Had Enough

He did recruit the trenches. Murphy, Sweat, Collins, Broughton, Sorrell were recruited by Herman. Murphy and Ojomo were his recruits too. As were Jones and Majors. He didn’t recruit the depth that we hope Sark does. But as you said, he didn’t have NIL to bring home more, higher profile guys. Lack of NIL and his moronic tendencies were the bigger problem rather than not wanting big guys. And that’s not to say we didn’t have too many WRs.

Gbenda has already been reduced. He and Crawford have gotten about 45 snaps between them the past two weeks. Hill is playing more at least in part for next year. So not really sure what’s expected to get Gbenda out more. I’m not certain Hill is any more productive at this point. Gbenda has not played a ton in the past 4 weeks.

Right, it’s not a foot speed issue.

How far do we get to go back? It was 4 games ago they demolished that powerful Arkansas game by 3. The game before was the 26-20 winner at the Ags and their 23 yards rushing. Bamas 23 rushing yards that is.

You said “I hate that we rotate so much.” That rotation was less yesterday than games with more successful run defense games. You do have me curious though, and I’ll probably watch again.

You’re not alone. Certainly a bit of that is perception. I’m confident in saying that Schooler and Crawford are very fast for S. I think there’s an element of them getting the blame when not the primary reason. The “slow” talk picked up after Bama and BU. When 4.3 WRs made some plays. Guess what? Every game Bama has pass TDs down the middle of the field. It happens. A lot. Contrast the KSU 32 yard pass with the Taafe pick. The S takes the inside route both times. Some say the S blew the TD. Brooks is over the top on both. I’ve read fans reactions on the Taafe play that if he was fast, he doesn’t need the deflection. Maybe, but the bigger deal is that he is not the playside S. So maybe the S did his job and the rest is bs.

I don’t believe this to be correct. Single biggest play versus Tech last year was a failure on this play. Earlier in the game, it worked by a hair. The issue with it is Sarks stubbornness. Quit going left 75% of the time. Give it occasionally. Or maybe don’t delay every damn time.

Versus KSU Broughton played almost half the defense snaps. Versus TCU he played less than a 3rd. He played more snaps and a higher percentage versus OU and Bsma than TCU. Sweat and Murphy very possibly played their most snaps of the year versus TCU. Without looking at every game, I’m confident it was easily their highest percentage of snaps played in any game. Your final sentence here is accurate. Maybe for TCU it was just a good day.

Remember that time Ewers threw the backwards pass into the ground that we had to recover? Inexperience much like Murphys failure on the screen. Ewers was mostly average last night, but he’s probably not close to healthy. Ewers did every bit the dumbshit that Murphy did when he was relatively inexperienced. TCU and KSU defenses present different issues. Any comparison has limits in value. That said Ewers is clearly the guy, but he’s also a contributing factor to not finishing games. An example being that shitty throw to Worthy when Whitt was wide open for a much easier throw to get the first and continue the drive.

I find this mentality interesting. Pass yards = secondary play. Then it’s the safeties. TCU had 3 drives of great success. One had a big play in which it appears Barron was the culprit. Also note that he went out and Guilbeau got some run. TCU and Houston probably had the most success When we struggle, it’s generally due to multiple reasons. Offense and defense. Then it’s different parts of that unit yet we tend to focus on one. The pass rush does seem to fade a bit late. Is it because Sweat and Murphy are a bit tired? Maybe. Sweat has missed 2 of 3 sacks the past two weeks with relatively clean shots. Why? The LBs have left openings. S has allowed some catches but so have the CBs and Nickel. It’s really not one thing. LB and S are the two most difficult positions in the sense of ground to cover and potential matchups. I’ve looked at a decent amount of data lately that seems to indicate all teams attack the middle of the field. From what I’ve seen we aren’t more vulnerable than others.

Perhaps I should have said only legends convert from CB to S.

Do it on the coverages. Need to watch the Taafe pick again. Thompson is the playside S there (I believe). And it may have played out similarly. The outside WR ran much deeper but Brooks took the deep in breaking route and the S crashed down to the inside. And logistically, I’d rather have my CB running with a WR than a S.

I agree. But I’m stating it based on what they’re being allowed to do. I’m a big fan of what our guys up front are doing and agree their success is hindered a great deal by that bs. As I mentioned previously, lost contain is probably a function of that excessive holding in that they’re trying to do too much to make a play.

Gbenda didn’t play much against KSU. Hill is hit or miss in coverage. Hill rushed the passer more the last two weeks than in any other games as best as I can tell. On that KSU TD, if that’s Gbendas man, that’s terrible play design. If it’s zone, the WR is leaving Gbendas zone so that wouldn’t be him. A Lb chasing any WR across the field is a recipe for failure. That said, it’s so convoluted who knows what’s supposed to happen. Go watch the 4th and 6 versus KSU. The contain was lost, but Blackwell was the main issue on that conversion. As poor of coverage we’ve had all season given down, distance, coverage and offensive play call.

And you don’t get to 2nd in the country in 3rd down defense or red zone defense without some damn good coverage. Our pass rush is not THAT good. Our coverage unit has some flaws. We did pressure KSU, but when you miss the sack or provide an easy escape particularly up the middle to the QBs or his strong side, that opens up big play possibilities. That happened multiple times. And that was the first, but not only, problem versus OU on the big Stoops catch and run.

Yes, I know. That’s 1 play. And look at the pass rush, it was equally shitty. 3 rushers 5 yards beyond where the QB ended up. Howard had no obstructed view and possibly could have run for 6 too. Part of his point was that we’d get more sacks if they covered that better. They didn’t beat us with this 10 times and this is an example of people latching on to one play and projected it as repeated failures over a full game. Houston was worse, but they went 4 WRs more often and likely put in some special shit for us. We’ve got multiple things to work on. Pass rush contain was worse in this game than struggling against mesh or crossing routes.

I know this will go nowhere, but I’ll throw it out there anyway. The crosser discussion regarding KSU is bullshit. Howard was 6-8 for 49 yards from 0-10 in the middle of the field. Yes, there was the TD. Outside of the hash to the right at 10+ yards, he was 5-6 for 108 and a TD. 2-2, 17 yards and a TD to the left. His 4 TD passes were to different sectors of the field, different routes. Any crosses hitting outside the opposite hash doesn’t really support getting more sacks because those aren’t immediate throws. I don’t recall those anyway. The claim about more sacks because of better coverage is false too. That short crosser for the TD, watch it again. Bad coverage, but we weren’t sacking shit as all 4 rushers ran themselves out of the play. There simply weren’t many crossing routes. Just watch the late 3rd and into the 4th. Our rush lanes were garbage. Howard most often escaped right. A big under appreciated play was the 3rd and 10 at 27-7. No pressure and in fact parted the middle of the field for the completion. I’m not saying we can’t or don’t need to be better on that but the pass rush containment was more significant. Our DEs (not including Hill) dropped into coverage 5 times. Barron rushed 5 times. Trying to surprise a veteran Oline is not surprising and really didn’t have a negative impact on our defense.

And OU had only 1 10 yard penalty which are typically subjective. By my math, we could have had up to 6 of that variety.

Dennis Taylor.

If we’d run press coverage on that cover 4 match shit, there wouldn’t be no confusion.

I believe this was the one with the Swoopes run that was called back on a less impactful hold than Brooks 60 yarder in 2021. OU had 28 yards at half but led. Their only penalty in half 1 was on a non-descript, low impact penalty on a punt return.

You know the 4th try versus Georgia worked. Keep trying til it works.

The busted coverages is probably my biggest concern. At least make the offense work. Going back to TCU last year, that’s 3 TDs on Brooks side of the field due to confusion. Think it’s 3 different S too. Rotations could be a part of it.

Every team, every situation, every scheme are a bit different. So when I compare Hamilton to Cine, there are reasons that can be a flawed comparison. What I can say is that lack of speed is not a deal breaker for Hamilton with his current team. Pretty much every player has a fit that fits their skill set. The mental aspect of S is more difficult than CB. You take one false step or you delay for 0.3 then that 4.4 guy isn’t that fast anymore. There are probably only a small handful of plays that you’d ever be able to use make up speed. There’s lot of discussion here about converting guys to S. It could work but maybe not. If you look at the NFL, the S converts that come to mind are aging CBs that were physical. Rod Woodson, Charles Woodson, Ronnie Lott(although he was younger). Given the history of the league, it’s a pretty short list to my knowledge. There should be reasonable expectations that passes will be completed and TD passes given up. And for us, this year it is different players giving it up, different play calls, different failings.

Chris Smith. 4th leading tackler for Georgia in 2022. Ran a fucking 4.62 40 at the combine. 2 time national championship Georgia. 4.62. Jordan Battle, DeMarco Hellams were 4.555, 4.57 at the combine. Kyle Hamilton was 4.59, 4.32 shuttle. But compare Hamilton to Lewis Cine and his 4.37 40. Looks like one is starting and one has 0 tackles. Ed Reed, 4.57. Jerrin had a 4.61 verified out of high school. Maybe he’s slower now. Maybe not. His shuttle time was 4.20. If you’ve got something verifiable, I’d be interested to see it. I just saw him with a reported 4.5 but maybe that’s trash. The two fastest safeties at the combine last year were 7th and 5th round picks. I don’t even see one of them on the depth chart right now. Maybe we should replicate Illinois. They had two of the top 4 times. Iowa, Notre Dame, Penn State, Florida x 2 all had dudes invited to the combine at 4.62 or slower. For the past two years, the fastest safeties come from all over. And not from top 10 or even top 25 programs. There are many a fast guy that fail at football Schooler, Tyler Owens, Crawford. All fast as shit. People don’t like any of them. All on campus in the past 3 years. We give up passing yards for a variety of reasons. Just like everyone else. Crawford hasn’t given up insane number of TDs in years past. He hasn’t even played substantial snaps as S until this year. I have no idea how fast Taafe is. He’s not Crawford fast. My guess is you don’t know exactly either. Vs KSU. Watts got beat at least twice. Brooks may have screwed up/perhaps Williams for a TD. Blackwell was the party on the 4th and 6 conversion. 40 yards on screens. Probably 75 passing yards due to poor pash rush/lost contain. Smith, Branch, Hamilton, Reed. All too slow to play for us. No idea how those slow ass guys got on the field for Bama and Georgia more than 4 years into their current regimes. Yeah, we want Michael Huff (actually wasn’t very good as an underclassman) and Earl Thomas. But since we’ve had a small number of those over the years, I’m not expecting them here every year. I guess since Harrell threw for 475 and Leinart 365 in 2005 and 2008 it probably had everything to do with their other teammates.