One of the game that sticks out during that run was the Army game. I think OU scored every time they had the ball but maybe once. But the game went to overtime because Army’s offense, unlike the Big 12 teams, essentially refused to score fast. So OU only had the ball like 4 or 5 times the entire game.

Heatherman’s strategy on defense, if he can’t get stops, is going to make the games closer than they need to be because he’s limiting our offensive possessions too much. While still allowing opposing offenses these death march scoring drives.