Defensive problems are not just youth/injuries
(Written by kencraw)
Spent some time over on CGB yesterday evening reading what people thought about our defensive struggles. There are still a lot of people deflecting blame from the coaching staff regarding the defensive woes over there.
Simply stated, while the youth of the defense (much of which is because of injuries) is a big factor, it is not THE factor.
First of all, most of these injuries are not new. The coaching staff has known who they were going to be missing for some time now. That gave them a significant amount time to train replacements and make scheme adjustments. It isn’t like 4 guys went down on Thursday’s practice. Most of them have been missing all season and it was known for a good number of them about mid-way through fall camp they were hurt. So we’re talking about a full month, PLUS THREE GAMES, where these injuries have been known to the world. It is the coaches job to make adjustments for these sorts of things.
Secondly, we have big weaknesses in areas where we still have depth. By way of example, yeah, the defensive line lost Jalil, but where are the rest of the highly touted guys? Where are Moala and Coleman? It’s not like they’re getting double teamed or given special attention. Or if you want to look in the secondary, McClure is getting schooled out there and he’s always been projected to be a starter this season and has a pretty strong history in his early years as a backup.
In fact, McClure is the perfect case study to determine what’s going on, at least from how I see things.
McClure has a lot of talent, showed a lot of promise in year’s past and has a fair amount of experience for a non-starter. If he’s having trouble, one of three things are true:
- He’s being coached poorly to use wrong technique.
- The scheme being used puts him in a difficult situation.
- He’s personally not giving the effort (which could include the effort to learn) he should be.
Numbers 1 and 2 would be the fault of the coaching staff, so if we can eliminate number 3 I think we can safely point to the coaching staff as the problem. And while it is not definitive evidence, the fact that we’re seeing defensive problems throughout the defense and not just with a player or two, it suggests it’s not effort issues, particularly considering that if there’s one thing Dykes has done exceptionally, it’s to get these young men to buy into bringing a strong effort.
Thus, personally, I think the main issue is coaching.
And more specifically I think the problem is a poor scheme setting the defense up for failure.
I said before the season that I was leery of the move back to the 4-3 but was willing to be open-minded, particularly since the lines between a 4-3 and a 3-4 have blended in the most innovative defenses. Well, this IS NOT an innovative defense. This is an old-school Big-10, completely unprepared for modern college offenses, we’ll just be playing a lot of 2 linebacker nickle, defense.
I’m just not seeing anything that makes me impressed with the scheme. I’m seeing cornerbacks being put on islands play after play and asked to do the near impossible. I’m seeing safeties and linebackers who have the same assignments over and over again. I’m seeing formations that pre-snap are obviously exploitable with no post-snap adjustments to take it away. Heck, just in general I’m not seeing a lot of deception or hiding of schemes.
Sorry folks, we’ve got a weak defensive staff right now.
Don’t get me wrong, I’d be happy to find out a few weeks from now that everything is clicking and all of a sudden Buh and company have taken their game to the next level. I’m open to the possibility that Buh is very talented but in a bit over his head and with time will improve dramatically. I’m willing to be a bit patient. Nobody needs to be fired.
But I don’t have to delude myself into thinking my patience is waiting for for some players to get healthy, when in fact what I’m waiting for is the coaching staff to figure out its incompetence.
September 16th, 2013 at 7:11 pm
Energetic discussion at CGB continues today, but nothing new really, just more of the same. Getting tired of reading it, so I will hang out here more for a couple weeks.
September 17th, 2013 at 5:32 am
Ken,
You’ve convinced me that the defense issue is mainly coaching. Buh is no Pendergast. There’s a reason why Clancy was picked up by USC after he was let go by Cal.
The good news is that on offense, the team is improving. They racked up 500 yards against Ohio State, let’s see if any Big 10 team does that this year. The running game improved because of better O-line work. It appeared to me that they utilized a larger playbook — especially in the 2nd half. The signs point to an offense that is evolving and maturing.
When was the last time Cal had fewer penalties than a top 25 opponent? It’s nice to see a more disciplined team.
September 17th, 2013 at 7:47 am
Ken,
If this defense doesn’t improve you might want to consider changing the name of your blog to “Excuse Me For My Defense”.
September 17th, 2013 at 8:02 am
I do disagree with a lot of this. We did have some recent injuries that have stretched our defense even thinner. Yes Forbes, Jalil, and Scarlett have missed the whole season and we shouldn’t expect any of them back anytime soon.
However recent injuries include Avery (week 1), McCain (during practice before PSU), Lowe (recently injured during the PSU game), Barton (injured before the OSU game).
So to add onto the three defensive injuries before the start of the season we have sustained three more injuries to starters since the beginning of the season, with one injury being season ending and an injury to a top reserve in Barton.
Avery was probably our second best DB after Kam Jackson. I also disagree about McClures struggles being a sign of poor coaching. I believe McClure is still rusty and still getting up to speed. McClure missed all of last season due to his ACL injury and often times it can take a player up to two years to fully recover and get back to pre-injury play. Some of it has to do with rust and getting back into game shape and some of it is mental as a player might not fully trust the knee and not playing at 100%.
I am not making excuses for Buh and I am very much on the fences about him but I’m willing to see if he and his staff can coach these younger guys up and see improvemt over the course of the season. Besides Buh, none of the position coaches have seem to do much with the talent on hand. Wasn’t DB coach Stewart supposed to be good?
Lastly, I believe a lot of the struggles on defense have to do with poor recruiting by Tedford in the later and tosh gate. Tedford and staff completely whiffed on safety recruits during the last two seasons of his tenure and the whole tosh gate robbed the defense of some potential recruits that could be adding depth to that unit right about now.
September 17th, 2013 at 9:55 am
You gave me a lot to reply to 858…
As for the additional injuries, obviously I won’t argue that they don’t matter at all, but I think it’s a mistake to over emphasize them. Avery was out a lot in fall practice as well and then got a different season ending injury just as he was coming back… I’d hope that the defense was prepared for some early games without him even before the 2nd injury. McCain has missed a little time, but has mostly been on the field. Barton may be the best example of a recent loss, but I wouldn’t call him the lynchpin of the defense (not that you were claiming that).
As for McClure, I’ll accept that there may be a post ACL factor involved. Hopefully he will get better. But yet again, I see this as a fault of the coaching staff, specifically it makes me think our scheming stinks. The coaches have seen him in practice for long enough now to know if he’s ready to be a corner on an island. If he’s not, why is the scheme being so inflexible and setting him up for failure when he’s not ready for that?
And yes, while my initial impression of Buh is not positive, I’m willing to have my mind changed. If late in the season the defense is vastly improved, then I’ll be happy and he’ll actually get a pretty long leash with me.
As for recruiting… this is an area SO hard to gauge. The “stars” suggest we did OK with defensive recruiting, particularly on the line, although I must agree that if there’s a weak spot it’s DB. But to add credibility to your argument, there have been a few 4-stars that might have not been worth their ranking. I did have the feeling late in the Tedford era that he was engaging in “start-grabbing”, something that helps make him look good in the short term on paper, but when those players who aren’t worth their stars actually have to line up and play, it comes back to haunt whoever inherited them. For what it’s worth, I think that was one of the things that changed a lot from the early Tedford years and was very disappointing to see.
September 18th, 2013 at 9:46 am
Rick,
Good point about the penalties. I remember being pleasantly surprised a couple times that it wasn’t something on the Bears. Just got so used to ‘winning’ the penalty game . . .
September 18th, 2013 at 9:57 am
Yeah, it is easy to get so focused on the problems on defense and forget the good. The offense is improving. There are a number of important metrics like penalties that are improving. Then there are the more subjective things like effort and determination. (I’m pretty sure last year’s team would have folded when down 0-21 after only 6 minutes.)