re: PSA regarding this months-long Golding debacle

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I feel you are also contributing to the board being bogged down.

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Constructive criticism noted and I will endeavor not to do that in the future.

We have used the mush rush as a means of rushing the passer when facing a mobile QB. While I see the reasoning for it (occasionally in my book), I don’t see it being effective too often especially when you have speed at LB(not this year) and DL capable of getting to the QB. JMO

Going to have to disagree there . It is to force the QB to stay in the pocket often with a spy on him as well

It was designed for mobile QBs . It was given that name by John Mitchell I think but Saban has alluded to this many times when facing mobile , elusive QBs

I think we are violently agreeing. I am calling any "pass rush" technique a scheme to attack the QB who is in the process of throwing or wanting to throw the football.

I am saying that the "mush rush" by definition is not a scheme to get to the QB who is passing, but a scheme to play the run, and the QB is certainly a runner. It also has the added benefit of uniformly collapsing the pocket around the QB.

My point in the original example was to illustrate that any poster why was screaming about the mush rush being a bad way to get to the QB quickly has no idea what they are talking about, as it's not a plan to do that at all by design. It's a plan to have overlapping gap responsibility for the front 7 in the run game while having the benefit of collapsing the pocket around any QB, including a running one.

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Put me in the corner of not liking it though . When the QB picks us apart in that D, it makes me say ugly things

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I hear you, but it's responsible for us knocking down a silly amount of balls a number of years back. And we've stopped the run with it effectively, even after going away from monster NTs, as the 2-gap technique eliminates the necessity of the NT demanding a double team. When done right, it works.

I did hear a DC talk on a podcast a few weeks back that the 2-gap is quickly becoming a thing of the past, and so I'm interested to see if that is true for Alabama. (Edit: it wasn't a DC, it was the new head coach for Arkansas in his first presser - Sam Pittman).

Honestly, how many teams on our schedule really want to run the football anymore? 3?

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My point is it was used by us primarily on passing downs so the run gap fits really didn’t apply.

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I disagree in 2 ways:

1) We used this technique on traditional downs, when the chance of run or pass was equal. It only looked like a "mush rush" when the offense decided to pass. When they ran, it looked like we played "normal" run defense.

When it was an obvious passing down, we frequently put in our rabbit rusher package and pinned our ears back, abandoning 2-gap completely.

2) Even if we run this technique on obvious passing downs, each and every Dlineman is scanning both sides of his man for a ballcarrier and not trying to get upfield at the expense of losing 2-gap responsibility, and so he is most definitely playing the run. The QB being the runner changes nothing.

And so my point remains, the "mush rush" at no point in time was a means to pressure a passing QB quickly, but rather a way to play all types of run game, QB included, while collapsing the pocket around the QB. And so any poster insulting the DC or player for not getting upfield faster in pursuit of a sack has no idea what they are talking about. It is a controlled upfield push playing run first, pass second - with every dlineman maintaining 2-gap responsibility.

Bear is a good guy and knows his stuff

I am fixing to catch a plane to Vegas for 5 day stay so can’t get into much but love talking X’s and O’s. Still a baseball coach ( gave up football last year) and AD nearing retirement and trying to give up baseball too in a short version which I will get back later , I hope we implement some elements of the 3-3 stack. Very versatile D

There appears to be only a couple of posters willing to upvote any of his posts, but it's a situation he's caused himself. I actually upvoted one recently -- prevatt33b's best post ever, imo.