Players and plays I'm most excited to watch against Bethune

[Mr. Dynasty1]

From my perspective, he was not impressive. I also didn't see the speed that everyone was talking about. I'm certainly not panicking but this LB corps currently won't get it done. We need Wes Bissainthe to get thrown in the fire and play now! Also Chase Smith must play although I don't know why he seems so buried on the depth chart. We need a serious infusion of speed, twitch, athleticism and explosion on defense. The CBs are also very lacking in this area minus the young kids obviously. The DL is also lacking elite level talent and athletic tools. The job Mario has done to patch up the DL this off-season was incredible but should not be confused with us having an elite DL. We have great depth which consists of solid to very good players but lacks big time elite level talent that pops. We have players that may develop into big time players like LT and Najalik Kelly but not nearly enough of them. We also need to take into consideration that this was the 1st game and this line will need more time to gel and develop chemistry.

In terms of the defense in general, a new DC, a new scheme and better coaching isn't going to magically erase the fact that we have athletic deficiencies at certain positions. The challenge the first year will be to instill fundamentals and good habits into these kids and build a solid foundation that way. Then as we add and stack talent, we can then add more concepts that we couldn't have run before. On the whole I think we need to sit back and realize that our weaknesses were not going to be transformed in one off season and that we are at the beginning of the journey/process. We're not starting from scratch but there is still work to be done. We will improve as the season goes along.

Well said

 

[grover]

Well said

Agree. But Wes and Chase are not MLBs. You don't want 210-215 pound guys manning the middle. I know we argue over height and weight all the time, and I'm sure someone will dig up an exception where a 200 pound MLB was all conference. But it's a scheme liability no matter what anyone says. And given they're still young and inexperienced at the college level, I expect Wes and Chase would end up getting hurt, as well.

Best case is Johnson gets more comfortable and his field speed improves accordingly. Alternative is move Steed over to MLB and fill his OLB spot with Wes and Chase.

IMO, the only other guy that could provide MLB support is Davis, who would already have moved there if he was able to process quickly enough. I was really hoping we'd see that, but successful DE to LB transitions are few and far between.