That is what the stats show, but the stats only show that because we stopped running to ball and switched to passing it almost exclusively (they only ran it twice in the 4th qtr). If you want to believe that we were better at pass defense before that, fine by me - but I don't buy it. They were gashing us on the ground and taking what we were giving them. When we put the extra safety back in the box in the second half to stop the run, they went to the air and gashed us in the air. We were never able to take away one without getting destroyed by the other. That is horrible defense and will get us killed by a team as balanced as Alabama.Gotta disagree B1G...take a closer look. Cook was 25-45 for 358 and Lippet had 5 catches for 64 yards. Looking at the drive charts, of those yards, more than half - 183 - came in the 4th qtr after MSU was down 3 TD's and the game no longer in doubt. Cook was 14-19 for 183 yards in garbage time and Lippet had 3 catches for 39 yards.
That means that through 3 qtrs when the game was on the line, Cook was 11 of 26 for 165 yards and Lippet had 2 catches for 25 yards. Clearly we took Lippet out of the game and Cook struggled.....don't get me wrong, Lippet is no Cooper - there aren't many of those guys around - but he is a fine receiver that will play on Sunday and Cook is an excellent QB and is quite comparable to Sims. I wouldn't be surprised to see Grant follow Cooper all over the field ala Lippet.....the test will then be can our front 7 handle the running game without putting a safety in the box.....I'm not sure, but I'm sure you'll see it or some derivative.....
ETA - Don't get me wrong, if we do this, I hope that it works as you think that it will, but I have serious doubts. We brought in Ash for a reason, and I think that his quarters defense has a greater chance of success against Alabama than the zone/man that we ran against MSU. It is a lot more flexible and is equally capable of covering run and pass plays on any given down.
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