Dear Dee Delaney

[hotshot]

Congratulations young man! You picked yourself up and played a pretty darn good game! We may just have been too quick to write you off your a darn good man to man defender and you actually tackled tonight! Good work we needyou

I thought overall the secondary played a much better game. Still do not like that some of the CB are not turning their heads around, but still a solid performance tonight.

Malek Young never turns his head. Just looks at receivers hands.

 

[brock]

Congratulations young man! You picked yourself up and played a pretty darn good game! We may just have been too quick to write you off your a darn good man to man defender and you actually tackled tonight! Good work we needyou

I thought overall the secondary played a much better game. Still do not like that some of the CB are not turning their heads around, but still a solid performance tonight.

Malek Young never turns his head. Just looks at receivers hands.

As long as he is knocking the ball out I’m fine wiTh it. He’s great at that. He realistically could have had 2-3 picks tonight though. He will get better at it but he’s a good cover corner

 

[astabooty]

Congratulations young man! You picked yourself up and played a pretty darn good game! We may just have been too quick to write you off your a darn good man to man defender and you actually tackled tonight! Good work we needyou

I thought overall the secondary played a much better game. Still do not like that some of the CB are not turning their heads around, but still a solid performance tonight.

Malek Young never turns his head. Just looks at receivers hands.

As long as he is knocking the ball out I’m fine wiTh it. He’s great at that. He realistically could have had 2-3 picks tonight though. He will get better at it but he’s a good cover corner

I'm with you Brock. Just about everyone knows a DB should turn to find the ball, but don't let what should happen to what did happen. Young was shutting down (maybe) everything that came his way. So let's not knock him. Praise the dude for balling and hope he learns to find the ball so he can get those picks.

 

[FrancisSawyer]

Congratulations young man! You picked yourself up and played a pretty darn good game! We may just have been too quick to write you off your a darn good man to man defender and you actually tackled tonight! Good work we needyou

Kudos to Delaney for brushing off the criticism and stepping up like a man. I was very hard on him after the first 2 games but the young man went out there and played a very good game.

Watching the defense tonight and especially the back seven, it started to become clear that much of our subpar play was due to just not being in football shape both physically and mentally. You could see in the second half that the defense was getting into the groove of playing football. I don't think this team was in football shape coming out of fall camp which we saw in the opener against BCC. Irma and the long layoff just compounded the issue and we saw that first hand last week. Football can be a funny game in that just when you think you have everything figured out you get thrown a curve. After the first 2 games, I thought for sure that we had greatly overestimated our secondary and that they were probation era bad. It didn't make sense to me given what we had heard during fall camp.

What we saw vs Duke defensively was much more in line with what I had envisioned in the offseason. Yes we still need a major infusion of speed, athleticism and talent in the secondary. We are still very thin at CB and safety play has been unspectacular but last night was a very good indicator of what they are capable of and what we should expect. The whole secondary was on the same page and the safety play was very solid. Delaney, Young and Bandy had good games. Now we need to keep improving week to week and we could be a very good defense by November.

 

[Johhny Cadillac]

Dee Delaney played much better tonight and we actually had a Jhavonte Dean sighting. Glad for both and we'll need them moving forward. Maybe it's me; but I don't like the way Malek Young plays DB. He runs with the WR just fine; but he never has his head turned around. If he did, he'd have 6 picks by now.

I liked him more with the ball in his hands coming out of high school honestly.