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Hetherman had his roughest day at Miami

Game plan wasn’t good against FSU, and I’m not as worried about the explosives yet.
But big picture:

LBs are just all kinds of bad. And will stay that way if this is who you run out there.

Blitzes sometimes come from too far away.

We allow too much easy stuff almost by design. Which, even when it has worked this year, it eats up too much of the clock. You’re shortening the game and allowing teams to flip field position too much.
Whether it was Stanford, Wake, Clemson, or FSU. Too many drives into our territory. And yeah, you got the 4th down stops. But you have now limited how many times the strength of your team (offense) is going to make an impact and actually put them in a bad spot by forcing them to drive even longer.

And when it doesnt work, you saw how bad it can look. So much of the, “we will allow you to take that” approach is based on the idea that we will eventually get you behind the sticks and stop you. But without that TFLs, FSU just kept sustaining drives.

Third down defense has to get cleaned up ASAP. Even a little bit of improvement would be huge.
 
skyman said:
It was a bad call and he owned it, we cant ask for more than that.. When you have NTT now, I dont even know why you call normal tampa ever anymore, but mugged up with Toure is just malpractice :ibis-roflmao-sm3:
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This is why he’s nothing like Guidry to me. Lance didn’t take ownership. I think he will be better and self scout. Happens every week at every level. Chess matches between coordinators.
 
atlcane72 said:
He runs that safety/nickel blitz a lot. I thought it was a game plan for Wake but he’s been running it every other play each week. Norvell was cooking him.
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He’s been running a safety or nickel blitz probably 35-40% of his time here, its a staple in his defense. It has worked more times than not, keiont obviously was a tremendous blitzer and force player
 
CaneMutiny06 said:
This was maddening. Normally we’re pretty good at defending screens too.

Need to see a big bounce back game from Heatherman next week , especially considering Pitt is down to scrub backup QBs.
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We completley stuffed a screen late in the 4Q if TrumpyCane remembers correctly, so at least we adjusted slightly
 
Miami Nights said:
The deep dunnigan blitz is the dumbest **** ive seen and dinnigan sucks at it right now to boot. scrap this dumb ****
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Yea he needs to develop not to over run and go outside and try something inside, to me he isn't strong enough yet. Scott was elite at this but 0 was special like that when it came to **** like this.
 
Gables Canes said:
Year 2 DC regression is beginning to remind me of what we experienced with Guidry.
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I think some regression was expected losing the players we did though. Then factor in injuries, and Poyser’s ejection last week, has just compounded the secondary issues.

I don’t think it’s coincidental that the area with the fewest injuries, the front seven, has been stout.

If we were fully healthy and putting this out there I’d agree with this thinking. But to be impartial, it’s tough to call a defense with multiple guys playing out of position because of injuries. I don’t think the plan was ever to play Thornton as a deep safety or really in coverage at all. Or playing Fitz at CB. Plus it’s not like FSU just picked us apart through the air. A lot of screens and prayer passes.

I just think injuries are really impacting everything even past the Gameday operations. We spent all spring, summer and fall practicing a certain just to have to scrap it two weeks into the season. Just keep our heads above water until some of the guys can come back.
 
CanesAreAble said:
Feels like OCs have a bead on him this year. Needs to break tendency a little bit.

We're currently 71st in 3rd Down Conversion Percentage Defense (38.9%), and it feels like a lot of those are 3rd and long.

The last two games, we've given up:

3rd & 16
3rd & 11
3rd & 18 (bogus facemask)
3rd & 8 (bizarre Tampa 2 call)

to bad QBs.

And we got bailed out on the 4th & 21 play (penalty was legit, coverage on the back end was not)

We have injuries and the Poyser ejection hurt, but we gotta clean up some of this stuff. I hated the DB blitz on the 75-yard to Duce. Just play coverage. Make FSU drive efficiently drive down the field.

Screen passes just kept getting chunks over and over and over.

Also, I might be in the minority, but I'm not crazy about these "NASCAR" packages with 4 DEs out there. I'd rather have Wilson and Lightfoot rushing the edges than the interior. Have at least one DT in there to bullrush so the QB has a harder time climbing the pocket.

And can we try Ewald at nickel a little bit? He seemed to have good closing speed in the reps that I saw. Thornton in coverage...


Overall, I'm pleased with the defense considering all the injuries, but stuff to clean up.

Thankfully it came after a win.
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Yes he made a couple bad calls. He was playing most of the game without is two starting safety and one starting DB and a guy coming off 5 games of injury. This was a rivalry game the other team played it like their national championship game, we played like we were three TD favorites. It happens, the great part we didn't have to lose to find out we need more work
 
I hate the delayed safety blitz. Either walk him up close enough to impact the play or just use BC kid as the Keionte nickel blitzer. Most effective use of him anyway.
 
Hindsight is 20/20 fellas. That Safety blitz has been a staple and has worked plenty.
Lucas has to play better and Thornton has to tackle. Poor performance by both guys on that play. That can make ANY call look bad.

I understand the timing of the call is in question, but if he played off/passive then we'd be complaining about him being conservative. 🤷🏻‍♂️

Kinda coming to his defense because I know what it's like NOT to have your "guys" back there. Missing even ONE key guy at Safety can make the whole back-end look worse...because that guy (Safety) is the glue that keeps everything together. He makes the coverage calls/checks, he relays information and assignments to the other guys, he alerts certain tendencies, etc etc etc.
So without Poyser you have to move the pieces around, and that can really ***** things up.
 
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