Defensive Adjustments Question

[gtgilbert]

It would likely cause more issues than it solves in the short term.

Some of it I think is just growing pains for a coach moving into the SEC. Womack sees a guy like Russaw, and must think he's superman and can do just about anything compared to what the guys at USA could do. Same for our Bandits. I'm sure at USA against that level of competition, Russaw could dominate interior gaps without getting a head start and Overton would be agile enough to contain a mobile QB on the edge. The same doesn't hold true against SEC level talent on a consistent basis. I'm not picking on either of those guys as I think they are both very good players. I just think they they are sometimes being asked to do things that don't fit with the skills and abilities they have. Russaw is a pure edge player. Keep him out there and let him wreck havoc and when the RPO comes his way let him crash the mesh point in the backfield. Overton is a heavy/hybrid edge, so if the RPO goes to that side, it has to be played like an option and he has to have inside/dive, with players behind him handling anything else (several times against Vandy the ILBs were crashing inside on the read and leaving Overton or Latham to try to handle the outside). Same with pass rush - don't waste Russaw's quickness by putting him inside with all the traffic and when doing that push a guy like Keenan out to an outside rush end spot where he doesn't have the quickness to get around an OT on the long path to the QB. Let Keenan do what he's built for and push the pocket on the inside with the shortest distance to the QB, and Russaw (or Robinson or Koht for that matter) who has the twitch to make an impact against the OT stay on the outside.

 

[colbysullivan]

Defensive adjustments? I'd be in favor of it.

 

[B1GTide]

Wommack earns 1.55 MILLION per year to be the DC at Alabama. If he needs to go out and solicit advise from CNS, he needs to be terminated immediately.

Saban often brought in consultants for this very type of advice. It is a sign of maturity, not weakness.

 

[B1GTide]

I guess the question should be: Do we face another option team on our schedule this year?

Georgia did worse to the defense for a half.

 

[RTR2u]

You guys have forgotten more football than I will ever know. If Saban is currently drawing a salary (and a hefty one, too) for consulting, then consult him. He told the players after announcing his retirement that he'd still be around to crawl their butts or did I dream that? I totally get what many are saying....it's CKD's team and CKW has to own it. I don't disagree there. I don't know if a different scheme is an answer and revert back to my first statement, but if ya got the world's greatest resource on campus you can at least pose a question or two.

 

[Bamabuzzard]

I agree there's a learning curve for the coaches as well as the players. We talk about how Malachi Moore should be embarrassed but Wommack should equally or be more embarrassed. He has gotten taken to school for six straight quarters by teams on polar opposite of the SEC organizational chart.

 

[Coach D]

Could CNS give pointers that would help, yes. Should he if asked, yes. It is normal for little suggestions but anymore than a short convo is a bad sign.

The scheme should put players in position to succeed and I have not seen a great job of this all year. The way they have run this leaves the d getting out leveraged a lot especially when pulling a guard and then the d loses numbers almost every time. Add in the only time the DC did anything exotic or got out of the base look was UGA that is sad.
As far as last game against the option you need the d line to get through and disrupt plays, they really did not hit the mesh point. So that’s a bad combo when the rest are trying to read instead of attack their guy and add in the LBs catching instead of hitting which gives even more yards.

The d should be tailored to who you have and if DC needs to ask Saban about how he thinks he could line guys up for better success since he is more familiar with them then that might be a good thing now. But I will say the d line has underwhelmed by a lot so far. More because of alignment to me than skill but they just have not done well. I know he was coming off injury I believe but lack of Oatis is surprising and Overton I don’t think should play inside on those third and longs, really think he is not used to his best ability. Regardless they are not making plays near consistently.

 

[Windsortide]

My wife and I were discussing this last night. If Saban were brought in and leveraged to help Wommack take what he has put on the field and transform it into something capable of stopping teams like Texas and Georgia, could he actually do it? Is it possible at this point in the season, or will it require an entire offseason to fix?

I believe that the ship has sailed, but my wife thinks that it might be possible if changes were implemented during a bye week.

So, looking for thoughts. Is Alabama even considering using Saban as a resource here? If so, is it too late? What changes could be made within Wommacks system that might make a difference this season?

Roll Tide

It is never too late to make changes. I would hope the DC is not to proud to use his resources for help or he won’t be in the job long. Changes that need to be made:
1. We need to go heavier in short yardage and goal line packages.
2. We need to clearly define roles when playing the option. Who has FB, QB, and Pitch! That’s how little shovel passes hurt you. It’s called assignment football.
3. Review our alignment against formations to make sure we are sound with CNS.
4. Use more edge rushers in passing situations.
5. Be more multiple on D. Use some dime packages when or if we can produce 3rd and long. SMH I’m still shook up over Saturday.

 

[Windsortide]

I agree there's a learning curve for the coaches as well as the players. We talk about how Malachi Moore should be embarrassed but Wommack should equally or be more embarrassed. He has gotten taken to school for six straight quarters by teams on polar opposite of the SEC organizational chart.

No excuse for 40 against Vandy! @B1GTide I think B1G pointed we hadn’t made one stop against Vandy at some point in the 3rd quarter. If that QB went 31-35 for 375 and we crowded the box and eliminated the run I could live with that. But to watch them run whatever they wanted and set up plays staying one step ahead all night and then the 4th down TD down the middle of the field with a safety in the hole? SMH

 

[bamaslammer]

Vandy had the unique feature of a QB who was lethal at 6 yard passes no matter if 11 guys were about to jack him up but couldn't complete anything downfield. Thus all their drives ate loads of clock and essentially took our offensive skill guys out of the game which they had no chance of stopping. If I'm an OC going forward I won't even try downfield passing because even if it works it's too quick. I don't need to score TD's every time I just need to eat clock and keep Milro looking sad on the sideline.

I don't recall a defensive failure of this magnitude in my lifetime.

From my uneducated view defensively a vandy offensive line manhandled our defensive line, which I never thought I'd type and someone needs to be fired for it. Secondly the tackling was atrocious. How many times did their guy just drag our guy for the first down yardage. They wanted it more, our guys didn't hit worth a crap.

We have a lot of freshmen in the secondary, I'll give them a pass for sucking. But the veteran players have no excuse for playing that bad. If vandy proved anything it's that you don't need a 5 star recruit to lay someone out. They laid some of our guys out. So that we can control. I realize we will probably get some roughing calls, well if we are going to lose we need to make sure they at least feel it after the game.

 

[uaintn]

I agree that there is an over-empahsis on trying to pull the ball out of a ball carrier's arms after contact rather than stopping his forward progress. If we don't rip the ball out (which we managed 0 times Saturday) you give up 2-3 yards pulling him forward instead of knocking him down.

May have worked in the Sunbelt. I'm sure there is some calculus. But if you give up an extra 2 yards on 20 carries trying to create a fumble? How many yards is one turnover worth?

 

[Isaiah 63:1]

Defensive adjustments? I'd be in favor of it.

Welcome to TideFans Coach McKay...

 

[Isaiah 63:1]

...Milroe looking sad on the sideline...

Poor leadership by him Saturday for sure, sitting on the bench while the defense was struggling. Why was he not on the sideline urging on the defense, or at least huddled with his offensive team going over the plan for when they got the ball back (which of course they never did)?

This, plus the thoroughly discussed Malachi Moore behavior, Ryan Williams' hot-dogging on the way to a score, all coming after Germie Bernard's poor sportsmanship in his post-Wisky comment about Jump Around, makes me wonder about the character of this team. And I do realize this makes me the internet forum equivalent of an old man screaming at the kids to get off my lawn...

 

[countrytider]

Unpopular opinion I know:

The way our offense operates does our defense no favors.

2nd half against UGA, you can’t continually go 3 and out and run absolutely no time off the clock in doing so. (Snapping the ball with 20 seconds left on play clock)

The Vandy game I think we all agree the defense absolutely sucked.

Let’s look at the offense tho, DeBoer knowing we couldn’t stop them continually neglected to go ahead and go for 2 a couple different times to at least make it a 1 score game.

Then you have the absolutely devastating Milroe fumble which CAN NOT happen at that point in the game. The FEW times the offense had the ball, with a chance to TAKE THE LEAD, they folded.

EVERY. SINGLE. TIME.

 

[countrytider]

Georgia did worse to the defense for a half.

The defense was gassed the 2nd half. Literally nothing from the offense.

We have two of the top RB’s in the country and we don’t even use them.

 

[countrytider]

I’ll add also we stopped UGA 2 or 3 times only for the drive to be extended because of a penalty.

 

[B1GTide]

The defense was gassed the 2nd half. Literally nothing from the offense.

We have two of the top RB’s in the country and we don’t even use them.

This thread is about the defense. I would prefer if we stayed on that topic here. Maybe start another thread to discuss the run game, which I agree needs more focus.

 

[NoNC4Tubs]

I agree that there is an over-empahsis on trying to pull the ball out of a ball carrier's arms after contact rather than stopping his forward progress. If we don't rip the ball out (which we managed 0 times Saturday) you give up 2-3 yards pulling him forward instead of knocking him down.

May have worked in the Sunbelt. I'm sure there is some calculus. But if you give up an extra 2 yards on 20 carries trying to create a fumble? How many yards is one turnover worth?

Nailed it!

Yeah, CKW is dogging these guys to get turnovers to the point that they aren't making tackles. Meanwhile, the ballcarrier is getting another 5-7 yards...

 

[BhamToTexas]

He is there as a consultant why not use him. You could have some beneficial conversations. Doesn’t mean you are doing a drastic overhaul of the defense. The DC needs to run his system. But Saban could give him a couple of ideas to help.

 

[gtgilbert]

Could CNS give pointers that would help, yes. Should he if asked, yes. It is normal for little suggestions but anymore than a short convo is a bad sign.

The scheme should put players in position to succeed and I have not seen a great job of this all year. The way they have run this leaves the d getting out leveraged a lot especially when pulling a guard and then the d loses numbers almost every time. Add in the only time the DC did anything exotic or got out of the base look was UGA that is sad.
As far as last game against the option you need the d line to get through and disrupt plays, they really did not hit the mesh point. So that’s a bad combo when the rest are trying to read instead of attack their guy and add in the LBs catching instead of hitting which gives even more yards.

The d should be tailored to who you have and if DC needs to ask Saban about how he thinks he could line guys up for better success since he is more familiar with them then that might be a good thing now. But I will say the d line has underwhelmed by a lot so far. More because of alignment to me than skill but they just have not done well. I know he was coming off injury I believe but lack of Oatis is surprising and Overton I don’t think should play inside on those third and longs, really think he is not used to his best ability. Regardless they are not making plays near consistently.

I disgree with that statement. I've actually been pretty surprised at how often we've done something different than the 'base 4-2' front. Womack actually has run a 3-4 alignment (or at least that personnel grouping) more this season than we ran it across the entire season last year) and he's got multiple variants of how he fills out that 4 in the 4-2 front with the number of DTs, Bandits and Wolves. He's also run the 3-3 alignment (same personnel as the 4-2 sometimes, but also sometimes taking the wolf off and having Campbell play that role with Jefferson as an ILB) way more than I would like as it hasn't been that productive so far except when we've stacked 2 LBs into the LOS to show blitz and then had variable drops based on the call.

Agree on Overton sliding inside - it doesn't seem to suite him even in pass rush. Latham does slightly better at the inside rush on pass downs and then just leave one DT in there. Either leave Overton outside, or if we need a speed guy he comes out and we get a guy like Robinson or Koht in there.