Defense was most of the problem the last 2 years. When we look back on the Robb Smith era in a few years, we will see that the Defensive scheme of RS was bad and his in-game adjustments were far Worse. We lost games because the Defensive adjustment sucked by the late 2nd quarter and after half time against better teams. The players on defense didn’t believe in RS or his adjustments, but the offense also was frustrated by the additional pressure applied by defensive failures. Sometimes the offense came apart but mostly against the best SEC teams, and really came off the rails as soon as the Defense became matadors.
You maybe right. However, the offense let us down in last 2 games from last year.
That was my point at the end about the offense falling apart after the Defense played like Matadors. Last year was a frustrated team with a bad Oline and a terrible Defensive Coordinator/Scheme.
It was group effort
Yep. The oline couldn’t sustain blocks and drives against decent to good teams. Austin tried to do too much and that backfired. The Oline almost got Austin killed and he was injured bad enough for it to get in his head after Auburn. Combine all that with the terrible defensive scheme and adjustments that deflated the defensive players, and you can see why we imploded at times. Our defense gave up big leads and the offense tried to do too much to save the game which put gas on the fire. It deflated the whole team.
Robb Smith was not the only problem. A lack of talent and speed was an even bigger issue. We just have been so slow compared to the offenses we were trying to stop.
Our offense has been among the better offenses in the SEC the past two years. The defenses have been among the worst. Dan Enos has done a really, really good job. Hopefully, Paul Rhodes will really get this defense to improve. If the D is much better, we will be much better. We have a ways to go, I think. Look at our best teams in the West last year…Alabama, LSU and Auburn. We really weren’t competitive in any of those games. The Alabama looked game more respectable than it really was…Saban tried to run out the clock the entire 2nd half, but we kept throwing and made it look respectable. But we got drilled by each of those teams.
I really don’t know what to expect this year. If I had to bet, I think it will be a lot like the past 2 years. Some good…some bad. 6-6, maybe 7-5.
IMO we had mediocre speed in the back 7 and it got worse when Greenlaw was injured. I think our LB play after Greenlaw was injured made the back 4 look even worse. Our safeties don’t have SEC speed so they inherently took bad angles even when they tried to take the right angles. Ellis was a liability in pass coverage that got exposed bad after Greenlaw was out. Scoota and Eugene were not experienced enough to react quick thus they played slow.
Conversely, we had some really good talent on the Dline that was wasted by the scheme. We had fast twitch guys like Ledbetter and Wise that were asked to fill gaps/plug instead of allowing their athleticism to shine. Do you remember part way through the season when CBB made RS change the front 4 scheme to free up Ledbetter and Wise? Wise was too injured to really show out but Ledbetter did much better.