Inspire Ted roof.

gtzulu said:
Too small a sample size. And it might've just been that Groh's signals stopped being stolen. Easy to be DC with FSU talent.
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Yes, the issue here is talent more than coaching. We all know that we aren't getting the caliber of player that other schools are getting on defense. That has been changing, although the D's performance against UT was all over the place.
 
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coit said:
Five 3 and outs.
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The defense did some good things, but the defense was also helped by Tennessee's inability to catch the ball in the first half. It's easier to rack up 3-and-outs when the opposing offense wastes plays dropping catchable balls. I'm curious how much the D's performance was helped by "unforced" errors from UT, but not enough to go digging back through the game film to find out.

Obviously eliminating any of a number of offensive errors would have won the game for us, so I'm not trying to assign blame, I'm just trying to look at things logically. Offensive screw-ups don't mean that the defense couldn't have also performed better.

JRjr
 
coit said:
Yes, the issue here is talent more than coaching. We all know that we aren't getting the caliber of player that other schools are getting on defense. That has been changing, although the D's performance against UT was all over the place.
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I'm curious why Johnson hasn't had the caliber of linebacker or defensive lineman that we had under, say, Tenuta. I know it's heresy, but I have to wonder if there's something to David Pollack's statement about stud defensive players not wanting to play "against" this offense. (Yes, I understand how the scout team works and all that.) Were our coaches back in the day just that much better at recruiting defense than Johnson and our revolving cast of defensive coordinators, or is there something more to it than that? Just one Key Fox or Daryl Smith or Michael Johnson seems like it could make a big difference for us.

JRjr
 
vapspwi said:
The defense did some good things, but the defense was also helped by Tennessee's inability to catch the ball in the first half. It's easier to rack up 3-and-outs when the opposing offense wastes plays dropping catchable balls. I'm curious how much the D's performance was helped by "unforced" errors from UT, but not enough to go digging back through the game film to find out.

Obviously eliminating any of a number of offensive errors would have won the game for us, so I'm not trying to assign blame, I'm just trying to look at things logically. Offensive screw-ups don't mean that the defense couldn't have also performed better.

JRjr
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Yes, they made mistakes on offense, we made mistakes on offense. I'll make the case that our offensive mistakes were far more costly than their dropped passes.
 
coit said:
Yes, they made mistakes on offense, we made mistakes on offense. I'll make the case that our offensive mistakes were far more costly than their dropped passes.
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How about we forget about our offensive performance altogether and just look at the defensive performance, to get away from this "the defense didn't lose the game, the offense did" narrative? I'm not trying to assign blame, I'm trying to figure out our defense.

The number of punts and 3-and-outs is encouraging, but may have been aided by a lot of drops. Did we get pressure on the QB? A little bit, early, but I don't think we had any sacks. It seemed like we played the run pretty well, but that UT didn't run all that much. (Edit: Or maybe not - I see that we gave up 7.1 YPC in regulation and 6.7 overall.) Did we create any turnovers? No, and we might have given up some extra yards when we whiffed on picks instead of playing the receiver. It's concerning to me that UT was able to score just as many points as us in half the time. The D got some solid stops, but when they didn't, they gave up yards in chunks and let UT fly down the field.

Clean up the offensive and special teams mistakes and we can outscore teams (though I think a lot of teams on our schedule will play us tougher than UT), but improvement on the defensive side would give us a little more margin for error.

JRjr
 
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vapspwi said:
How about we forget about our offensive performance altogether and just look at the defensive performance, to get away from this "the defense didn't lose the game, the offense did" narrative? I'm not trying to assign blame, I'm trying to figure out our defense.

The number of punts and 3-and-outs is encouraging, but may have been aided by a lot of drops. Did we get pressure on the QB? A little bit, early, but I don't think we had any sacks. It seemed like we played the run pretty well, but that UT didn't run all that much. (Edit: Or maybe not - I see that we gave up 7.1 YPC in regulation and 6.7 overall.) Did we create any turnovers? No, and we might have given up some extra yards when we whiffed on picks instead of playing the receiver. It's concerning to me that UT was able to score just as many points as us in half the time. The D got some solid stops, but when they didn't, they gave up yards in chunks and let UT fly down the field.

Clean up the offensive and special teams mistakes and we can outscore teams (though I think a lot of teams on our schedule will play us tougher than UT), but improvement on the defensive side would give us a little more margin for error.

JRjr
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I'm not all that concerned because we were clearly the better team out there and it isn't even close. Everyone that watched the game knows that.

To me the game was like playing Texas Hold'em and getting all your money in against a guy who only had 4 outs. And that guy hits one of those outs on the river. Heartbreaking and infuriating, and most of all, lucky.
 
Out of curiosity, does anyone know why Charles Kelly wasn't kept on? He's doing pretty well at Free Shoes U.
 
ciegetanks said:
Out of curiosity, does anyone know why Charles Kelly wasn't kept on? He's doing pretty well at Free Shoes U.
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We tried to keep him, but not as DC b/c we wanted roof. He opted for a similar position at FSU, which later led to the DC job when Pruitt left...if I recall.
 
JoeCakeEater said:
We tried to keep him, but not as DC b/c we wanted roof. He opted for a similar position at FSU, which later led to the DC job when Pruitt left...if I recall.
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He did want to be DC, but I thought the departure was bc he got a better offer. I don't think our salaries are quite up to FSU's.
 
18in32 said:
He did want to be DC, but I thought the departure was bc he got a better offer. I don't think our salaries are quite up to FSU's.
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I think this is the most accurate. It seems like FSU fans never really liked him because they think he is a bad DC, at the same time most FSU fans think they are a top 5 team. So IDK.
 
Architorture23 said:
with a prolific offense, I would just think you can afford to be a little more aggressive and take risks. the worst that can happen, aside from end game scenarios, is that they score and your offense gets to go back out onto the field.
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I think he did that this game.

I for one was very pleased that he took enough risks to ensure we either got the stop OR gave up the TD with a minute and a half left, so our offense still had time to win on the 2 minute drill. In prior years, he would have played prevent long enough to allow the opponent to burn the whole clock before scoring.
 
vapspwi said:
I'm curious why Johnson hasn't had the caliber of linebacker or defensive lineman that we had under, say, Tenuta. I know it's heresy, but I have to wonder if there's something to David Pollack's statement about stud defensive players not wanting to play "against" this offense. (Yes, I understand how the scout team works and all that.) Were our coaches back in the day just that much better at recruiting defense than Johnson and our revolving cast of defensive coordinators, or is there something more to it than that? Just one Key Fox or Daryl Smith or Michael Johnson seems like it could make a big difference for us.

JRjr
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I think we all are aware that we havent had a consistently good defensive unit in a long time. Just to further the discussion, here are some numbers for the Johnson era. As you can imagine, its not a pretty picture. Sure, we talk about strength of the conference improving, rotating DCs and their diverse schemes, etc but at the end of the day its sad how much we have probably left on the table not being able to field better than a mediocre defense for reason x, y, z... Mediocre is being courteous in some of the below

upload_2017-9-8_21-49-38.png


meh. Sacks alone aren't really a great measure of anything but can indicate some effectiveness of scheme or personnel.
 
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We hear time and time again about how we cant get off the field on third down, so no surprise here, but it gets worse when you consider the next chart.

upload_2017-9-8_21-56-0.png
 
This one struck me as odd that the less opponent third downs you faced, the better you were ranked, but in the context of GT, its just that teams didnt need to use the third downs that often... and when they do, see above...
upload_2017-9-8_21-57-3.png
 
Last but not least, habitually bad.

upload_2017-9-8_21-59-14.png
 
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Ranking P5 against G5 is silly. We aren't worse than 2/3 of G5 teams.

Edit: I meant to say ranking P5 and G5 together.
 
Seems like from the plots that the defense has gotten worse since 2013. Did something happen that year?
 
ramblin' wagon said:
Ranking P5 against G5 is silly. We aren't worse than 2/3 of G5 teams.

Edit: I meant to say ranking P5 and G5 together.
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Agreed, is the quickest/dirtiest way. At least its consistent across the years so its meaningful for GT in general as far as the numbers go each year for getting better or worse.
 
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