Psycho Defense

I know we have complained a lot about the lack of defensive pressure we got as the season went on. But my question is, what the heck happened? Why did our psycho defense lose it's psychotic tendencies? Did we get too conservative in fear of the big play? Is our lack of safety play what caused Collins to be less risky? Are we too big suddenly on defense? Not enough speed?

I've said all year that I like how OM plays downhill and aggressive on defense. I feel like we play the complete opposite. I'm ok with that, if it works....but when you need to get pressure on a QB and just can't get to him when he has a bad OL....something is wrong. I'm concerned about our defense going forward, because I feel like we have a lot of talent on that side of the ball....yet we play zone nearly the entire game and are not able to get much pressure at all, even against poor OL's. Some of you former coaches explain why we can't be more disruptive and why, if our safeties are so poor in coverage, we couldnt bring them on more blitzes and use them to be more disruptive at the LOS. I'm just confused how with that much talent, we can't get any pressure on Bo Wallace, yet we STILL can't cover downfield despite having several guys in coverage. Seems like you should either be getting pressure by outnumbering blockers, OR covering the secondary well because you outnumber receivers. What am I missing?

Is pretty much all of our defensive issues related to our safety play? Is it a coaching issue?

It looks like we went to Whitfield and got on some anti-psychotics!

I dont understand how you dont bring the heat on hurting QB. Our DE's werent even rushing at times- they were pressing the OT's and reading.

I'm baffled

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Originally Posted by Coach34

I dont understand how you dont bring the heat on hurting QB. Our DE's werent even rushing at times- they were pressing the OT's and reading.

I'm baffled

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My dad almost had a coronary wondering the same thing. I've never seen him so mad in my life. And I did some pretty bad shit as a teenager

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Originally Posted by Coach34

I dont understand how you dont bring the heat on hurting QB. Our DE's werent even rushing at times- they were pressing the OT's and reading.

I'm baffled

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That's what is so confusing to me. Either bring the heat, or don't....but if you don't, then there should be zero chance at a big play. Somehow we managed to not bring heat AND give up tons of big plays. Just a total bed shitting on our offensive and defensive gameplan's. When you have a QB that has an obvious injury....you MUST exploit that weakness. Especially if his #1 and #2 target are out. How we managed to not pressure Bo, and not cover Engram is just totally unacceptable considering those were the two most obvious things in the world we should have known to do. Collins blew it on his gameplan.

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Originally Posted by Coach34

I dont understand how you dont bring the heat on hurting QB. Our DE's werent even rushing at times- they were pressing the OT's and reading.

I'm baffled

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This bothered me more yesterday than missed tackles, bad play calling, poor safety play and 2 hour bus rides combined!

Saturday's performance is a fireable offense for Collins. That level of incompetence is unacceptable at this level.

We play 4 DE's significant minutes. Those 4 DE's average weight is 275.5 pounds. That's close to DT size. I really like Ryan Brown, but rushing the passer is not his strong suit. Preston Smith was the only guy who got pressure, but honestly he got most of his sacks the first half of the season.

Our DT's play like NT's not like 3 Tech's.

And we aren't terribly creative with our blitz packages.

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Originally Posted by Smitty

Saturday's performance is a fireable offense for Collins. That level of incompetence is unacceptable at this level.

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I have to agree. I'm sick of this ****ing bend don't break defense. The players get bored and it shows in their effort

We played man early on in the game and the DBs made some plays, knocked down a few and Calhoun picked one in the endzone. There is no reason on Gods green earth to play all zone in the 2nd half and not bring pressure. The only blitz we sent was a corner blitz as always, Ive seen it work for us twice. Ever. Our safeties are not good enough to run that. We have a helluva pass rusher at LB in McKinney and we stopped blitzing him a LONG time ago this season. Our sack numbers went up this year but we had a grand total of two that i remember against Ole Miss and Bama, both were by Preston Smith. Just off the top of my head. Yesterday was an absolute abomination of a game plan offensively and defensively and it is unacceptable. We did not do any twists or stunts that i can remember in this game, they ran outside on us when they did run it, and we never widened our ends out. They threw it deep time and time again and we did not take our best matchup player for Engram (Matt Wells) and use him. The staff and the team looked like they had checked out to me. I saw less than a dozen players with any kind of passion, Dak, Richie Brown, Calhoun, Will Redmond played hard, had 2 big effort plays in the game. Jay Hughes played hard . Fred Ross played like he wanted to be there, Bear Wilson did too. Ashton Shumpert showed he can ball. Other than that they looked like they could care less. And that is on the coaches. Something needs to be fixed after that.

How much of what we're doing on defense comes from Mullen? He's coached real tight since the Auburn game IMO and I wondered if he may have told Collins to be less aggressive. I don't know why he would do this but it just seemed Mullen coached a little cautiously the second half of the season.

Where was All America MLB yesterday? Did he make any tackles? I would have liked to seen him blitz Wallace a few times, but don't think he did. Matter of fact, I don't think anybody did, or they weren't capable of doing it. I saw one on our LB's go in and just stop before he got to the QB. Very lackluster performance by our defense all around. I, too, think that type of performance is a fireable offense.

So many on ED have praised Collins and some were saying if Mullen left make him the HC, I never thought this of Collins. He was and is an improvement over Wilson but to play so passive and like some or saying bend don't break is foolish against the spread! I think Collins is a nice guy and is well liked but as the saying goes teams play off the emotions of coaches.
I was shocked we didn't line up in the box with 5 to 8 men and show different blitz packages on a one leg QB which was obvious he couldn't run. My take on this years awful pass coverage on the "bomb" was why not just blitz and make the QB throw quicker, after all playing soft on defense just killed us and that being the case why not just try to kill them first?
Man would I love to see Coach O on this staff even if it was for a year or two! Also on Gene's page the rumor was two defensive coaches probably want be back!

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Originally Posted by Coach34

I dont understand how you dont bring the heat on hurting QB. Our DE's werent even rushing at times- they were pressing the OT's and reading.

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This week's burning question. Our multimillion dollar staff needs to answer. Mind boggling.

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Originally Posted by State82

This week's burning question. Our multimillion dollar staff needs to answer. Mind boggling.

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That is our fault. I am afraid that Mullen has a large role in our D plan. Think the opposite of JLD? JLD brought the house all the time and folks killed us eventually when we lost our NFL level talent and we stubbornly kept doing the same dumb shit. Think the opposite of that.....we have domesticated our D linemen to simply "engage and eat space" or whatever....I would bet you 50 cents that if Nick James shed a block, went crazy and destroyed a QB he would get benched because he "failed to occupy his zone/lane!" It is the same theory of "don't give up the big play (Mullen is thinking "I don't want to make a mistake") so we become so passive and predictable we give up shit tons of big plays. Same with our offense.....field position and turnovers are so worrisome for Dan, he babbles about that, but our lack of variability in play calling makes us easy to stop, especially lately, see A and OM.

We NEVER brought creative blitzes thereby putting worlds of pressure on our under talented safeties and don't get me started on turtle playing Engram over the middle, that was brutal.

I worry that Dan's "philosophy" is at the root of all of this and in the off season he needs to take some MMA fighting class and some testosterone pills.

Let me just ask this question. Does anyone think it may be at least partially due to us constantly rotating players in and out all over the field? We never give a defensive unit time to get into any kind of team rhythm on the field. As soon as they might the 1b's come in. Me personally. I don't care if we keep the entire defensive staff or fire the entire defensive staff - I just want the 1b concept to go the way of the dodo bird. Yes, we may have built a little depth this year but I also think it cost us big time too. Maybe in ways not as visible as just on field results.

To go even more black helicopter - something seemed off with the team down the stretch. I am not sure if it was just the pressure of finally having some expectations placed on you and that caused some tension in the locker room amongst the players and coaches or what. Maybe the 1A's got tired of having to sit and watch the opposing offense march down the field at will while they kept the bench warm. Maybe it was players on the 1B team that knew they should be on the 1A team. Not sure. But something just didn't seem right.

On the offensive side of the ball, what in the blue hell happened to JRob down the stretch? He goes from gashing defenses like they were girl scouts to not being able to do squat and spending large amounts of time on the bench. Was he hurt? In Mullen's dog house?

I may be completely over reacting but this just didn't look like the same team we saw against LSU and Auburn. If I am overreacting then apologies...just wanting answers. And yes, I am still butthurt over the EB and will be for quite some time.

Our D coordinator is average.

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Originally Posted by SallyStansbury

That is our fault. I am afraid that Mullen has a large role in our D plan. Think the opposite of JLD? JLD brought the house all the time and folks killed us eventually when we lost our NFL level talent and we stubbornly kept doing the same dumb shit. Think the opposite of that.....we have domesticated our D linemen to simply "engage and eat space" or whatever....I would bet you 50 cents that if Nick James shed a block, went crazy and destroyed a QB he would get benched because he "failed to occupy his zone/lane!" It is the same theory of "don't give up the big play (Mullen is thinking "I don't want to make a mistake") so we become so passive and predictable we give up shit tons of big plays. Same with our offense.....field position and turnovers are so worrisome for Dan, he babbles about that, but our lack of variability in play calling makes us easy to stop, especially lately, see A and OM.

We NEVER brought creative blitzes thereby putting worlds of pressure on our under talented safeties and don't get me started on turtle playing Engram over the middle, that was brutal.

I worry that Dan's "philosophy" is at the root of all of this and in the off season he needs to take some MMA fighting class and some testosterone pills.

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You got it!!! Overbearing, which leads to locker room friction every year. I was hoping having "his coaches" this year would fix this issue. Apparently it did not.

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Originally Posted by Coach34

I dont understand how you dont bring the heat on hurting QB. Our DE's werent even rushing at times- they were pressing the OT's and reading.

I'm baffled

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Even beyond that how do you not bring any extra players on the pass rush and yet STILL be lacking in coverage help deep to prevent giving up huge passing plays? Apparently the bulk of all of our defensive players were between 5 and 15 yards out from the line of scrimmage because they weren't rushing and they weren't defending deep.

Psycho defense you say? Psycho??? Pfffftttt more like fricken Schizo defense! I piss with more aggression than this group shows!

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Originally Posted by starkvegasdawg

Let me just ask this question. Does anyone think it may be at least partially due to us constantly rotating players in and out all over the field? We never give a defensive unit time to get into any kind of team rhythm on the field. As soon as they might the 1b's come in. Me personally. I don't care if we keep the entire defensive staff or fire the entire defensive staff - I just want the 1b concept to go the way of the dodo bird. Yes, we may have built a little depth this year but I also think it cost us big time too. Maybe in ways not as visible as just on field results.

To go even more black helicopter - something seemed off with the team down the stretch. I am not sure if it was just the pressure of finally having some expectations placed on you and that caused some tension in the locker room amongst the players and coaches or what. Maybe the 1A's got tired of having to sit and watch the opposing offense march down the field at will while they kept the bench warm. Maybe it was players on the 1B team that knew they should be on the 1A team. Not sure. But something just didn't seem right.

On the offensive side of the ball, what in the blue hell happened to JRob down the stretch? He goes from gashing defenses like they were girl scouts to not being able to do squat and spending large amounts of time on the bench. Was he hurt? In Mullen's dog house?

I may be completely over reacting but this just didn't look like the same team we saw against LSU and Auburn. If I am overreacting then apologies...just wanting answers. And yes, I am still butthurt over the EB and will be for quite some time.

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They were not the same team because Dan Mullen did not let them be the same team. Bama and TSUN ran a good scheme to stop us, played a double eagle and we did not adjust. At all. Defensively we held up against alabama but did not in the 2nd half vs ole miss because, i firmly believe, that mullen makes collins play it safe all the time. or he did saturday. how the hell do you play all zone vs a hobbled QB and a proven to be average O line??? On top of that, how do you play all zone and still get beat by a few big plays??? We played a cover 2 and they attacked the middle of the field. We did nothing to adjust. Something needs to be addressed. ASAP. Offensively and Defensively. 10-2 is all well and good, 11-2 would be even better but saturday made me lose a lot of confidence in this staff

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Originally Posted by Coach34

I dont understand how you dont bring the heat on hurting QB. Our DE's werent even rushing at times- they were pressing the OT's and reading.

I'm baffled

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The impression I got was that we thought we would get enough pressure with 3 or 4, having the rest in coverage so to speak, and wait for Bo to throw an interception off his "bad" foot. They got one over on us. He couldn't really run but was healed enough to throw just fine.