Something to "better defense" against our O...

GTCrew

GTCrew

Patrick Henry
Joined
Jul 25, 2002
Messages
49,807
Not to doubt PJ, but the "more film" vs 25 years of film is a straw man. The reason that teams will defend us better is because they will spend significant time studying the O in this offseason. I doubt that was very true last year.

While 24 years of film were available, we flew under the radar last offseason, and probably drew very little special attention.

Of course it is still true that other opposing coaches had the same wake-up call after facing the O and they fared poorly overall in year two.

What I feel we haven't proven beyond all doubt is if teams with pro talent and unlimited resources can leverage those to slow down the O.

It isn't beyond the realm of possibility that resource unlimited teams could hire consultants to map out the best strategy such that with pro level talent the O struggles.

LSU is one of those teams. They hired consultants and have pro caliber talent. The great news is despite the low scoring we did get yardage.
 
That game wouldn't have been a blowout if we had held onto the football in the EZ and not made the bonehead special teams mistakes.

We may have still lost but it wouldn't have been talked about the way it has been this offseason.
 
Any offense run well with fast players is difficult to defend. Ours is no different. Think of it this way: Some quarterbacks, once they see the defensive alignment are allowed to check out of the play before the ball is snapped.

We can 'check out of the play' after the ball is snapped. With our speed, it almost doesn't matter if they know what we're up to.

Study all you want. We'll just run something else. Just about every defensive alignment there is is eccentric - it shifts its strength to stop one thing at the expense of another. After the ball is snapped, we find the weak spot and hit it.

All the film study in the world can't stop that if its executed properly and quickly.
 
People can say all they want, but I sincerely doubt we were flying under St. Richt's radar last year, and we still hung 45 on them. Maybe it was true with other teams, but U[sic]GA scheduled a bye before us, and Richt definitely knows that even if it may not seem that way, beating us is very important to his job.
 
Ask Army how well preparing for one offense works. They seemed to figure it out.
 
Also, I've read on LSU boards that the coaches admitted the strategy was take away the dive and the outside and make Josh beat them... For the most part it worked (granted there were some dropped passes that could have been huge). I don't think that strategy will have as big a payoff this season as we learn to take advantage of those lopsided strategies.

That will be one of the big hurdles our team will face to really be elite... To face any defense, any formation, and make the right reads/execute such that on almost every play we exploit a numbers advantage.
 
Texas Tech has been running their "gimmick O for yrs under Leach, same with Myer, I don't see teams "figuring" them out.
 
Enuratique said:
Also, I've read on LSU boards that the coaches admitted the strategy was take away the dive and the outside and make Josh beat them... For the most part it worked (granted there were some dropped passes that could have been huge). I don't think that strategy will have as big a payoff this season as we learn to take advantage of those lopsided strategies.

That will be one of the big hurdles our team will face to really be elite... To face any defense, any formation, and make the right reads/execute such that on almost every play we exploit a numbers advantage.
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Yeah honestly I think if they can take out the dive AND the outside at the same time then there is a good chance we aren't doing all we could to do to move the ball. That and it would have to be a pretty damn good defense. With the added wrinkles in the offense we'll be even better equipped to deal with such strategies.
 
That was VT's strategy as well. Swarm the pitch, and have both DEs crash on Dwyer.
 
beej67 said:
That was VT's strategy as well. Swarm the pitch, and have both DEs crash on Dwyer.
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Yeah but I'd bet $50 that the same strategy they used won't work on us again. At that point in time the pitch was probably a risky move since we had a good odds of dropping the ball at that point plus the speed wasn't too great. That and we used a total of 4 different plays in that game.
 
Let's see what happens when we can efficiently run a few run and shoot plays. Bebe and Stephen hill will be down field with no DB's within 20 yards of them.
 
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Have you guys checked the box score from the LSU game? That defense with "pro-caliber players," and with a month to prepare with their consultants, held us to 4.1 ypc in a game which our O had to pass early ans often to try to catch up. Had we not had to pass the whole second half (25 attempts), we would have easily had close to 250 yards rushing.

I'll take 4.1 ypc against the best teams we play any day. The issue in that game was the defense couldn't get a stop in the first half, and the ST's kept giving them the ball in great position. I think the bigger threat is from our own ST's than our opponents' DC's.

Team Stat Comparison
1st Downs:
LSU 19
GA Tech: 15

Total Yards
LSU: 324
GT: 314

Passing
LSU: 163
GT: 150

Comp-Att
LSU: 17-27
GT: 8-25

Yards per pass
LSU: 6.0
GT: 6.0

Rushing
LSU: 161
GT: 164

Rushing Attempts
LSU: 35
GT: 40

Yards per rush
LSU: 4.6
GT: 4.1

Penalties
LSU: 6-60
GT: 4-40

Turnovers
LSU: 0
GT: 3

Possession
LSU: 30:41
GT: 29:19
Click to expand...
 
GTCrew said:
LSU is one of those teams. They hired consultants and have pro caliber talent. The great news is despite the low scoring we did get yardage.
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Another reason why we.... NEED... TO.... PASS SUCCESSFULLY!!!!! gotta open it up some and throw in more variability.
 
Hopefully PJ will start raking in more 4 and 5 star calibur recruits... imagine what we could do with more NFL prospects in our offense...muhuhuhaha.
 
I bet Miss St fans have the same conversations about GT as we have about LSU.
 
Wreck02 said:
That game wouldn't have been a blowout if we had held onto the football in the EZ and not made the bonehead special teams mistakes.

We may have still lost but it wouldn't have been talked about the way it has been this offseason.
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I actually respect PJ for losing the way we did to LSU. I would want to win of course, but I respect how PJ took a gamble with the punt fake. Coaches have an incentive to hedge against looking like a bad coach and losing badly rather than taking more chances, even if the latter might have a higher overall probability of winning. He came out on the wrong side of that bargain, but I still respect him for taking the course more likely to net us a win considering how badly things were going before the punt fake.
 
beej67 said:
That was VT's strategy as well. Swarm the pitch, and have both DEs crash on Dwyer.
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Granted not the most formidable example, but Duke also employed this strategy and it blew up in their face when our receivers didn't drop passes.

The option works every time when properly executed against a standard defensive set, i.e. a safety or two to not play man-to-man coverage. Defenses have to "cheat" and take away something to defend somewhere else every time.

The big catch, though, is the "properly executed." Bigger than bad pitches last year were OL blocking, or, well, lack thereof. Thankfully, literally nobody exists who could coach execution of the option better than PJ and if our OL holds up, I see no reason GT can't do amazing things next year.
 
Allen Koholic said:
Ask Army how well preparing for one offense works. They seemed to figure it out.
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Army could have 1000 weeks to prepare and we still beat them like a drum. Of course they don't have 300 lb DEs who run like gazelles.

There is no question the offense when run well against sub-pro talent is nearly impossible to beat.

Also, UGA spent two weeks, but I have inside info that Martinez blew off help with the scheme saying he would "outathlete us". He won't make that mistake again.

Also, I think there is evidence that TTech's scheme can be defended by the right scheme executed by top tier talent. Florida may be another story altogether, but can we consistently count on having Florida level talent?
 
Again, in a game in which we had 3 turnovers and were behind 35-3 due to THREE special team goof-ups giving them the ball at our 40, 22 and 18 yard lines, we still ran for a 4.1 ypc average and had 314 total offensive yards.

This is much ado about not so much.
 
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