This ain't your grandpa's 4-3:

[FullyERicht]

So I saw some clown try to say that our D tonight was the typical assignment football defense that 4-3 over coaches have used for years. One even tried to post pictures of UNC from Butch era as proof. So here's where I **** on you pieces of garbage for even attempting to blame this on the players.

Let's talk about how it's supposed to work:
This is what the front looks like from Butch (aka Jimmy Johnson):

If the flow is to the strong side, as above, he fills the center-guard gap to the strong side. This makes him responsible for the Dive. He spends his night destroying the fullback.

if the full back dive flow is to the weakside, like above here, the Mike fills the Guard-tackle gap to the weakside.

Basically, whichever direction the FB first moves the Mike LB (Denzel tonight) has to fly into that gap and tackle him. Period end of story. But that's NOT what we had him do tonight.

You despite nearly 30 years of sound option beating principles, our genius coaches had a "better idea". I'll explain to you why the went with this method, and it's critical to understanding everything, at the end of the post.

We played a 4-3 front, but with our Mike LB we retained 3-4 inside LB principles. So instead of reading flow and immediately filling a gap, we had Mike read the OL block. Bc he was uncovered, the Center would charge to the second level, where Perryman did what he does very well in the 3-4 to guards: stacks his man and sheds and makes the tackle. It looks kinda like this, and you then have to "shed" the block and tackle the ballcarrier:

The theory our coaches thus had was "we won't have to change what our senior LBer has to do technique wise, and we'll still be able to "stop the dive"". And we did stop the dive, but only after it gained bout 5 ypc. When the MLB is playing that technqie, aligned at 7 yards off, by the time the C gets to him for the stack/shed, the full back has already run through an unfilled hole for 5 yards.

Now playing it this way does protect you more from the play action pass, and still keeps everything in front of you, but it ensures a slow bleed via the dive. And ANYONE who has ever coached option ball or against knows that the dive makes the ENTIRE THING work.

So why would they go against 30 years of proven option-beating defense? The answer is simple: this is college football, and there is limited practice time.

When your base defense is a 3-4 2-gap front, it is EXTREMELY difficult to suddenly (for one game a year), play a 4-3 single gap over front. It's not as simple as just lining up and telling guys to attack. The 4-3 over is an entire system/philosophy, that is COMPLETELY counter to the 3-4 2-gap we play. The best our corches can do is try to make some techniques fit within the 4-3 over. It's hodge podge, not "being multiple".

In fact the only time we haven't struggled against the option under Golden was his first year, when all those players were used to playing the 4-3 single gap, so it was easy for them to pull out the 4-3 over playbook for GT week and have the kids get it. DP played on the OLB spot every year before this one when they played GT as well.

Now it's like teaching kids all year in the breast stroke, and then one random week asking them to win a butterfly race, and the kids saying "what the **** is a butterfly coach?" WTF do you think is gonna happn???????

 

[luke137]

My question is why was DP playing 7-8 yards off Los regardless of down or distance?

 

[Awsi Dooger]

I don't know who you are referring to. I posted an hour or so ago that it looked like it was supposed to be a 4-3 over, but so many alignment and emphasis aspects were out of whack that I gave up trying to figure it out. I was saving that for later in the week, once I could watch every play several times. Your explanation seems valid.

Somebody early in the week posted that he was concerned that so many of our defenders hadn't faced the triple option, particularly the defensive tackles. That proved to be very astute. I noticed from the outset that guys who have been playing the nose weren't adjusting properly to the 4-3 at all. Heurtelou seemed to be operating under the "close enough" philosophy of where he needed to line up. Pierre was much better, until he got nicked.

Perryman was less effective this game than at Nebraska, considering what we needed him to do. I've watched every Georgia Tech game this year and the B-back hasn't had that much room until tonight.

 

[FullyERicht]

My question is why was DP playing 7-8 yards off Los regardless of down or distance?

I think that Denzel probably was struggling with reading the keys, and that they were afraid of him getting sucked up into the wrong gap which would result in a huge huge gain up the middle. Backing him off let him see the play develop. Remember this isn't anything like our kids play the rest of the year. It takes a ton of reps to get good at it. Considering they used to always move him outside against GT, I'm putting 2 and 2 together.

And it ain't on DP. It's disgraceful to ask a college kid to transform in one week and then get mad when he can't.

 

[FullyERicht]

Awsi: wasn't you bro. Some random dude with an AG pic, porsting about how what we saw tonight wasn't unusual. Smfh.

 

[Awsi Dooger]

My question is why was DP playing 7-8 yards off Los regardless of down or distance?

Believe it or not that's actually recommended in modern 4-3 over technique against the flexbone type offenses. I've read one book and sampled several related websites over the years. They often list the ideal MIKE depth as 7 yards.

I've always been skeptical of that. Regardless, that middle linebacker needs to read and attack. Perryman too often hesitated and absorbed. He did make one nice play early in the game going forward and barely making an ankle tackle. Otherwise he was allowing himself to be a target and then fighting off the block to make an angled save further downfield. It was pathetic. But I'm convinced it is what he was directed to do, not something he brainstormed on his own.

This is not an easy offense to defend, regardless of all the summations of high school offense and similar blather. The read option teams fail on vital short yardage plays all the time because they insist on taking the snap from the shotgun and allowing penetration from all angles.