Like most here I was ecstatic about the aggression we showed on defense but I also noticed a few things that I found disturbing.
1) We dont seem to be as talented as I think we should be. Now hold on. I'm not excusing the staff for any issues on defense. Quite the contrary. For the record I think this scheme is an abomination and I think Golden and his staff need to go. What I am getting at is player development. Take the secondary for example. Look at all the talent on that unit. That group should be the strength of the defense. They were up against a rather pedestrian Duke offense and while they got the job done, they hardly stood out or dominated. Those kids should be much better than they looked Saturday. That falls under teaching part of coaching and it doesn't seem like these kids are getting much of it.
2) Functional strength and explosive power. We should have ragdolled that Duke team. We should have been able to physically dominate them and push them around but we didn't. I see all these great weight room numbers like bench press, squats and power cleans many of which I hear are new team records. All I hear in the off season is how much bigger and stronger we are yet I never see us physically dominate the trenches. This speaks to S&C. I'm no expert but to my eyes there seems to be something sorely lacking here.
These two things really popped out at me. Lack of player development and a lack of functional strength and explosive power. The fact that we are in year 4 of this regime makes these two things especially disturbing. Add to this the garbage scheme we have been running and now it's quite clear why we have fielded historically bad defenses the last couple of years. Unfortunately it also becomes quite clear that the ceiling for this years team isn't quite as high as we may have thought with or without this garbage scheme. We can borrow **** Lebeau's playbook, run cover 1 all day and install Buddy Ryan's 46 but at the end of the day you can't polish a **** and it all falls on this staff. They have failed in more ways than one.
Golden and staff need to go.
Some people call it swag some people call it attitude. These kids have been neutered under this regime. This staff was put together as super recruiters. We don't have teachers or innovators. I would love to see what Gary Patterson or Chris Petersen would do with this team.