Oregon State OTRH Podcast
(Written by kencraw)
The On The Road Home podcast is up. I’m getting better, it’s only Wednesday morning.
Since it was a home game, no interview quotes in this one, but as a bonus you do get to see the darker side of Ken in this one (remember that is really is recorded on the way home from the game, so no time to get one’s emotions in check).
November 11th, 2009 at 9:53 am
I pretty much agree all-round with your thoughts on this one. Regarding the 5-point plan, I don’t have much opinion on #2 or #3, since I have enough trouble forming coherent thoughts about what I see on the field so I’ll leave back-office critique to my betters. But as far as #4 and #5, I totally agree. The defense needs some shaking up SOMEhow, and Syd’Quan looks like the only one on the field half the time.
And I would like to see the younger guys, particularly Sweeney, gets some reps. Not in the spirit of giving up on this season, by any means, but just giving them some time on the field like they got in those first couple blow-out games.
Amen to the comments re: Best.
November 11th, 2009 at 1:00 pm
Great podcast as always.
I totally agree on your plan, Ken. What do think the chances are of Tedford doing anything near any of them? It seems like in the past, he’s been hesitant to make big changes midway through the season (I’m thinking 2007 specifically).
Hope to see some changes this Saturday.
November 11th, 2009 at 6:49 pm
Regarding the defensive pre-snap adjustments and signals.
I don’t think all the pre-snap talking between the defensive players is confusing them. They are alerting each other to changes in assignments due to pre-snap movement by the offense and location of offensive personnel. They do this to make sure everyone is on the same page, just in case someone didn’t see something. The pre-snap talking is actually making things less confusing to the defense.
Of course these confirmations and changes need to happen quickly. Sometimes they don’t, but I’m not sure you can really do much else about that. The offense makes pre-snap changes quickly for the very purpose of giving the defense little time to react and adjust. So if the offense gets the ball off quickly after making adjustments, I’m not sure there is much else you can do other than to quickly alert the other defenders and have faith that they saw the same thing, and know their assignment.
As for making these adjustments silently, and without verbal alerts, I see that as a horrible decision. Without alerting each other, players will not be sure if they are all on the same page. They will not be sure if the other player knows their assignment as changed due to the pre-snap movement.
I know that on rare occasion the defense is legitimately confused on their assignments, but without their talking and verbal alerts to each other pre-snap, they would have even less of a chance of being on the same page.
I cannot agree with your analysis of what’s going on defensively pre-snap, or with your solution.
November 11th, 2009 at 9:38 pm
Here’s the problem with verbal alerts: at home the crowd is REALLY loud. Those defenders can’t hear each other. The first thing that made me think this was ironically my wife who said “it always seems like the opposition scores when we’re the loudest.”
Well, I think that’s just incidental because of course the crowd is loudest when a score is imminent (in the hope of preventing it). But searching my memory banks, I remembered how there were more frantic signaling at home than on the road. I’ve noticed this over multiple years now and never really put one and one together.
At home the defense is in the tough position like the offense is on the road. If they don’t have a strategy to make signals in a noisy environment, they’re doomed at home.
Doesn’t that make sense to you Hydro? How else should they deal with the noise than to make signals silently?
November 11th, 2009 at 11:22 pm
The verbal alerts are accompanied by hand signals too. The purpose of using the hand signals is so the players know what the other is saying even if they can’t hear each other (due to home field crowd noise). But if I’m reading things correctly, you don’t want the players to use vocal alerts at all? It seems like having two alert systems (audio and visual) is better than one.
November 12th, 2009 at 6:12 am
If it’s truly redundant, if they can’t hear each other but can still can get all the information they would otherwise, then that’s good enough for me.
I fear that either the hand signals aren’t comprehensive enough or that they so much more used to the verbal signals that when they’re reduced to their hand signals because of the noise that they’re unable to communicate effectively.
I’d love to be wrong, but I do get the feeling they seem less on the same page during the loud plays than otherwise, but I must admit that’s not based on any analysis, particularly any that accounts for the reality that big plays tend to be the loudest, but just on a subjective feeling.