Something is amiss -- and it starts with coaching. May not end there, but it definitely starts there.
Depth does not explain away piss poor tackling technique. It does not justify people being out of position consistently. It does not make sense of the fact that arguably the best linebacker on the team (Freeman) spends long stretches watching the game from his comfy seat on the sidelines.
There was an attitude, a sense of tenacity that seemed to be missing. Swagger, if you will.
Why do you play nine yards off a receiver on third and four? Why, when what you've been doing has been working all phuking day long, do you allow your butthole to tighten up and revert back to laying off and keeping everything underneath (the last Alabama drive). Maybe I'm wrong about that, but I'd like somebody to go back and watch to confirm. On their last drive, we changed everything we'd been doing and consciously tried to keep everything in front of us. That freed up Thuggio Jones on the short patterns -- because they played 12 yards off him. phuk... I could have run those routes. A mountain gorilla could have.
Maybe that was all we could do. But I think the first 53 minutes of the Alabama game showed we were capable of more.
I think both sides have valid points, and for sanity's sake, I'm not going back to the last drive of the Alabama game. Freeman can't cover people on passing downs, I think that's all there is to his lack of playing time. Hopefully between now and next season he becomes at least adequate.
On the loss of personnel from last year to this year, I don't think that losing just those players is what caused the change in yards allowed. I think losing those players (with virtually no one to replace them) made them play with a different
philosophy, and that change in philosophy is what led to the enormous change in results.
I think Chizik and Roof knew we would have two choices this year.
Option one, play all out, aggressive, blitz, etc, and probably be pretty sound (good, but not great) defensively for about 4-5 games. But then, the reality of the depth and youth would set in and we would probably be among the worst in the nation the last 7-8 games. The fact is we had about 3 scholarship linebackers for most of the year (for a long stretch, we had three scholarship players, one a true freshman, and a walk-on as our top 4).
Stephens and Bynes played nearly every down of every game this year and should receive metals for their efforts. So with option one, we would probably be around #20-30 in defense for the beginning of the year, then end the year at about #100+ and likely look really, really bad for the majority of the year, especially down the stretch against our tougher opponents...probably wouldn't have won the Ole Miss game, wouldn't have been in the Georgia game (which, in my opinion, is the main game we loss because of depth in the 4th quarter against the run), and wouldn't have been in the Alabama game.
Option two was to tip-toe through each game, being as conservative as possible, while still trying to do the best with what we had. This would probably result in being around the #60 or 70 defense, but it would also give us the best shot at being the #60 or #70 defense for the entire year, from game #1 to game #12, looking pretty good occassionally, and looking really bad occassionally.
It's easy to sit back where we are and look at what's happening and throw stones. We didn't have to make the decisions to determine what was the best option to pick out of some pretty poopty options. I'm going to trust that these guys knew better than any of us about what they had to pick from and that they made the best decision to help us stay competitive for the most games possible this year.
We finished #68 in total defense this year. Had we not played our cards right from the beginning, we could easily have been Arkansas (#89), or Iowa State (#99), or Texas A&M (#105), or Florida State (#108). But with no depth and a lot of youth, we managed to finish #68.
Here are some numbers for example. In our last 6 games this year, we gave up 337 yards per game and 26.6 points. That's not great, but it's actually 37 yards better than our season average and 1 point better than our season average. Last year, in the last 6 games of the year, we gave up 386 yards per game and 24.8 points per game. That was 69 yards worse than our season average last year and 7 points worse than the season average.
My point is that this year, we actually performed better down the stretch than we did last year. Last year, we came out with it all on the table and threw everything at them in every game from day one. But down the stretch, we were beat. We were dead. Partly because the offense was so lame (but check the number of plays our defense played last year vs this year, it's not much different), but mostly because we didn't have the depth to keep up what we were doing.
I'm not saying Chizik is a defensive genius, but I still believe he proved in the past that with good players and depth, he is smart enough and a good enough coach to lead a very good defense. He's bought himself another few years to fill the roster and prove that true. As Kaos hates to hear....we'll just have to wait and see.
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