Q: Your struggling puts a microscope on everything. People are posting pictures of the defense off TV. Like a third and two play in both games, Nebraska and Georgia Tech, they'll snap the screen and it'll show Denzel Perryman, for instance, seven yards off the ball on third and one or third and two and the play gets converted and that opens up a snowstorm of criticism. What would be the explanation for things like that which might be contributing to the struggles in getting off the field on third down?
Golden: Denzel's depth is a function of the defense. Depending what we're doing with the defensive tackles his first gap might have to get outside (and he needs room off the line to get there). He's never supposed to be seven yards, we want him at six. We tried to get him to move up during the game. … in terms of the Georgia Tech game, that was designed. He's designed to be there. The tackles and perhaps one of the outside linebackers who was blitzing is responsible for the dive. Many times he's responsible for the dive because many of the times we're asking him to scrape fast because the outside linebacker is coming. What I'm saying is we move them back in certain instances because we're bringing the outside linebacker and his [Perryman's] gap (would be) outside. I don't know which play you're talking about. The last three years we beat that team running the same stuff. We got takeaways, third down stops, got a fourth down stop. And the offense in both years was 50 percent last year, 60 something the year before in Atlanta. That makes it a markedly different game. You have to beat that team as a team. We didn't play well enough on defense, have to get off the field on defense, and the offense and special teams didn't help the defense.
