Lashlee is a fvckin' savage. Every time Louisville got some momentum that MF'er pulled something out of his bag of tricks. He did the same thing last week.
Any time someone scores on our defense my man gets that 7 points right back.
And like I told yall months ago, I know we're excited about Rooster and Chaney but that dude Cam AIN'T...NO...SLOUCH!
I'm tellin' ya. I saw it live when he made the entire D1 filled Daytona Mainland defense look like they were running in quick sand. Dude is sneaky fast.
How 'bout Lashlee setting up that 75 yard run by motioning the single WR to the other side, clearing the UL defense of an edge player...then BOOM. House call!
I told yall last week that we didn't see even 4.9% of the playbook versus UAB. Tonight we saw much much more. I imagine there's even more good **** to come next week.
I really wish that long Mallory play didn't get called back, cause that was some Jeremy Shockey type of **** he did. We are spoiled at the TE and RB position. The way Lashlee schemes things up to get the ball to Jordan, gotta love it.
Let's talk about this defense though fellas! SMH
A pretty decent first half but once UL's staff figured out WTF was going on, it was a lube-less a$$ raping.
I want to put something into perspective for yall.
Our defense got their a$$ handed to them by an offensive squad full of 3-star kids who had offers from the likes of Akron and North Dakota Tech A&M. (joking, but not entirely)
This game was a match-up off 2 outstanding OC's and a couple of out-matched Defensive Coordinators. Baker had absolutely no answer for UL in the second half. UL's QB, WR's and RB all got off on us. (all 3 star kids)
With that said...issues that I noticed...
(that will never get fixed)
Defensive Line
I think the jury is out on our DL. Outside Zone running plays kill us. We saw it in the UAB game, and we saw UL exploit it as well, big time. Reason being, our DL always get reached and can't maintain their gap. They get cut-off by the O-lineman in front of them and they try to "back door" everything. This often creates an extra gap for the LB's to defend and/or leaves them out to dry by allowing O-lineman to reach the next level. Go watch our defense and tell me how many times our LB's are actually running free. Rarely. That's why you will likely NEVER see a LB reach 100+ tackles in this defense. This is a product of a D-line that's told to play "vertical" i.e. just get straight up field. Don't get me wrong, it creates havoc and TFL's sometimes, but tonight it got us torched in the run game. (think I saw Roche get reached like 39 times tonight)
Any smart OC from here on out is simply gonna run outside zone plays and let our DL run themselves up-field and out of the play.
Linebackers
I thought McCloud played better today. He had one play where he was on some grown man ****. Lit up the blocker and the ball carrier on an outside run. He also forced that fumble on UL's QB towards the end of the game. You can still see how he's limited athletically at times. I thought Jennings showed a lack of instincts on a couple plays. Honestly, it's really hard for me to be too critical of the LB's though cause they get ZERO HELP. Nobody on the DL is requiring double-teams because (as I mentioned above) they're just running themselves up-field and through the back door. Our LB's have to deal with free-running O-linemen on a lot of plays.
Secondary
Here's where it gets ugly. The alignments, the assignments, just a plethora of **** that makes no sense.
1. You can't have Bubba Bolden covering Tutu freakin' Atwell one-on-one. That is all.
2. You can't play man coverage...with OUTSIDE leverage/alignment...and no help underneath. Multiple times tonight I saw a DB lined-up in man coverage with an outside alignment. The WR would simply run an in-breaking route for an uncontested catch. Go watch Tutu's long catch late in the game. Bolden is lined up OUTSIDE of him and Tutu just runs a post/deep cross, wide open. Same thing with a couple short/intermediate throws we gave up. On one particular play I saw Couch lined up OUTSIDE of a 2-WR bunch set (I believe)...in man coverage...and his WR simply ran an inside hitch for an easy 1st down. YOU'RE ALREADY BEAT PRE-SNAP WITH THAT ALIGNMENT.
3. Why the fvck do we blitz 6+ guys (from a mile away) and play zone behind it? We leave the middle of the field wide open. JUST FVCKIN PLAY MAN IF YOU'RE GONNA SEND 6! We blitz 6 guys our **** CB's are playing bail zone coverage, and any in-breaking route is wide open! (cause the CB's are playing an outside zone)
4. I saw zero effort to account for UL's most explosive player on every snap. On Tutu's TD late in the game, UL is in a trips (3x1) formation and Tutu is at the #3 WR spot. This is a fvckin' dead giveaway that they want to get him the ball. Do we have a Safety play over the top of him? Noooo. He runs vertical down the middle of the field and he's past the LB's in a split second. Their QB had to move around and couldn't throw it, but he was **** near unaccounted for. Would've been an easy TD. Ultimately he got open FOR A SECOND TIME and UL's QB was able to find him while scrambling. We made absolutely no effort to contain their most explosive offensive weapon. If you're creative there's ways to double a WR in basically any formation. I did last year in the play-offs versus Bryan Robinson. Dude had 5 TD's the week before, versus us 3 catches for 11 yards. If you KNOW an offense is insistent on getting the ball to a certain player, and that's where the majority of their explosive plays come from, you make a conscious effort to take him out of the game and force them to rely on their less talented players for 48 minutes. YOU DON'T JUST ALLOW THREE DIFFERENT OFFENSIVE PLAYERS TO HAVE CAREER DAYS ON YOUR DEFENSE! The fvck man?! We didn't stop any of their guys! LOL
Unfortunately I don't think any of this is gonna change. The defense will have some games better than others, but i fear that versus any team with a decent offense we are gonna find ourselves in a shoot-out. Thankfully we have Lashlee and King. But you can't really count on the offense to fire on all cylinders EVERY game. That usually doesn't happen.
For anybody who says "well Louisville is a good offensive team and we still won the game!" allow me to remind you that UL is playing with a bunch of 3-star kids. They are not playing with the same deck as Clemson.
Good win nonetheless. Love the **** offense. Should be a fun season!
