Rate the GT DC's past and present

aeromech

aeromech

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Rate the GT DC's

To get some football talk going (hey, fall practice is right around the corner), here is a question for you GT fans. Who is the best Defensive Coordinator you've seen at GT and why? My ratings are as follows:

#1 Don Lindsey - Developed the Black Watch defense GT enjoyed during the mid 80's. His defense roduced stars like Pat Swilling, Ted Roof, Riccardo Ingram, Willie Clay and others. The defense was aggressive and hard hitting. I give Lindsey the top spot because while the talent level of his squad may not have been the best ever, his defense was consistent and well balanced, covering the entire field. Lindsey's defense had a swagger, and had an attitude that the ball was something they owned, and seemed to love the sound of pads popping.

#2 John Tenuta - Hard to say anything new about Tenuta or his defense, he has been well discussed on this board and others; here I need to justify why he came up as #2, so I'll probably be perceived as negative. I think of Tenuta's defense as 'Gritz Blitz lite'. It's not 'lite' because it is simple; but because it lacks the hard hitting of a Jerry Glanville defense. Tenuta's blitz package is probably the best orchestrated I've ever seen, offenses have a difficult time knowing who's coming and when. While the Tenuta defense is very aggressive up front, it seems to play soft in the secondary, relying heavily on the pressure up front to defeat the pass. Consistency is also a problem with the Tenuta defense with examples like Clemson last year, and a few other forth quarter swoons. Lack of aggressiveness in the secondary and the occasional lapses on defense in big games is why I dropped Tenuta to #2.

#3 George O'leary - [Note: George O'leary the DC, not George O'leary the HC]. The O'leary defense was very good, let there be no doubt. In fact it was good enough to get us our last National Championship. O'leary's defenses in the late 80's were physical, consistent and well balanced. I dropped O'leary to third based in part on the Bill Lewis years. O'leary's defense under Lewis was just good enough to insure that Lewis got fired while keeping the powers that be convinced that he would be a good head coach. Without the Lewis years, I would probably move O'leary to the #2 position.

I don't have much first hand knowledge of the GT DC's prior to 1980, so if someone can rate them against our more recent coordinators I would find it interesting.
 
Baughn was the one who brought back the old Engineers hat. At that time the Defense started to let the other team have the ball if we won the toss. After 3 plays and a punt the D went off with the stands raising hell. The O came on in good field position. Scored, other team got the ball, 3 plays, punt, repeat often.

Our Defense comes on the field now and just stands there waiting for the other team to come alive. A real let down, our D needs to come on the field alive and ready to kill something, get the GT fans into the D. That is what the Jon Tenuta needs to do now, make the other team understand that the GT D owns the damn dirt and grass. More Paramedics will be on the sidelines for the other bumbs.

O'Leary as DC was fun to watch, really got into the game.
 
Our Defense comes on the field now and just stands there waiting for the other team to come alive. A real let down, our D needs to come on the field alive and ready to kill something, get the GT fans into the D. That is what the Jon Tenuta needs to do now, make the other team understand that the GT D owns the damn dirt and grass. More Paramedics will be on the sidelines for the other bumbs.


I don't get this comment at all.
 
Our D does not get the Fans involved and excited about the game.
 
The V said:
Our D does not get the Fans involved and excited about the game.
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I guess I'm slow, but still don't know what you're asking for. Should they jump up and down and wave their arms? When I see our D take the field I see a very focused, emotional unit. If our aggressive, attack style doesn't get the fans excited I'm not sure what you do.
 
The V said:
Our D does not get the Fans involved and excited about the game.
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I guess it is all perception. I feel our section of the stadium was MORE excited when the D was on the field.
 
Our D does not get the Fans involved and excited about the game.
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You're nuts. Our D is why I watch our team. Our D is the most exciting D in the country.
 
I would rate them similar to most with one exception:
1. Jim Carlen - great run on defense as Coordinator, '61-'65. In five years defense gave up 20 points or more in only six regular season games. Was he the first to use the 4-4 with a Stinger Back and Wrecker Back? I loved that D when I was a kid.
2. Tenuta - this is a good run on defense
3. Lindsey - the Black Watch was terrific.
4. Carson - one great season as DC before becoming Head Coach.
5. O'Leary - a good job, but I think we won more with O than D in the Ross era
 
The V said:
Our D does not get the Fans involved and excited about the game.
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I understand what you're saying. Tenuta's defense has always been about 'bend, but don't break'. He plays to make the offense go the length of the field, instead of gambling and giving up the big play.

I think that has more to do with the quality of the defensive backfield and not having strong single coverage man-on-man corners that can take the big plays away, which forces the safeties into deeper zone coverage instead of filling the box with eight or nine men. Once the field is shortened inside the 20, they're forced to play up closer and the offense can't go over the top.

Tenuta's game plan fits our personnel. That's what makes him a great DC. If he was given different tools, he'd adjust, but he can't play that way now.
 
Tenuta's defense has always been about 'bend, but don't break'. He plays to make the offense go the length of the field, instead of gambling and giving up the big play.
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You're out of your mind. That was Roof's defense. Tenuta's defense is about continually attacking to force the offense to commit a drive-ending screwup. If anything, we're weak on containment because we rely on pressure to force the play to go faster than it's designed to go, so we don't have to guard routes that develop over 7 or more seconds.

Are you guys even watching the same games as me?
 
beej67 said:
You're out of your mind. That was Roof's defense. Tenuta's defense is about continually attacking to force the offense to commit a drive-ending screwup. If anything, we're weak on containment because we rely on pressure to force the play to go faster than it's designed to go, so we don't have to guard routes that develop over 7 or more seconds.

Are you guys even watching the same games as me?
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QFT.

It was O'Leary that insisted on a bend-but-don't-break D while he was a head coach. It paid off because we had an O that could easily eat up big chunks of yards. So the field position battle wasn't as important.

Tenuta's D is all about speed. Force the quick play. Force the QB into his hot read. Swarm the ball. Keep everything in front of you. We have major trouble once a TE or a RB get more than 5 yards beyond the line of scrimmage. We have big trouble when a team can chuck up the long ball into single coverage.

With our O production the last few years, we have needed a D strategy that could preserve yards like they were gold.
 
Tenuta is about forcing a big play, while not giving up one. That's the reason we put so much pressure at the point of attack but play zone in back of the blitzes, etc. It's definitetly not a bend but don't break defense as it's more of an attacking style. But at the same time he doesn't want to give up the home run when we get beat.
 
Essentially, Tenuta is willing to spot you 12 yards to roll some dice on you losing 10. Whether it's the best system or not is a subject for debate, but it's certainly more exciting from a fan perspective than yielding a consistent 6 and a half yards per play to the other guy, every play, like Roof did.
 
You both said the same thing I did and came to the wrong conclusion.

We suck at containment BECAUSE our DBs play deeper and keep the play in front of them. We force the quick read to make them to throw underneath. When the field shortens, we don't give up TDs because they can't throw over the top. The problem is that we WEREN'T stopping the other team until they got into scoring position.

We lost the time of possession. Our opponents had the ball for more than half the game. They also ran more plays than we did, but with only 6 more punts and just 16 fewer first downs. They had fewer TDs then we did, but more FG attempts and FG made. Their scoring attempts were nearly the same, but they settled for FGs, while we scored TDs.
 
What conclusion are you talking about? Tenuta is banking on sacks and TOs to stop the opposing offense. That's not bend-but-don't-break. The fact that we didn't get as much penetration last year as he'd like doesn't change what he's trying to do.
 
Dude, we lost time of possession last season because our offense sucked.

If you want to look at a stat, look at points allowed per possession, and compare our defense to other team's defenses. Also look at how long our D was on the field per possession, not how long they were on the field for the game. With an offense that could actually drive, our D's numbers would look insane.

Also, all defenses have a harder time defending in the middle of the field vs in the red zone, because the play area collapses. That's a fundamental feature of football, not unique to Tenuta.
 
Tenuta's D is one of the best. Has a rep. Kids want to play for him.

The Black Watch was my personal fave. Great defensive team and played their guts out.

But no one has mentioned Coach Dodd's D's. I mean the man liked to punt on 3rd down and turn the game over to the defense. Dodd had great assistants. The first DC (being quite young) I actually remember was Carson. I know Dodd had Graves, Broyles, Tonto, Woodruff and Spec on staff before Carson's brief introduction but who was running the D? I think Broyles was offense and Graves Defense. I'm pretty sure Coleman was from the defensive side but I'm grasping here. Dodd's D's had to be the the best.

Any "old timers" care to recollect?
 
beej67 said:
Dude, we lost time of possession last season because our offense sucked.
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We actually had a decent offense last year. We had the conference leading rusher for instance. Our quarterback also had some good games running the ball. All that running had to burn some clock. I'm just saying the offense didn't "suck".
 
aeromech said:
We actually had a decent offense last year. We had the conference leading rusher for instance. Our quarterback also had some good games running the ball. All that running had to burn some clock. I'm just saying the offense didn't "suck".
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Our passing offense S U C K E D. Overall I would classify our offense as mediocre.

I seriously doubt there has ever been another offense featuring a Biletnikoff winner that finished as low as 91st nationally in passing offense.
 
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