Yes, they played terribly because they were poorly coached. There have been a lot of terrible defenses in the SEC, including a recent VOLS defense. I would be willing to wager that there are only a select few who gave up 2k yards in 3 games. Injuries are an excuse only up to a certain point, blaming the entire defenses struggles on injuries and not holding coaches responsible is lazy and irresponsible IMO. Even after we lost Sutton, JRM, and Kirkland to injury there was no adjustments from Shoop to better fit the personnel available to him. How many times does it take seeing Gaulden whiffing on a corner blitz and us getting burnt as a result for him to make an adjustment?

Shoop may have a solid track record, but he had a horrendous season and a lot of the poor displays the 2nd half of the season fall on him.

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Posted by Prof

Member since Jun 2013

42695 posts

Posted on 12/26/16 at 7:12 pm to Nukeese

Shoop isn't a bad coach. However, you can't install a new D and then lose all your starters, all your DTs, and backups and expect to do well. I mean for frick's sake we were forced to put DEs in as DTs and gave up shite ton of weight because we lost all our DTs to injury. The people who need fingers pointed at them are Martinez (dbs haven't improved since the work he did in his first season) and even Thig but not Shoop who called some brilliant games when we still had defenders.

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