Diaco's Defensive scheme has been rightfully termed as "maddening" - despite the "bend but not break" moniker, there is plenty of breaking - especially on our opponents 1st drive of the game.
We have derivesively but rightfully come to expect our opponents to score at will on their initial possession.
On Rice's 1st 2 possessions, they drove the ball down the field at will.
Understanding that our players' performance early against Rice was lackluster (to say the least), there still seems to be a scheme issue with the Defense in the 1st quarter of most of our games. It is as if we just drop into some sort of "prevent defense" initially waiting to see what an Offense will do.
Don't we watch film in order to prepare for an opponent? Why aren't we more aggressive early in the game? Wouldn't we be just as if not more effective early, if we actually tried to attack an offense, rather than playing on roller skates, waiting for them to come to us?
Admittedly, our Defense seems to become much more effective as the game wears on. But that seems to be a product of increased aggressiveness from a scheme and playcalling perspective.
As we get further into the meat of our schedule and play teams that are more or less our peers, spotting our opponents by an easy TD or 2 will only serve to put us behind the proverbial 8 ball. It will be much harder to make up that deficit against teams like Southern Miss or N Texas than it was against Rice.
I appreciate the in game adjustments and our increased effectiveness later in the game, but what is the theory behind and the cause of our "bend over" Defense early in games? I can't imagine a DC Coordinator coming to a HC and effectively saying, "We're going to just kinda lay back early and see what they do to score, then make adjustments as needed". Yet, that seems to be our plan.
We have derivesively but rightfully come to expect our opponents to score at will on their initial possession.
On Rice's 1st 2 possessions, they drove the ball down the field at will.
Understanding that our players' performance early against Rice was lackluster (to say the least), there still seems to be a scheme issue with the Defense in the 1st quarter of most of our games. It is as if we just drop into some sort of "prevent defense" initially waiting to see what an Offense will do.
Don't we watch film in order to prepare for an opponent? Why aren't we more aggressive early in the game? Wouldn't we be just as if not more effective early, if we actually tried to attack an offense, rather than playing on roller skates, waiting for them to come to us?
Admittedly, our Defense seems to become much more effective as the game wears on. But that seems to be a product of increased aggressiveness from a scheme and playcalling perspective.
As we get further into the meat of our schedule and play teams that are more or less our peers, spotting our opponents by an easy TD or 2 will only serve to put us behind the proverbial 8 ball. It will be much harder to make up that deficit against teams like Southern Miss or N Texas than it was against Rice.
I appreciate the in game adjustments and our increased effectiveness later in the game, but what is the theory behind and the cause of our "bend over" Defense early in games? I can't imagine a DC Coordinator coming to a HC and effectively saying, "We're going to just kinda lay back early and see what they do to score, then make adjustments as needed". Yet, that seems to be our plan.
