Is The Defense Better??

UM finished the year ranked 76th in rush defense giving up 174/yds/game, and 79th ranked in rush yards per play at 4.55/yds/play.

Official NCAA Stats: Rushing Defense

As for the original question: I think we'll be better at DB, about the same/maybe a little better at LB (not good) and not as good on the DL.

My expectation is that the defense will perform similarly to this season when we finished as the 51st ranked scoring defense. Maybe a little better. I have no expectation of a substantial improvement.
UM should NEVER be ranked worse than 20-25th on both Offense & Defense....anyone who thinks otherwise needs there heads examined....
 
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Head coaches for right or wrong keep around coaches they trust. They sink or swim. Golden kept D'Onofrio around because he was an Al Groh disciple and believe in that aborted version of the 3-4.

I don't understand the love affair with Lockette especially as a defensive assistant. He coached running backs at Oregon State and tight ends at FSU. Marshall hired him as a running backs assistant. Maybe replace Patke as a special team assistant. Not like Lockette landed at a P5 school.
I guess Blake James didn’t ask these difficult questions during the interview with Diaz.

Lockette is an elite recruiter with South Florida. That in itself is more valuable what we get out of Baker and Patke. Díaz dropped the ball because no DC wanted to come to this **** show and now lost Lockette because of it.
 
DL
Interior DL should be somewhat better, but we don't have the talent there such as we're losing at DE. So compared to this year's DL, it's a net decline to me.

Simpson is a wild card, but is he much of an improvement over Stroud? I like Simpson, but Stroud was also highly regarded.

The real question with the DL is whether our "everybody pin your ears back and get 7 yds deep into the backfield asap" style play will continue, or will more gap integrity emerge? As has been amply noted, the lack of gap integrity was a huge problem in 2020. That's not the DL coach's call, it's part of Manny's/Baker's scheme.

LB
You caveated with "if we get better LB play" and also noted "no guarantee". I'm not optimistic we'll get better play. I don't see much reason why we should. Same guy is coaching them in the same defensive scheme. And from a personnel perspective we didn't end the season with any LB looking like they're on verge of taking the next step.

From the last two games of 2020 to the first games of 2021 i see no reason to expect any of Jennings, Steed or McCloud (if he even plays the position anymore) to play any better. Similarly, nothing about Flagg, TAC and Huff says to me that they're all of sudden going to start playing much better in Sept/Oct 2021 than they played the last several games in 2020.

My conclusion is I don't see much reason for meaningful improvement out of this group. Additionally, since I expect our DL play to be worse than 2020 it will put even more pressure on this already weak position group.

DB
You and I both expect improvement. TS will help a lot, Couch should be better, Blades and Ivey should be solid at least, and younger guys should get better with another year under their belt and better coaching.

All the guys at S are returning and some top (albeit young) talent might be able to contribute early.

Scheme
I'm in the camp that thinks after 5 years in the ACC other teams have now figured out how to play against Manny's defense. Sure, ACC teams with limited talent and/or no competent QB are ripe for getting run over by our attacking style. But as others have noted at great length, good offenses are now regularly beating this scheme, and better than good offenses are now embarrassing our scheme.

Our sack totals are a bit of a proxy for this. 2020 saw a sack rate of 2.7/pg, which is the lowest since Manny got here and down from 3.7 in 2019. This is in spite of having the two best DE's by far since Manny got here. It's an indication opposing OC's have figured out how to counter our pressure. And the problem with other OC's figuring out how to counter our pressure, is that it leaves us highly vulnerable once an offense play gets downfield.

OC's have figured out how to get the ball past our initial pressure, and that's a huge, huge problem for Manny's scheme.

Whether it's running behind or around our aggressive get-up-the-field, low gap integrity scheme like UNC did, or simply a dump the ball where our guys are blitzing from and/or a short spot passing game like NC State did, teams with competent QB's that don't operate at a significant talent disparity are no longer afraid of Manny's pressure defense and are performing well against us.

I don't see this changing in 2021. There's no reason it should imo no matter how much I might wish otherwise.

That's how I size things up for 2021, and how I come to the belief that things aren't going to much, if any, improved.

There are some things we could have done to improve our prospects for 2021, but we didn't do them. And that's highly disappointing because it's so unnecessary.
I don’t think you’re goving enough credit to natural maturity. flagg and cave as second year players should show noticeable improvement over first year. Steed and brooks are further from their injuries. Huff will be a third year kid. We should see better LB play, even if it still isn’t good.

At DT, ford and silvera are highly experienced, miller and hunte will be experienced, that should be an improvement over this year, if only a bit.

imo stroud wasn’t particularly good - expect Simpson to be an improvement.

How we play the DEs is the biggest scheme issue, imo. Set edge or jail break. Hopefully that gets fixed. Especially with our LB deficiencies, we really need the DL to contain. Harvey and cam may well be solid there because of quickness and mobility, even if they’re less powerful than the guys they are replacing at getting upfield and taking on blockers.

I partially agree re manny but imo baker gets blamed for last year in part because our CBs were weak and lacked depth, so we played too much zone. Combined with manny’s DL philosophy it was a bad mix but not clear baker had permission to rip it up and start over. We’re going to be more agressive this year and manny will take credit but it’s probably unfair to baker. I share your view we need more discipline from DL and better play design on D.
 
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I think better but nowhere near where it should be at this point. That’s coaching and recruiting. There’s been too many misses at CB and LB. I think the bigger question is will Diaz stay the conservative easy route playing older players that know the scheme but aren’t as talented. OR will he bust his ***, hold people accountable, and coach up the young guys with serious talent?
 
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Many fans make excuses for Manny by stating the obvious, “we are not Clemson, we are not Bama etc”? Ok, What are we? Why are we what we are? We were the Apex of college football, why are we no longer? Has Manny built a championship caliber staff? Do you think we’re going to compete w Bama and Clemson in a year or two? If not, we’re on the wrong path
 
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I don’t think you’re goving enough credit to natural maturity. flagg and cave as second year players should show noticeable improvement over first year. Steed and brooks are further from their injuries. Huff will be a third year kid. We should see better LB play, even if it still isn’t good.

At DT, ford and silvera are highly experienced, miller and hunte will be experienced, that should be an improvement over this year, if only a bit.

imo stroud wasn’t particularly good - expect Simpson to be an improvement.

How we play the DEs is the biggest scheme issue, imo. Set edge or jail break. Hopefully that gets fixed. Especially with our LB deficiencies, we really need the DL to contain. Harvey and cam may well be solid there because of quickness and mobility, even if they’re less powerful than the guys they are replacing at getting upfield and taking on blockers.

I partially agree re manny but imo baker gets blamed for last year in part because our CBs were weak and lacked depth, so we played too much zone. Combined with manny’s DL philosophy it was a bad mix but not clear baker had permission to rip it up and start over. We’re going to be more agressive this year and manny will take credit but it’s probably unfair to baker. I share your view we need more discipline from DL and better play design on D.

We're speculating of course, and there's a range of possibilities. We were ranked 51st this year and this conversation is about whether we'll be better than that in 2021.

You've stated reasons for being a little more optimistic and I've given reason for pessimism. Neither of us are talking about UM improving to a top-10 ranked defense next year, nor are we talking about UM collapsing to the 90th ranked defense.

Sounds like we're fairly closely clustered in our expectations within a fairly narrow range. I hope your view of things is more right than mine.
 
I guess Blake James didn’t ask these difficult questions during the interview with Diaz.

Lockette is an elite recruiter with South Florida. That in itself is more valuable what we get out of Baker and Patke. Díaz dropped the ball because no DC wanted to come to this **** show and now lost Lockette because of it.
If Telly was so elite, how does he end up at a G5 school? I would have traded Lockette for Patke to run special teams but not defense. Makes no sense otherwise.
 
We're speculating of course, and there's a range of possibilities. We were ranked 51st this year and this conversation is about whether we'll be better than that in 2021.

You've stated reasons for being a little more optimistic and I've given reason for pessimism. Neither of us are talking about UM improving to a top-10 ranked defense next year, nor are we talking about UM collapsing to the 90th ranked defense.

Sounds like we're fairly closely clustered in our expectations within a fairly narrow range. I hope your view of things is more right than mine.
It just seems to me that the only spots were losing good kids are DE and were most set for succession there. Everywhere else we should be better through a mix of maturity and new blood.

And improvements at DB hopefully can support more man coverage. Why they combined jailbreak pressure with weak zone I just don’t get but expect that won’t persist.
 
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It just seems to me that the only spots were losing good kids are DE and were most set for succession there. Everywhere else we should be better through a mix of maturity and new blood.

And improvements at DB hopefully can support more man coverage. Why they combined jailbreak pressure with weak zone I just don’t get but expect that won’t persist.

Agreed. The only spot we can be worse is on the edge. And there are certainly bodies there who have the ability to at least come close to replicating what we saw last year. Literally everyone else is back, and you're adding hopefully Tae Williams, Tyrique Stevenson, Blades coming back, James Williams should be able to come in right away and help a lot, Bolden should be much better physically with another year to get stronger.

It's going to come down to who can they find on the edge, as I mentioned, and is anyone going to step up and be some semblance of a Miami backer? I got absolutely blasted on this board about 18 months ago for railing on the LB situation, and it turned out to be prophetic. These kids are terrible. Well, they have been so far. But can we find a **** Mike and Will out of this group who can make some type of impact?

Avery Huff
Sam Brooks
Corey Flagg
Tirek Austin-Cave

Can 2 of those kids become above average players? If so, with Manny calling this defense, I think it can get back into the Top 20.
 
If Telly was so elite, how does he end up at a G5 school? I would have traded Lockette for Patke to run special teams but not defense. Makes no sense otherwise.
Telly is a elite recruiter. If you’re disputing that then there is no need to discuss this further.
 
Agreed. The only spot we can be worse is on the edge. And there are certainly bodies there who have the ability to at least come close to replicating what we saw last year. Literally everyone else is back, and you're adding hopefully Tae Williams, Tyrique Stevenson, Blades coming back, James Williams should be able to come in right away and help a lot, Bolden should be much better physically with another year to get stronger.

It's going to come down to who can they find on the edge, as I mentioned, and is anyone going to step up and be some semblance of a Miami backer? I got absolutely blasted on this board about 18 months ago for railing on the LB situation, and it turned out to be prophetic. These kids are terrible. Well, they have been so far. But can we find a **** Mike and Will out of this group who can make some type of impact?

Avery Huff
Sam Brooks
Corey Flagg
Tirek Austin-Cave

Can 2 of those kids become above average players? If so, with Manny calling this defense, I think it can get back into the Top 20.
Troutman is on campus too. And he actually played LB in HS unlike the edge rushers we keep trying to convert to LB.
 
Troutman is on campus too. And he actually played LB in HS unlike the edge rushers we keep trying to convert to LB.

Man i hope to not have to play a true freshman at that spot, but **** if he's got half a brain and a lick of ability, he'll be an upgrade.
 
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Telly is a elite recruiter. If you’re disputing that then there is no need to discuss this further.
As I stated if it were me I would have made him special teams assistant and sent Patke packing. Again, you refuse to address that he is heading to Huntington and not Oxford or Athens. Nice pick up for Marshall.
 
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