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Corey Heatherman revisited..

E1k said:
Did you watch the game tonight? Im not saying the lbs are good in coverage but 25 and 7 got torched
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I’m not talking about one game. I’m talking about every freaking one of them. 1 and 9 are perennially getting targeted.
 
Film don’t lie.

Neither does the best edge duo we’ve ever had here. It’s the reason I was “down” on the defense all summer. Although I didn’t think it’d be this bad. But a lot of people don’t understand, if you can create constant pressure with 4, calling defense is literally easy. It just is. The secondary is awful but all of this is predicated on not being able to get pressure with 4. 5 and 99 are insanely strong and never get moved off their spots in the run game, but they don’t get a ton of pressure on the middle. And Lightfoot has been good, but the edge group is MILES worse than last year. How could they not be, the two we had last year were literally the best we’ve ever had.

The DL can’t generate enough pressure. He’s not really able to generate it in other ways. We can’t cover anyone with our nickels and backers. And we are poor tacklers. All that adds up to a mediocre defense. Teams know how to attack us and they have the time to do it.

I’m almost inclined to say let’s start playing some odd fronts and get more DBs on the field. If nothing other than getting different looks out there. Sacrifice something in the run game to help these kids cover. Again, yet another team who did **** in the run game, their backs had 21 carries for 68 yards. But it doesn’t matter much if you’re gonna let Billy Edwards get 10 yards every time he throws it.

28/34 for 341 yards is flat embarrassing. Thank god for our offense, I’d bet a QB with those numbers wins about 98% of their games. Give up something in the run game if you have to and just get on the edges. 10 yards a throw to that group is gross. Tight end and backs ate our lunch.
 
MiamiCanesFan77 said:
The worst thing Hetherman can do is allow the opposing offense to go on long drives and keep the ball away from Mensah like UNC did for much of the game tonight.

It would be much better if he played a higher risk/reward style of defense with aggressive blitzing to force more disruption.
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So basically the Diaz defense. What a world we live in to be wishing that Diaz would save us from a Heatherman defense.
 
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.
 
Linebackers are Heatherman's position group. He can't get any other guys to eat into 9 and 1's snaps? Let's be honest, Chase and Mo shouldn't even really be in college any more. As it stands now, the LB room flat out stinks. We've got (on paper) a great group of recruits in the 27 class that are more athletic and rangy, but I'd imagine they won't be ready to contribute much next season.

Cristobal wants to be like Saban. Saban would have absolutely gone BALLISTIC on Heatherman and the entire defensive staff for this performance and made them question whether they want to be coaches. Every single defensive coach needs to get chewed out, that includes gold jacket guys like JT.

This defense could absolutely hold us back from the title and I know Cristobal has to be aware of that.
 
Last season our pass rush win % was 40% (4th in the nation)
Going into tonight, we were at 38%.

After 8 games this season we have 24 sacks which will be in the top 10.

After 8 games last season we had 15.

And we are #1 vs the run this year after 8 games. I truly don’t think not having Bain and Mesidor is the issue through 8 games.
 
Not a fan and never have been a fan of his defense. It’s always been extremely zone heavy and we spot drop instead of playing match coverage.

BUT, I still think he’s a good coach. His resume and pedigree keep me on board there.

The lack of a second portal period was going to hurt some teams and I think it REALLY hurt us. Having to put all our eggs in one basket so to speak while we were making our playoff run last year wasn’t good. In 2025, we had the opportunity to evaluate what we had in Spring and then make tweaks and take guys like Keionte and Jakobe Thomas to make it a lot better

So we lost Bain, Messidor, Scott and Thomas AND we lost Etheridge to the league (and turned Will Harris into the new S coach and passing game coordinator).


I think after the season is over your going to see us replace several position coaches AND an aggressive effort made in the portal on defense, especially at LB
Go Canes!! said:
Tackle better and the DC will miraculously look much, much better.
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I’m guessing this is what the staff is going to tell themselves, and unfortunately even if we tackled better it wouldn’t fix the holes in our zone coverage.
 
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