Heard Cole Cubelic breaking down AU on Finedong yesterday. He must have come on here and read my takes because it was like I wrote it....and then he went on air and said it. Srsly, it was all about the D for him. If Muschamp gets the D going, we win the SEC. If not, we're 8-5 again. He believes we're loaded on offense and JJ will light it up. One tidbit of teh trivias that was a little unsettling. He said we haven't won in Baton Rude since he smoked a cigar on the field in 99'.
I know that means nothing but that's an early game that could be pivotal. Cubelic said though, he believes LSU will continue to be down and getting them early is the best possible thing with them being so unsettled at QB.
Oh...and on the D...he seemed to indicate without coming out and saying it, that Ellis Johnson was ignernt. Always lined up wrong. Wrong schemes, wrong coverages, horrible technique. That makes me happy. If that was truly the problem, and it seemed to be to my untrained eye, that shit is fixable.
Eillis never played a down that I know of. But yeah, they looked totally fux'd up. Schemes? I'm pretty certain he knows a sound scheme or 2. Getting it coached up is another deal. My surmise is he tried to do too much shit without perfecting any of it in practice. Just fucking line up right, play sound, and tackle like a MOFO. You can do a lot of damage just doing that. Was Ellis trying to make up for lack of talent with scheme? Maybe. I just don't see how the defense cannot be significantly improved. I mean, 2 stops a game would be an improvement.
I've changed my mind on this over the years. I used to think you could be GREAT on both sides of the ball. I have concluded that you are either an offensive or defensive oriented team. That, in and of itself, is no revelation. However, when your HC is an innovator or master of one sort or the other, that divide is going to be greater and skewed towards the HC's way of seeing and doing things. (Reference for the opposite of our current situation, Tubs teams with great defenses and talented yet underachieving offenses) Thus we will, under Gus, always be a good to great offense, and I think we will always be left wanting on defense, even if we're 'good enough'. I can't explain why it is that way, but it just seems to be. JMHO, YMMV.