Net Points Scored per Drive, through Week 7 - Our defense is not good.

Damn, you know it’s bad when “I’m a man” Gundy’s Okie Lite defense is better than Bama’s!

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you know expectations have changed dramatically in Tuscaloosa.

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I think the game has changed dramatically.

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I mean he’s technically right. With the way Mac and the offense are playing, we only need a couple or three stops a game. We don’t have to have the D be lights out. It is kind of sad for us older guys though who remember all the great Bama defenses down through the years.

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He's more than technically right but it also felt like more of a concession to how this defense is also performing. Frankly, it just doesn't have to be this bad. And the coach knows it.

Am i reading that correctly....UMass hasnt scored an offensive point this year? 0.00 OPD. And giving up 4.75 Pts per drive

A kid from my hometown is the Umass QB. They went to state last year in Niceville. He is a good athlete but needs a lot of reps at that level.

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So, we've held 3 teams under their average and had 1 all-time historic disaster. Remove the Ole Miss game and our PPD defense is 1.971, which would be around 25 and be a little above average.

So, I guess my thought is, this group had a terrible no good game in Oxford that terrifies me for when we play other good offenses, but outside of that they've been frustrating but average to above average.

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I guess that's a nice way to say we are heading for some serious shootouts. Given that last season's defense wasn't good enough, I'm getting more and more convinced our defense is once again going to eventually leave us wanting.

Fortunately for us that's the case for the rest of the SEC as well.

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This defense can’t be fixed. We seen NO improvement in 4 weeks. It is not going to get better “all of a sudden.”

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Don't think anyone thinks that it will get fixed all of a sudden.

Also, you said we'd lose to Georgia and "it wouldn't be close", so.

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Last year it just felt like we were in over our heads, this year it feels like we have guys who aren't trusting themselves. The good news is #2 can get better.....the bad news is we haven't seemingly gotten better on defense as the year progressed in a long time.

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I've personally lost faith in our man to man principle as they apply to spread concepts. Part of the frustration about Golding isn't just what fundamentally seems to be missing with our inside LBers, but his creativity. I think I've tried to be somewhat fair about it by saying, I don't think it's always his call. As you mentioned, we don't seem to improve. Frankly, it feels like we are asking our defense half the time to dig a ditch with a spoon. Saturday was actually one of the few times this season that I feel like we put the right tool in their hands and asked them to go out and perform.

This defense has so much naturally. Speed, athleticism galore, and size. Saturday felt like we helped the team to stop thinking and just react. Let them see everything in front of them, and just use their God given ability to react and we're getting off the field. When our safeties and DBs see it coming they are jumping routes and blowing stuff up in the backend. The thing about zones, you just can't let QBs sit in the pocket and wait for receivers to find soft spots. Golding has to get more creative with his blitz packages and make teams go the long way.

Not everyone agrees, but I think if we could just get the right tool in our guy's hands against these elite offenses things could change dramatically. This season.