defensive rushing stats, so far, are offensive

We are in a dogfight every weekend. The amount of teams that have byes or weak arse teams before Alabama is absurd.

This is pathetic. DeBoer better clean house after this season.

We thought Golding was bad….he was bad by Saban Standards. Wommack is just fricking bad period

Not when you look at the rankings adjusted for competition.

Here is how our defense looks relative to expected performance:
Scoring Defense: 5th
Total Yards Allowed: 5th
Passing Defense: 3rd
Passing YPA: 21st
Rushing Defense: 21st
Rushing YPA: 27th

When you factor in these injuries they're playing way better than could be expected:
Keenan: missed three games
Lawson: recovering from knee injury
Russaw: Out indefinitely
Beamon: Out for the year
Smith: Targeting
Latham: Out for the year

We need to fix the scheme issues we had against option/veer teams, but our front 7 is basically spare parts right now.

In fairness they’re probably just measuring this defense against a peak Saban healthy championship defense.

And this ain’t that right now and never will be based on injuries and personnel.

But post FSU I respect the fight they’re putting up even with younger and smaller guys than we would prefer.

As long as they fight and show improvement I’ll defend and commend them for what they are rather than criticize them for not playing to a standard that isn’t realistic given the current circumstances.

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But the eye test seems to say otherwise... time will tell

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Oh I agreed completely post FSU.

I thought we’d improved but ULM and UW don’t have functional offenses so that didn’t really count outside of effort which was unfathomably better IMO.

UGA we were still missing gap assignments and failing to set an edge, but again, I just can’t get that upset when we lose our best edge defender IMO, have a mash unit inside and our best LB is still getting back after his knee injury.

I just can’t yell too much when a freshman can’t draw two blockers or a replacement edge guy loses contain, it’s to be expected.

I’m curious if we try to go heavy at edge with Keeley who plays Overtons spot but is buried to get more size over there where we are so small with Lawson stepping in at times apparently (225ish) to backup Pierre against these option teams so we can handle pulling interior OL blockers without giving up 50lbs.

For some reason the focus remains on the Vandy O vs Bama D. I get it. And we are told this Vandy team is improved from last year. Ok. A 7-6 team that ranked very poorly in total offense and pretty mediocre in total defense has improved. Hell, some of these folks are trying to make us believe Vandy is a better team than UGA. Based off of their schedule to date which is a joke. If Bama takes them seriously and doesn't become a turnover machine on offense this game isn't close. The team and fans need to sack up.

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A 7-6 team that ranked very poorly in total offense and pretty mediocre in total defense has improved. Hell, some of these folks are trying to make us believe Vandy is a better team than UGA

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UGA is a very good team but they play a style that suits Bama. They typically will play you straight up and try to beat you. Vandy does not do that. Their offense will score more than 21 points. It's not "better" but it's more effective against a guy like Wommack's defense. Vandy scored 40 against Alabama last year and didn't crack 25 points for the remainder of the regular season. It's a bad matchup.

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Not when you look at the rankings adjusted for competition.

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What does this mean?

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At the highest level, you take your results against a team (rushing YPC for example) against a team, eliminate garbage time stats and compare it to how other teams that played that team did.

For example if we allowed 2.5YPC against UW and other teams allowed 5.0YPC we would be really good.

If we allowed 2.5YPC but other teams only allow 1.25 we would look good on paper, but actually probably suck.

Until you can baseline a performance against another performance it’s tough to put it in context. Even then it can be tough because sometimes things that annihilate bad teams just don’t scale against teams with elite talent.

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This clip of a play from last year resembles a lot of what we’re still seeing this year.

1) our linebackers are clearly confused. In the play above, it looks like 0 and 4 think they have the same coverage assignment, causing hesitation, and then both attempt to rush the quarterback (I guess you could call Lawson’s effort a “rush”.. I have no clue what he was doing there). Our ILBs are either dumb as hell or our DC/ILB coach really struggles communicating the assignments.

2) the amount of times our secondary just completely breaks down and gives up a nearly effortless touchdown is mind blowing.

3) I do like seeing a 4 man DL + WOLF in this video.

Exactly, Pavia was dinged up the latter part of the season. Vandy played Texas close the entire game last year. They will score on anyone as long as their QB is healthy