Shaq

[Calinative]

The stunts definitely made the LBs job harder, but I think they were worth it, because we were completely disrupting Syracuses offense. And sometimes when you're playing so aggressive big runs will happen.

There has been discussion that Manny likes to take away what they are good at, and I am all for that. We shut down Dungy and came away with the win, so all is well. But I saw some of the same cutback lanes against GT.

I know many are worried about our run fits at times. We need to get more consistent with our tackling, because how "loose" we become or over-pursue seems to be a symptom of Diaz's desire to err on the side of aggression and get offenses behind schedule. It's as much a byproduct of his philosophy as our ability to create TFLs.

https://www.canesinsight.com/thread/recruiting/124374

Maybe it's optimism, but I think almost all our defensive issues are fixable with players we already have or a small infusion of Safety talent. And, if so, we're not far from more consistent dominance instead of splash plays. That said, part of being so aggressive with the front 7 is inevitably going to lead to some gashes.

I suppose the question is why big runs are given up because of (over) aggression. Is it blown assignments, or that someone simply got beat? Good offense beats good defense type thing.

2 plays in particular jump out to dissect. 1:37:01 and 54:51 at this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgcZ1NUGhTg&ab_channel=CFBLights2

I can't figure out how to embed, but I'm sure [MENTION=5374]HurricaneVision[/MENTION] will breakdown both of them when he does his review.

Next play we switch to nickel against their three-wide and play Bandy. They spread us out and run the draw. The G gets out to Quarterman, who has a tough job here. He has to understand that Redwine has the outside gap (B gap) and he is responsible for the A gap. He allows the OL to turn him towards Redwine, which opens up that middle gap far too easily. You can see the RB is behind the OL who is handling Norton here. We tried to twist our DT’s and stunt the edges and they hit us right up-the-middle, leaving Quarterman exposed to a blocker right on him. You might see McCloud and think he’s responsible for this gap, but he’s responsible for the cutback to that huge lane you see by the number 20. Gain of 24.

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Net play we run the X stunt again and they gashed it by running a quick hitter right into the gap created when we stunt. That’s two big running plays that have occurred because we stunted and they run right behind it. I’d prefer we reserve the stunt for third and long situations where the run doesn’t hurt us as much. This run goes for 23.

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This is a big run that gashed us for 27 yards. We have it defended. Shaq needs to hit this OL with some thump to shock him back and plug that hole. Jaquan brings him down on the back-end, which is another of those “saving” tackles you hear about. Hopefully we need fewer of them in the future.
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Instead, he tries to sidestep the blocker and actually took himself to this place. In a way he’s helping to block Redwine as well since he’s shielding him from the runner. [URL=https://www.canesinsight.com/usertag.php?do=list&action=hash&hash=7]#7 5[/URL] pulled around and kicked out the weakside LB. The LB has to beat that puller into this hole and plug that hole as well, but our LB’s were just bad on this play. Look at Dungey, he knows this is a big play as he’s already got his hand up and the RB hasn’t even gotten past McIntosh who is obscuring the view of the RB here. Our run defense has some holes due to inconsistent or poor run fits.
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These are the plays I mentioned, taken from [MENTION=5374]HurricaneVision[/MENTION] thread. And as I suspected, at least 2 of them were due to the stunting. I believe that to be a huge contributor to the big runs our D is giving up.

[MENTION=10044]UknowWhat[/MENTION] I mentioned elsewhere in the thread that I thought OL were getting too clear a shot at Shaq. These screenshots and breakdowns show you what I was talking about.

yeah thats also the reason I was saying (in another thread i think) that I'm not really worried about the Run D as a whole. Vs GTech we held them to under half their season average for the 4 other P5 games they have played in rushing. And vs Syracuse we went into the game with the clear intention of stopping their passing game and getting to their qb, and it ******* worked. As a result of that gameplan, it gave Syracuse a few big plays. I said in a stat breakdown in another thread that they got 78% of all their rushing yards on 10 plays. On the other 41 plays they ran, we held them to 56 rushing yards. Thats pretty ******* good.

So yes the stunts and over-aggression hurt us at times, but it definitely created more positive defensive plays, than negative ones. Plus, we can see that even with the scheme leaving us open for some big runs, sometimes it was just our guy not making the play due to poor angles or bad tackling.

After these 6 games I think there are 3 things that can take this defense to the next level:
1) Get Knowles, Perry, Smith, Owens off the ******* field. They should see extremely limited PT, basically only if absolutely necessary.
2) Run their asses until they never forget to keep outside contain if that is their job. Simply attacking the outside shoulder when you are supposed to probably could have stopped half their big runs.
3) Wrap up. I think our tackling has improved the past few weeks, and I think it will continue to improve. But if you get a shoulder on the runner, wrap up and bring him down.

Just doing those 3 things, and they shouldn't be too difficult to "fix" either will turn this defense into what we all thought it would be entering the season.....but I think the pass defense has exceeded our expectations.

offense has a much more difficult job fixing the Redzone offense 3rd down offense, and keeping Rosier playing at a high level.