re: Golding needs to go.

quote:

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just out of curiosity. how many losses to lsu and auburn you kool with before you accept the truth of the golding defenses?

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1) We lost to auburn because of 2 pick 6s. Full Stop. End of discussion on why we lost to auburn. The defense played plenty good enough to win.

2) Regarding LSU, they had arguably the best CFB season of all time, and we nearly beat them with a hobbled Tua, losing by only 5. If that game had been 3 minutes longer, we likely win. That defense had a helluva second half overall, and the good can't be ignored. The good counts just as much as the bad in an evaluation.

Sure, our defense has plenty of room for improvement, and had obvious deficiencies at the ILB and DLine groups in 2019. We tackled poorly at times, and had to get REALLY out of our comfort zone to try and make it work last year, notably going to a 3-3-5 a good bit in the final 3rd of the season. Hell, we had to take our starting Mike off the field on passing downs, and our Dline wasn't winning 1-on-1 matchups. Can you all understand how crazy these things make life for a DC?

But I'm also clear on 2 other things:

a) Our defensive deficiencies are almost totally due to personnel issues. It's clear as day. I see no reason for any logical person to lay our issues primarily at the feet of Golding's coaching prowess. As a matter of fact, I think he did quite a good job to get what he got out of that freshman/MASH unit.

b) Furthermore, I'm also clear that we are living in the era of offensive explosion, and playing defense is harder today than it has ever been in CFB. Everyone needs to understand that the Bama defensive unit we watched this past year, while not up to our standards and had plenty of room for improvement, was still one of the best units in the country. That's how difficult playing defensive is now. The. Game. Has. Changed.

And so, yeah. I get really annoyed that a huge portion of this board won't update their expectations to 2019/2020, and they also won't clearly see just how big of a personnel 8-ball we were behind in 2019 after the injuries. Remember, ILB and DLine depth were 2 of our biggest question marks BEFORE the injuries. Those were the preseason negative narratives, along with TE/H talent and depth. And so again, yeah, rewriting history and ignoring our eyes in favor of demanding a non-player scapegoat pisses me off. It's just bad fandom all around.