The defensive problems aren't the HUNH it's the CB's

81usaf92 said:

Trickett's past numbers were misleading. He is probably the 2nd or 3rd best qb in the big12 and probably will be the best or a close 2nd qb we will see all year. A lot of the problems we had with him was that he was capable of making snap decisions and he had great pocket prescense. Granted our cbs didn't play particularly well and our d line didn't get in his face often enough, but you got to give the man his props and he might of only missed one or two passes if not for his butter fingered receivers.

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That's a fair assessment, no doubt, and Trickett does have an impressive physical skill set. Not going to take away from him the least in that regard. Again, though, that's not much in the way of consolation as the schedule gets tougher as the season goes along (and which will feature better OLs and WR corps than what WVU had). I'm not trying to denigrate WVU, but if we are to get to where we want to go this season, we're going to have to beat several teams with a more dangerous passing attack than what they presented on Saturday.

Bamabuzzard said:

The DL works in conjunction with the defensive backfield to have success. The CB's cannot be expected to cover for five and six seconds. It will never work. The quarterback cannot be given that kind of time to throw the ball. The DL MUST pressure him. It is a must. The "answer" is just as much the DL getting pressure as it is CB's covering.

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I agree with the overall point, but I'd dissent to the extent that I thought the D-line actually played a pretty decent ball game on Saturday. Not a lot of pressure, no, but then again the ball was routinely coming out very quickly, so there wasn't much of a chance. Individually, Dickson had a career day, and I thought Jonathan Allen played by far his best game to date.

All things considered I thought the DL showed a pretty big step forward compared to one year ago.

BigEasyTider said:

That's a fair assessment, no doubt, and Trickett does have an impressive physical skill set. Not going to take away from him the least in that regard. Again, though, that's not much in the way of consolation as the schedule gets tougher as the season goes along (and which will feature better OLs and WR corps than what WVU had). I'm not trying to denigrate WVU, but if we are to get to where we want to go this season, we're going to have to beat several teams with a more dangerous passing attack than what they presented on Saturday.

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This is true hopefully having depriest and Jackson back helps

I want to point out few things from Saban conference from the other day....

Saban on the progress of Cyrus Jones:“The guy played really, really well,” Nick Saban said. “He made two big plays inside the 10-yardline. He’s the one guy that consistently did what he was supposed to do in the secondary. He did a good job of covering and didn’t give up any plays. When they kept throwing the ball to number 11, we flip flopped him on number 11. He had a really good camp. He’s matured as a player. He’s much more confident this year.”

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He has progressed so much that he did great job of doing what he was coached to do.

Sylve had 5 tackles but struggled throughout to play the ball; nick Perry (4 tackles) & Jarrick Williams (3 tackles) combined for 7 total stops while Geno Smith had two; As expected, Nick Saban was not happy with the play of the secondary after film review: “We didn’t play very well in the secondary at all,” Saban said. “We didn’t play well at linebacker. We had too many missed communications, too many missed coverages, too many assignments.
“There were several times we were in position and the guy didn’t play the ball,” Saban continued. “That’s not what he’s coached to do. He’s coached to play the ball. He capable of playing the ball. That’s poise and confidence. You’re supposed to look at the ball and play the ball. A couple of other times we had mental errors in coverage, like who was covering who.”

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That's why I feel as a fan, as a observor, it's not just the CB. the whole Defense didn't communicate well to the point there Slyve wasn't sure what's going on. Now, I know Saban was talking about Slyve in a way, but at same time, he reminded us it's not just him.

We have to stop talking about Tony and Marlon, I would rather develop them, and get them spot up duty in games, to get them ready for later in the season where as now, we throw them in the fire, and its possible their confidence could take a hit. I don't want to risk that this early in the season. That's just me. With Jackson back in mix, I think we automatically are better, but i do expect to see Slyve to get playing time.. to get his confidence issue out of the way. Cyrus Jones did great job, so now he has to be consistent and he'll be fine. I understand what OP was talking about and it makes sense, I just wanted to remind everyone.. it takes the whole team to execute their assignments right.

I think overall our problems with HUNH are two fold...

1. as OP points we have not had a shut down corner with BALL SKILLS since Dee. Ball Skills is the issue here, how many times in the last two years has the corner been there but not made a play on the ball! The play-by -play will then talk about the height advantage allowing the catch, but watch dee against the tight end against ND he was giving 6 inches and 30pounds and still knocked the ball away. When CNS sees the lack of ball skills he becomes less agressive in blitzing Safeties, because in his mind (and I QUOTE)" IF they cant cover in basic 2deep, why would i trust them to do exotic blitz schemes" but we all know if you can' cover blitzing can help take away some pressure.

2. to get that quick pressure on 3 step drops, most teams resort to stunts where d-linemen cross... That is against CNS principles in defense, becauuse it opens up run lanes and that is always his first priority.

BigEasyTider said:

Absolutely, and that's going to remain a problem, I'm afraid, as we play Ole Miss, A&M, and especially Auburn.

When your starting cornerbacks are averaging around 5'10 and 185 pounds, that's just a battle you are never going to win. Opposing coaches will -- and have, judging by what WVU did to us -- see that and view it as an opportunity ripe for exploitation. A 6'3, 215 pound receiver iso-blocking a 5'10 and 194 pound cornerback is going to win that battle far more often than he loses it.

Again, that just gets me back to my earlier point, underlying which is the fact that size is very important in a cornerback these days, and signing a lot of these small frame, bean-pole type "athletes" who run really well isn't a complete solution. You need length, you need athleticism, and you need someone who can fend off blocks and fight through the clutter on the perimeter in the run game and in the short passing game. Truth is, CB has become a position a lot like LT, in that it's getting to be essentially a must-have position for top-end talent. It has become nearly impossible to disguise talent deficiencies at cornerback these days.

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agree with all this except the "especially Auburn" part. last year they were a very run heavy team, and really didn't exploit the pass that much. Of course that could change we'll start seeing more of the WR screen from them, but it's not the case right now. The problem last year against AU was two-fold: The NG didn't demand a double team in the middle and keept things clogged up, and the OLB/DE didn't always set the edge of the line effectively to push things back inside. Neither of those have anything to do with the CB.

runtheoption22 said:

I agree, thought the DL played outstanding-- even without some proper calls and adjustments from the LBs. Having Depriest making the calls should help them out even more.

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I don't think people realize the impact Depreist being out had on the defense.
Poor ol' Reggie and Reuben were very confused for much of the game, and understandably so.

I don't know much about defensive back alignment, so I have a question. Why do our CB's line up five yards off the receivers in the red zone? It would seem to me they would need to be in the receivers face.

TIDE-HSV said:

I agree, and that was one reason I was so heartened at the signing of both Brown and Humphrey. We could have easily lost one or both. Both are just about as close to "can't miss" as is possible in recruiting. I recognize that an ACL or two and we could be back where we were. In the spirit that anyone can be questioned, we do have to ask if the complexity of CNS's DB defense has begun to work against us...

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At this point I think the onus is basically to sign a guy (or guys) like Brown and Humphrey on an annual basis. You just can't get by with supbar CB talent, and the best ones are going to be gone in three years anyway, so you really have keep the pipeline constantly flowing or you're going to get hit very hard once you go through a dry patch.

And as for defensive complexity, I've thought generally for a long time now that the natural philosophical response to the spread / HUNH offenses is to simplify things dramatically on the defensive side of the ball.

Alasippi said:

I don't think people realize the impact Depreist being out had on the defense.
Poor ol' Reggie and Reuben were very confused for much of the game, and understandably so.

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I agree to an extent...I think TDP will help with getting the right alignments and calls, but as far as coverage skills go, I doubt it will be much better at 260 lbs.

BigBama76 said:

It's not just DB's that are the problem. We don't have a Cody or Chapman type at NG which is critical to the 3-4 defense. A lot of things feed off of good NG play with CNS's defense, stopping the run and pass rush, which helps the DB's and LB's.

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Not against HUNH. In fact, they become a literal "huge liability".

TIDE-HSV said:

The problem is, as others have said, the ball just comes out too quickly with a good QB (and Trickett was certainly imitating one very well). The main hope for DL pressure is if the QB can't find his 1st choice receiver or makes a mental error. Trickett didn't do either very often...

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And we honestly lucked out with dropped balls that were on the money.

I don't know much about defensive back alignment, so I have a question. Why do our CB's line up five yards off the receivers in the red zone? It would seem to me they would need to be in the receivers face.

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I wondered the same thing given what so many others have said about Trickett passing the ball so quick after the snap. Why not jam and reroute the receivers at the LOS and disrupt the play that way? I'd have to guess that our CB's are so small that they physically just aren't big enough to be effective pressing at the LOS.

Or maybe Bama's strategy against spread offenses is: 1) keep them off the field with our own long, clock-eating drives; 2) on defense, don't let the play get behind teh DB's and make these spread teams spend all their time getting to the red zone where they just don't have the space to run that kind of offense as effectively so we try to force FG trys; and 3) turn up the heat and pressure on D anytime that we are able to cause a negative yardage play.

If so, I would argue the strategy against WVU was successful but the execution could have been better. WVU got yards but their offense was not productive in getting points. To quote Ernest Hemingway: "Don't confuse motion with action".

fundytide said:

Or maybe Bama's strategy against spread offenses is: 1) keep them off the field with our own long, clock-eating drives; 2) on defense, don't let the play get behind teh DB's and make these spread teams spend all their time getting to the red zone where they just don't have the space to run that kind of offense as effectively so we try to force FG trys; and 3) turn up the heat and pressure on D anytime that we are able to cause a negative yardage play.

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It's not the strategy sought to be employed, really, but in practice #2 is essentially what we end up doing.

Everyone talks about #1 -- playing keep-away -- but really that's not a real, viable strategy. You can certainly shorten a game that way and limit the overall number of possessions, but at the end of the day you've still got to out-perform your opponent on an overall per-drive basis. You don't necessarily get any real competitive advantage by going that route.