scheme on defense

HANC

HANC

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I know it makes no difference at all, but I have a question, from a scheme stand point.

One guy doesn't make a 40 point difference, but by not having Baker play really effect our alignment?

Now, Baker hasn't had a great year, and we would have lost this game with or without him. My question is..... Do any of you think that we were so worried about Wiscy pounding the ball between the tackles at Rome ( who can't get off a block to save his soul) and Merideth (who is undersized at DT), that we may have committed our LB to "watch", "stunt", or help protect the middle.

It just seemed like sooooo many times, Wiscy was able to get the edge and everyone was pursuing at HORRIBLE angles...or, no one was even in the area. I tend to think that all the talk this week was about how Nebraska needed to stop the power game, and Wiscy used that to their advantage by attacking the edges after we over-committed to the middle.......then, of course, once we moved around to help protect the edge, they exploited the main concern, which was the middle.

Hell, I don't know... I just like to try to find reasons. Must be the coach in me.... It just seemed like are pursuit from inside-out were at very bad angles..... they couldn't have been that much faster could they?

 
I have no idea whether or not this is accurate, but here's my thoughts.

I think we pulled a 2009 Arizona. They went into the Holiday Bowl game confident in the assumption that our offense was what they had seen for most of that season - run the football, run it some more, punt it away, and let the defense win the game. They never even thought for one second that we were turning our offense off on purpose, and decided to turn it back on for the bowl game and they were totally caught with their pants down.

I think we did something similar. Wisconsin had known for weeks that they were going to be playing in Indy...that gives a distinct competitive advantage to fool your opponent into false confidence in what to prepare for.

 
HANC said:
I know it makes no difference at all, but I have a question, from a scheme stand point.

One guy doesn't make a 40 point difference, but by not having Baker play really effect our alignment?

Now, Baker hasn't had a great year, and we would have lost this game with or without him. My question is..... Do any of you think that we were so worried about Wiscy pounding the ball between the tackles at Rome ( who can't get off a block to save his soul) and Merideth (who is undersized at DT), that we may have committed our LB to "watch", "stunt", or help protect the middle.

It just seemed like sooooo many times, Wiscy was able to get the edge and everyone was pursuing at HORRIBLE angles...or, no one was even in the area. I tend to think that all the talk this week was about how Nebraska needed to stop the power game, and Wiscy used that to their advantage by attacking the edges after we over-committed to the middle.......then, of course, once we moved around to help protect the edge, they exploited the main concern, which was the middle.

Hell, I don't know... I just like to try to find reasons. Must be the coach in me.... It just seemed like are pursuit from inside-out were at very bad angles..... they couldn't have been that much faster could they?
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I think yes the lack of Baker, and the fact that our D-line has been mostly pathetic all year with rare exceptions, made Papuchis/Bo obsessed with stopping the up the gut runs. That worked great in Lincoln in the comeback, so they figured hey, let's just do that again. It's not like Wisc has any other plays other than between the tackles with Ball and play action passes, right? All night every time Wisconsin ran to the sideline, the D looked like it was a play that came from outer space...even when Wisc had just run it two plays earlier. That's on Papuchis and this coaching staff. They had a pathetic defensive gameplan, had NO anticipation that Wisconsin would do anything other than run up the gut, and had NO way to adjust. Pathetic, pathetic, pathetic, coaching job.

 
it just looked like our D was fooled so many times on misdirection. Was Eric Martin there??? No one filled any gaps tonight at all.

 
OP. Baker has had a very solid year. Stats dont tell the story for a dlineman in this type of defense. He requires a lot of double teams. Double teams means 1 less man for the linebackers and downers like Martin and Ankrah. We'll never know how much of an actual difference it made.

What about Justin jackson. The center is the qb/MLB of the oline. Taylor was under diress tonight and our normal center was not there, leaving us to rotate a normal guard and b/u center.

 
roadrat said:
it just looked like our D was fooled so many times on misdirection. Was Eric Martin there??? No one filled any gaps tonight at all.
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Not only were they fooled, they also looked like fools with all the last-second signaling to each other, and jumping around, and trying to line up their neighbor. Looked like a freakin circus. Is that top-notch defensive coaching?

 
I don't understand the play in the defensive backfield paired with the lack of agressiveness front seven. We seem to have excellent coverage in the secondary but not have pressure in the backfield. I'm not even talking about pressure on the quarterback. For example, I'm not sure why there is no one in the backfield AT ALL when you do a thow back to the quarterback. Why do we not have ANYONE in the backfield EVER. Wisky could do any trick play they wanted because we don't put pressure in the backfield to essentially blow up the play. With our cover corners, pressuring the quarterback into a bad decision should be the bread and butter of the defense. Why don't we ever pressure the edges with the defensive ends? They line up inside the tackles? I'm dumbfounded by this defense. Isn't the most basic responsibilty to contain the edge and force the offense back into the middle???

 
Here are the stats that standout:

CR YDS AVG TD LG Gordon 9 216 24.0 1 60 Ball 21 202 9.6 3

57 Martinez 19 140 7.4 2 76 Burkhead 11 61 5.5 0 19

Wisconsin absolutely owned us while our offense really struggled. Look at those rushing averages! I mostly blame the coaches for this.

 
I would like to throw some blame at Papuchis but I'm not sure what level of decision making he has over Bo. I doubt Bo has pulled his hands free of the defense. I'll agree that the defense played horribly. I'm sure the coaches knew we were going to get stung consistantly up the middle and played our slower, stronger LB's to offset the disadvantage of Stine being gone. That hurt us to the outside. The LB's would get sucked into the middle on the handoff only to have the RB bounce outside. Even the faster David Santos had trouble. Same thing happened in the Ohio St game. Until we have DL players who can hold their own this will be a recurring theme. As soon as they took a step into the line they had no chance of getting an angle on the much faster running back. It's like stopping a leak in a dam. Eventually you run out of fingers to plug the holes.

 
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