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re: Defensive adjustment
Posted on 1/14/20 at 10:05 am to LovetheLord
Posted on 1/14/20 at 10:05 am to LovetheLord
quote:
What do you think those 4 guys look like size and weight wise? And would you go heavy in the middle and leaner on the Edges?
Courtney Upshaw and Tim Williams on the edge
Quinnen Williams and Jon Allen in the middle.
Or hopefully, Will Anderson and Drew Sanders on the edge
Tim Smith and Christian Barmore in the middle.
It's really hard to find 3 down players that can combat any type of offense you're going to see. Those guys, the Jon Allens and Quinnen Williams of the world, are first round picks for a reason. Being able to penetrate and disrupt the passing game while holding the point of attack in the running game takes a special type of athlete. You either need specialists or freaks.
I think why you see us "fatten up" our defensive ends is that we're trying to create a balanced player that isn't limited by what he's able to do in situational football.
Do you know why that's important? Because everybody runs tempo now. If they don't sub, you can't sub. So you need guys that can rush the passer and play against the run or else you have a clear weak link that can be exploited until you're able to get him off the field.
Unfortunately there are only a few freaks every season. If you miss on them then you have to mold the clay you've got. I think we've ended up with a lot of DE type players that are pretty good at everything but great at nothing. The 260-275 pound freshman that come in as pretty good high school pass rushers, but will never quite have that twitch as the 230 pounder that bulked up a little, and don't have the strength right away to successfully play the run. They're more well rounded players if you work on bulking them up, because they aren't super twitchy anyway.
1
Posted on 1/14/20 at 10:05 am to bamameister
quote:
And now for the saddest truth of them all, there is no easy defensive fix short of doing away with the constant running clock. At that point, defenses can get on the field after each snap and can now match up with offensive personnel and play to down and distance. I have a sneaky feeling though that the NCAA is in love with watching all these scoreboard explosions.
Truth. The game is geared toward giving the offense the advantage. There are rule changes that could reverse that a bit, but there is no interest yet in going that direction.
Which brings us to another point - you have to have defensive players who are 3 down players and versatile and not specialists. And you also need a guy at each level of the defense (DL, LB, and DB) who is the coach on the field because coaching defense from the sidelines (by calling in plays/audibles, sending in plays with substitutes, etc) is increasingly difficult and too much of that will have your defense not even ready when the ball is snapped. Alabama had this happen quite a bit this year.
Posted on 1/14/20 at 10:08 am to Shaft Williams
Our formula has been working. We just had too many injuries and Golding didn’t seem to know how to adjust.
Posted on 1/14/20 at 10:16 am to LovetheLord
quote:Only so much you can do when the rules are clearly favoring the offenses. Pretty much what has been said. Injury luck and keeping guys from making the jump to the NFL. In other words, not much.
Guys, I am not just talking Alabama, here. I mean defenses in general. Erybody gettin’ burned to death by the offenses right now.
Posted on 1/14/20 at 10:19 am to Riseupfromtherubble
quote:
It's really hard to find 3 down players that can combat any type of offense you're going to see. Those guys, the Jon Allens and Quinnen Williams of the world, are first round picks for a reason. Being able to penetrate and disrupt the passing game while holding the point of attack in the running game takes a special type of athlete. You either need specialists or freaks.
I think why you see us "fatten up" our defensive ends is that we're trying to create a balanced player that isn't limited by what he's able to do in situational football.
Do you know why that's important? Because everybody runs tempo now. If they don't sub, you can't sub. So you need guys that can rush the passer and play against the run or else you have a clear weak link that can be exploited until you're able to get him off the field.
Unfortunately there are only a few freaks every season. If you miss on them then you have to mold the clay you've got. I think we've ended up with a lot of DE type players that are pretty good at everything but great at nothing. The 260-275 pound freshman that come in as pretty good high school pass rushers, but will never quite have that twitch as the 230 pounder that bulked up a little, and don't have the strength right away to successfully play the run. They're more well rounded players if you work on bulking them up, because they aren't super twitchy anyway.
Agree with all of this. You can't really have too many niche players anymore because of substitution rules, but the guys who are naturally twitchy enough to get after the QB and strong enough to anchor against the run are few and far between. I personally think we got one of them this year in Timothy Smith, but time will tell. I don't think anyone is going to be able to maintain consistent greatness on defense from game to game, much less year to year, anymore though. Simply because even the greatest defensive mind in history can do nothing to adjust during the middle of a possession if the offense doesn't substitute.
Posted on 1/14/20 at 10:24 am to LovetheLord
Saban said it last night. Disrupt the quarterback. If you can disrupt the QB you can get negative plays and sometimes turnovers. Now, it's awesome to be able to do this with four guys, but if you can't you need to bring pressure and live with the fact that you're going to give up some chunk plays. One issue is that our DL are so big that most of them don't have explosive pass rush ability. I wish they were a little smaller and quicker, but I don't see that happening unfortunately.
Posted on 1/14/20 at 10:44 am to elposter
quote:
Truth. The game is geared toward giving the offense the advantage. There are rule changes that could reverse that a bit, but there is no interest yet in going that direction.
For 140 years they allowed the defenses to get on the field and mix and match. It helped control the pace of play and allowed teams to simply play best on best.
quote:
Which brings us to another point - you have to have defensive players who are 3 down players and versatile and not specialists. And you also need a guy at each level of the defense (DL, LB, and DB) who is the coach on the field because coaching defense from the sidelines (by calling in plays/audibles, sending in plays with substitutes, etc) is increasingly difficult and too much of that will have your defense not even ready when the ball is snapped. Alabama had this happen quite a bit this year.
For offenses to play this fast and proficient they have got to "simplify" their passing and running techniques. Speed is the great equalizer.
Bama needs to match speed and simplicity with these guys.
In 2017, under Pruitt, we were fast and simple and Mack Wilson led the team in interceptions. Including the big pick-six that turned the Clemson game. If the NFL could have gotten their hands on him he was a first-round pick.
In 2018 under Tosh/Golding Mac got his first interception in the LSU game and not much after.
Coach Saban believes we need to continue to try to "outsmart" these simple, fast as lightning offenses that are basically designed to throw short passes or execute an option run game. So, here we continue to run down that rabbit hole, through a series of complex defensive disguises that need to be made after the OC gives them the call at the LOS.
Why not just appreciate and "GIVE IN" that when we fight "simple and fast" offenses with "simple and fast" defenses, instinct and talent take over and turnovers and stops come more rapidly?
And all our Mack Wilson's get taken in the 1st round, as they should, and we win a lot more games.
Posted on 1/14/20 at 10:45 am to LovetheLord
Good thread. Pondering the last two seasons I was thinking of starting a thread asking if we will ever see dominate defense again. I am not a fan of the 45-48 scores in today’s game. I suppose the rules/penalty enforcement and offenses have changed the game forever. Dinosaur I may be, I’ll never be a fan of winning games 55-31, giving up 300-400 yards. That just doesn’t feel like Alabama football to me.
Posted on 1/14/20 at 11:11 am to bamameister
quote:
In 2018 under Tosh/Golding Mac got his first interception in the LSU game and not much after.
His first INT in 2018 was against TAMU(4th game of the season that year,) but I am by no means disagreeing with your overall point.
Posted on 1/14/20 at 4:34 pm to Tw1st3d
Position Thoughts: Growing pains thing of the past at ILB (BamaOnLine)
This post was edited on 1/14/20 at 4:35 pm
Posted on 1/14/20 at 4:48 pm to LovetheLord
One thing is to stop starting each play with 3 or 4 players AT the LOS. We should have at least 5 at the LOS for every play. We don't have to rush 5 but for heaven's sake, mix up the looks to make the QB think. With the current passing attack, bringing pressure from the LB or DB spot is too slow. It works occasionally but most of the time, it's ineffective and takes someone out of coverage.
Posted on 1/14/20 at 6:01 pm to LovetheLord
quote:
Go back to mount Cody in the middle will leaner defensive ends?
No, we abandoned that scheme immediately after the 2013 season. We've been 2-gap up front ever since, and won't be going back to lineman that size. They've been phased out of modern CFB by the spread/hurry up.
quote:
what kinds of adjustments do you see needing to be made in order to deal with modern offenses?
I don't think we need to change anything schematically. In the secondary, everyone that matters has copied Saban's pattern matching stuff, and so we've been and are the standard schematically on the back end.
The only "changes" we need to make is to get better players and keep them in Tuscaloosa longer. Too many guys leave early, and it robs us of getting lengthy contributions from these guys while they're upperclassmen.
Our defensive gameplan was hurt by one thing more than anything else this year - extreme youth at ILB. This literally meant that a chunk of the playbook is missing when designing gameplans during game week, and a DC's ability to adjust midgame is severely limited -limited to only what has been installed up to that point in the season. And even late in the season, it's still a small fraction of the playbook that would be available to make adjustments if the ILBs had been upperclassmen.
We just need to recruit and develop players to the best of our staff's ability, and hopefully have our units on both sides of the football littered with experienced players. And keep them in TTown as long as possible.
Richt was on Finebaum a day or 2 ago, and while talking shop, waxed lyrical on how much easier it is to make in-game schematic adjustments if the players are experienced/upper classmen, and how difficult it is to adjust to what a team is doing midgame if the players are young. Said it was night and day, paraphrasing his words, obviously.
Personally, I'd like to see us blitz more, but that's predicated on having good, experienced players who can play on islands.
This post was edited on 1/14/20 at 6:04 pm
Posted on 1/14/20 at 6:24 pm to prevatt33b
I'd also like to see us get back to recruiting ILBs with more length, which we did do in our most recent recruiting class. Keeping ILBs around 235 is fine and all, but they don't have to be 6 feet tall. I'd like to see us get back to having 6'3" ILBs. Rangy dudes with big mitts.
Posted on 1/14/20 at 6:56 pm to prevatt33b
The other change I would make is to convince Derek Mason to leave Vanderbilt and come to Alabama and be the highest paid defensive coordinator in all of college football.
Posted on 1/14/20 at 8:35 pm to Bham Bammer
quote:
Saban said it last night. Disrupt the quarterback. If you can disrupt the QB you can get negative plays and sometimes turnovers. Now, it's awesome to be able to do this with four guys, but if you can't you need to bring pressure and live with the fact that you're going to give up some chunk plays. One issue is that our DL are so big that most of them don't have explosive pass rush ability. I wish they were a little smaller and quicker, but I don't see that happening unfortunately.
You can't disrupt the QB with your front 4. Hell, nobody can since holding doesn't exist anymore. You have to literally ride a guy down to the ground with your arms around his neck for holding to be called. It's bullshite. They HAVE to rebalance things and give the defense a chance. That's one reason DC's are blitzing like hell. That's the only way you can get home. Venables did it all night last night. He could see that LSU had figured it out and were burning Clemson almost every play. But he kept bringing it, hoping he could get home and hit Burrow. It was his only chance and only answer. If not, Burrow has all damn day back there to throw or decide to take off.
Posted on 1/14/20 at 10:05 pm to phil4bama
This is completely untrue Phil.
You have to have your legs wrapped around them too.
You have to have your legs wrapped around them too.
Posted on 1/15/20 at 10:49 am to LovetheLord
Brady brought the Saints’ schemes with him. Okay, but how come NFL defenses aren’t holograms for the offenses to run through whilst scoring unreal points? It would seem that there would be some type of learning to be done from the NFL. Correct?
Posted on 1/15/20 at 10:57 am to LovetheLord
Yes , colleges go to NFL teams all the time for skull sessions on different aspects of football . Clemson actually did a pretty good job defending short and mid range option routes that LSU likes to run, but got hurt on deep balls , some of which did not have bad coverage but Burrow dropped them in there perfectly or their receivers high pointed the ball perfectly
Posted on 1/15/20 at 11:00 am to LovetheLord
quote:
Brady brought the Saints’ schemes with him. Okay, but how come NFL defenses aren’t holograms for the offenses to run through whilst scoring unreal points? It would seem that there would be some type of learning to be done from the NFL. Correct?
Because NFL defenses are significantly more talented than any college defense. By sheer on field talent, it's a totally different game. If Alabama could have the second best Saban Era player at every position on defense, every year, there isn't an offense in cfb that runs through them. There is no mayden or savion smith or slow depriest or first year cyrus jones in modern NFL defense barring catastrophic injuries.
This post was edited on 1/15/20 at 11:02 am
Posted on 1/15/20 at 11:09 am to Tider95
Dang , beat me to it. Was about to edit to say the same thing . College rosters and talent change . It’s about jimmies and joes.
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