5.9 yards per play and no loss of yardage plays

We need some bigger guys that can set the edge on run plays, but that's not necessarily Roof. Difficult to find 280+ pound guys that can qualify at Tech to run the end positions. We have to grow them, and are a little behind now (pardon the pun).

Another issue seems to be that we aren't getting creative. We had a lot of success last year when we went aggressive run blitzy and did some other unique things to confuse the opponents (see UGA in particular, first half vs second half).

I like Roof and think he has done a fine job with what he's been dealt. I won't disparage the players available because they play their hearts out and don't quit, but we could use some size on the edge.
 
aeromech said:
I reluctantly disagree. Saturday against Pitt the offense outplayed the defense in the 1st half; but not the second. The O was absolutely awful against Clemson, way worse than the D. The O was also worse against ND. I don't see any room to argue the O is much better than the D so far this year.
Click to expand...

Look, man. I'm not trying to defend our offensive performance this year. It's been a real disappointment, especially compared to last year. But here are some facts:

Almost every team we play scores their season high against us. We have had good moments on defense, but we are still awful at getting big plays when we need to, i.e. 3rd and long or in crunch time. Our defense might not LOSE us every game, but we certainly won't be winning any 10-9 type games like we did from 2002-2007.

Point being, if our offense plays badly, we lose. Period. Hell, we actually played fairly well on offense twice and still lost both. Every single P5 opponent has scored 30+ on us this year. We just can't expect our offense to be lights out every week.
 
BTW, I'm not trying to disparage Roof, CPJ, the players, or anybody else. It's just a fact that we are consistently mediocre at best on defense, and that's not gonna be enough to get us to the level that we all want to be at.

There are teams that get it done with athletes of our caliber. Look at BC this year as an example. If they can do it, we can do it.
 
johncu said:
BTW, I'm not trying to disparage Roof, CPJ, the players, or anybody else. It's just a fact that we are consistently mediocre at best on defense, and that's not gonna be enough to get us to the level that we all want to be at.

There are teams that get it done with athletes of our caliber. Look at BC this year as an example. If they can do it, we can do it.
Click to expand...

But look at BC for the past 5 years...yeah, we can do that.
 
GEETEELEE said:
But look at BC for the past 5 years...yeah, we can do that.
Click to expand...

That's not what I meant. BC's offense sucks balls and has since Matt Ryan left. But their defense is fantastic. If our offense was as bad as theirs is, we'd be losing games 35-0.

Example: BC only scored 7 points against Duke. We'd be apoplectic if our offense did that. However, since BC has an actual defense, the score was 9-7 and they still had a very good chance to win, right down to the wire. That just doesn't happen to us.
 
KrazieJacket said:
Roof is really bad. Has been for a long time.
Click to expand...

I tend to agree with this assessment of his coaching. He does have 2 redeeming traits, though. First, he does not have a big ego, so he gets along with CPJ and would probably be willing to delegate a lot of decision-making to a good assistant. Second, he seems to do well with recruiting, which might be the biggest obstacle for Tech to improve on defense.
 
When we fire Roof I would like to pick up a defensive coach from Mizzou. If they can take 2* Missouri talent and make them as good as Florida or Alabama they are obviously doing something right.
 
floridajacket said:
We didn't get many stops last year, mainly turnovers. Defense certainly didn't turn the corner against Pitt, giving up the 80 yard run to the one yard line.

I don't know if I follow the "get off the field one way or another" comment. How does the math work for playing a more aggressive defense when the offense is more reliable?
Click to expand...

"Get off the field one way or another" means force a punt, get a turnover or they score a TD. Last year we would return the score; this year's offense is 7-10 points per game worse and if they get a quick score we can't reliably get it back. - PJ's words on the call-in show yesterday (paraphrased).
 
It seems many are stuck on roofs recruiting. But a good recruit and a crappy coach equals texas. Or fsu end of bowdens years. Or notre dame before kelly. Or any other perennial top 15 recruiting school that goes 500 over and over and gets the coach fired. So i dont care about roofs recruiting. For me he is not a good coach for tech. He maybe just a fine coach for the player type at ohio state. Or souther cal. But not for tech.

I want to start with a really good coach. And use the rest of the program to fill the recruiting needs much like we did with BJ, giff smith etc under tenuta if it turns out the dc is just an ok recruiter. But today it seems most dc out there carry their weight in recruiting too

This stat vs pitt is a perfect example of the lack of aggressive scheme and play under roof.
 
33jacket said:
It seems many are stuck on roofs recruiting. But a good recruit and a crappy coach equals texas. Or fsu end of bowdens years. Or notre dame before kelly. Or any other perennial top 15 recruiting school that goes 500 over and over and gets the coach fired. So i dont care about roofs recruiting. For me he is not a good coach for tech. He maybe just a fine coach for the player type at ohio state. Or souther cal. But not for tech.

I want to start with a really good coach. And use the rest of the program to fill the recruiting needs much like we did with BJ, giff smith etc under tenuta if it turns out the dc is just an ok recruiter. But today it seems most dc out there carry their weight in recruiting too

This stat vs pitt is a perfect example of the lack of aggressive scheme and play under roof.
Click to expand...

Did you see where CPJ has told Roof not to be aggressive because we can't count on the offense?
 
Believe me, I'm not here saying that Roof's the best DC in the world, but I still believe that you guys are putting too much of the blame on him.

We have some great experience and depth in our defensive backfield, but we are vastly undersized and thin at the DL and LB positions. In several cases, we have had guys playing out of position just to field a team.

That is due to the large number of players we lost out of the program during the 2014 spring/summer period, I believe it was, and due to some injuries that have held guys out.

We have always had difficulty recruiting the big nasties for the interior DL, and we have not had the NFL caliber or near caliber DEs that we have been blessed to have in the past. Gotsis is likely of that caliber, but teams can DT him knowing that they are not going to get beat on the other side. And our DE play is very weak.

If these personnel issues continue for another 2 years, well that's on Ted's shoulders. But I personally feel that he deserves that time to get past the loss of a large group of guys beginning from when he came on board through last year. They are his players now, let's give him a couple of years to prove his worth. He is a Tech man after all.
 
GEETEELEE said:
"Get off the field one way or another" means force a punt, get a turnover or they score a TD. Last year we would return the score; this year's offense is 7-10 points per game worse and if they get a quick score we can't reliably get it back. - PJ's words on the call-in show yesterday (paraphrased).
Click to expand...

I remember what he said. It's just hard for me to track mathematically.

Let me put it this way. I cringe every time I hear about Time of Possession. It makes no sense, especially if you're talking about first-half drives. What difference does it make if you have an 8 minute drive or a 20 second drive in the first quarter? After the 8 minute drive, you have a fewer plays left in the game and so you're more likely to win. But the 8 minute drive is also much more likely to falter at some point.

If you press on these coachspeak talking points with Moneyball-type math, they often fall apart. But the math is honestly much more complicated for football than baseball.
 
Every time you have the ball and the opponent doesn't, it's a much greater chance that you will score versus your opponent scoring. That's why time of possession is important. Not to mention the real world application of fatigue.

I don't think the math about being more or less likely to falter is true. Each drive can be broken down into 10-yard segments. Obviously getting a touchdown is the true goal, but surely not every drive that doesn't end in points can be considered a failure. A 20-second 3 and out is not good. A 20-second touchdown is obviously very good. By and large 20-second drives are the former and not the latter. An 8-minute 3 and out cannot exist.
 
GT1992 said:
Did you see where CPJ has told Roof not to be aggressive because we can't count on the offense?
Click to expand...

roofs' d looks not much different to the prior two years....so paul wasn't asking roof to do much more than he is used to, to be honest. Of course paul also says we need to bring more to get there too. Said that in the presser....vs rushing 4

so not sure what to believe. But since paul said that, sure that explains even less aggressive approach.

doesn't change my opinion of ted though right now. There is still alot of issues on that D scheme wise and complexity wise being way too simple where blitzing isn't the only problem
 
33jacket said:
roofs' d looks not much different to the prior two years....so paul wasn't asking roof to do much more than he is used to, to be honest. Of course paul also says we need to bring more to get there too. Said that in the presser....vs rushing 4

so not sure what to believe. But since paul said that, sure that explains even less aggressive approach.

doesn't change my opinion of ted though right now. There is still alot of issues on that D scheme wise and complexity wise being way too simple where blitzing isn't the only problem
Click to expand...


So all of the things I mentioned above about players leaving the program and the injuries from their year don't factor into your opinion at all then?
 
33jacket said:
roofs' d looks not much different to the prior two years....so paul wasn't asking roof to do much more than he is used to, to be honest. Of course paul also says we need to bring more to get there too. Said that in the presser....vs rushing 4

so not sure what to believe. But since paul said that, sure that explains even less aggressive approach.

doesn't change my opinion of ted though right now. There is still alot of issues on that D scheme wise and complexity wise being way too simple where blitzing isn't the only problem
Click to expand...

That's when the D started getting turnovers last year. After UNC, CPJ told Roof to get aggressive. We were even in turnovers up until that point. If you don't have the horses up front, you can't play bend but don't break. Eventually you bend into the end zone. We need to be jamming receivers and forcing decisions. The problem is that CPJ isn't confident in his offense.
 
GTCrew4b said:
Every time you have the ball and the opponent doesn't, it's a much greater chance that you will score versus your opponent scoring. That's why time of possession is important. Not to mention the real world application of fatigue.

I don't think the math about being more or less likely to falter is true. Each drive can be broken down into 10-yard segments. Obviously getting a touchdown is the true goal, but surely not every drive that doesn't end in points can be considered a failure. A 20-second 3 and out is not good. A 20-second touchdown is obviously very good. By and large 20-second drives are the former and not the latter. An 8-minute 3 and out cannot exist.
Click to expand...

TOP is low if you have a bunch of three and outs, but then your team is losing because of three and outs, not because of low TOP.

Pretty much any other stat, such as points per possession or yards per play, is better to look at than TOP. TOP may correlate with what matters: points and yards. But then why not look at points and yards directly?

There are two areas where TOP, in and of itself, may matter. If you're up in the second half, then a longer drive reduces the number of possessions for the other team and thus may increase your chance of winning. If a team goes more heavily to the running game if they're up, then maybe their points per possession goes down from 4 to 3.5, but that decrease MAY be offset by the other team having less possessions. Many pro-style teams can become too conservative too quickly.

The other area is fatigue, but that's number of plays rather than TOP. An incomplete pass is not less tiring than a complete pass tackled inbounds. Death marches do help Tech in that respect, but getting 5 yards at a time is likely to falter too. We did much better with a bunch of quick strikes, like Mississippi State.

I just used TOP as an example of empty coachspeak. Trying to put numbers to CPJ's comment, a defense has two goals:

1. Minimizing points per possession.
2. Getting better field position for the offense.

How does a better offense affect the optimal level of aggressiveness? What did CPJ trade off between the two goals by becoming less aggressive? Why did that increase our chance of winning? I can't see the logic there. If the aggressiveness last year was better for both goals, then it doesn't matter how well the offense is doing. That's the scheme the defense should choose.
 
coit said:
Totally dominated on TOP as well. By Pitt. With an SEC reject at QB.
Click to expand...

All I saying is that Pitt is a ranked team.

Teams are ranked because they are good. It's not like we are playing UCF or Memphis every week. These are really good teams. You know, the Criminoles went to the CFP LAST YEAR AND won it all in the last year of the BCS the year before. We play the big boys. Even Duke is ranked. They didn't get there because they beat us. They got there because they are good. Stop crying! Chin Up. Wear White! Go Jackets!
 
gespacho_the_slender said:
We need some bigger guys that can set the edge on run plays, but that's not necessarily Roof. Difficult to find 280+ pound guys that can qualify at Tech to run the end positions. We have to grow them, and are a little behind now (pardon the pun).

Another issue seems to be that we aren't getting creative. We had a lot of success last year when we went aggressive run blitzy and did some other unique things to confuse the opponents (see UGA in particular, first half vs second half).

I like Roof and think he has done a fine job with what he's been dealt. I won't disparage the players available because they play their hearts out and don't quit, but we could use some size on the edge.
Click to expand...

Derrick Morgsm. Michael Johnson. We found 2 one time.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top