I don't get paid to do this anymore, but I just had to see what went wrong Saturday. I rewatched all the defensive snaps, the offense is pretty much the same story with better talent, but the defensive performance made no sense while watching in the stadium. While ACU wasn't doing anything wild, it didn't seem like we could ever get lined up right, seemed like we were confused all game, and both of those factors caused us to play super slow. I didn't think it was really a personnel issue in the secondary that is, the defensive line absolutely is, just bad scheme/preparation. Don't get me wrong, there were some nightmare performances from the DBs, but it's hard to separate that from the complete lack of scheme.
First Half:
- So many times the play was over before the snap, alignment all wrong. A few of McIvor's incompletions came from him having too many options presnap and he overthought it.
- The secondary was basically never on the same page, most common problem seemed to be our underneath guys were playing cover 2 while only having one safety behind them. I have no idea how it's possible for this to happen as many times as it did.
- I'm honestly not sure the entire back seven were on the same page one time in first half.
- The few times a same side corner/safety seemed to be on the page with cover 2, the jamming/rerouting was horrific. Safeties never stood a chance.
- D Line is a total and complete disaster. I was watching their o line warmup before the game and texted @B. Golan and @4O9to8O6Nback "if we can't move these guys when we want we should be very worried." Consider me worried!
Second Half:
- More of the same, I seriously have never seen a secondary be more lost. I need an explanation, it's from the very first play!
- DEs/OLBs better in second half, problem is the DTs are so bad McIvor could always step up. Zero inside pressure.
- Horn and Lewis were better, but that might only be in comparison to Peoples and Baskerville.
- The DBs just kind of lost their matchups all night. I wouldn't jump to season long conclusions about that, it could be a lot of things, but it ain't good.
- LB play was worse than usual because they basically spent all of presnap trying to get the secondary right
- I mean, the secondary will get better just out of all of them running the same play. You can say what you want about this staff, they've never shown to be this unprepared, so I'll expect this aspect to improve by Saturday and chalk this up to a, incredibly disturbing, fluke.
After all this my biggest concerns are the DLine, because I don't think it can be fixed, Morton/Offensive Scheme, because it has zero flow or, frankly, sense to it, and the penalties, Mcguire usually has those things pretty tight, this could show some regression.
Side note: there's an element to a game like that that makes me glad to have a guy like McGuire at the helm because ACU should have won and would have won with some aggresiveness late in the game. They let us off the hook, a McGuire team would not have done that with roles reversed. The tiniest of silver linings I realize haha
First Half:
- So many times the play was over before the snap, alignment all wrong. A few of McIvor's incompletions came from him having too many options presnap and he overthought it.
- The secondary was basically never on the same page, most common problem seemed to be our underneath guys were playing cover 2 while only having one safety behind them. I have no idea how it's possible for this to happen as many times as it did.
- I'm honestly not sure the entire back seven were on the same page one time in first half.
- The few times a same side corner/safety seemed to be on the page with cover 2, the jamming/rerouting was horrific. Safeties never stood a chance.
- D Line is a total and complete disaster. I was watching their o line warmup before the game and texted @B. Golan and @4O9to8O6Nback "if we can't move these guys when we want we should be very worried." Consider me worried!
Second Half:
- More of the same, I seriously have never seen a secondary be more lost. I need an explanation, it's from the very first play!
- DEs/OLBs better in second half, problem is the DTs are so bad McIvor could always step up. Zero inside pressure.
- Horn and Lewis were better, but that might only be in comparison to Peoples and Baskerville.
- The DBs just kind of lost their matchups all night. I wouldn't jump to season long conclusions about that, it could be a lot of things, but it ain't good.
- LB play was worse than usual because they basically spent all of presnap trying to get the secondary right
- I mean, the secondary will get better just out of all of them running the same play. You can say what you want about this staff, they've never shown to be this unprepared, so I'll expect this aspect to improve by Saturday and chalk this up to a, incredibly disturbing, fluke.
After all this my biggest concerns are the DLine, because I don't think it can be fixed, Morton/Offensive Scheme, because it has zero flow or, frankly, sense to it, and the penalties, Mcguire usually has those things pretty tight, this could show some regression.
Side note: there's an element to a game like that that makes me glad to have a guy like McGuire at the helm because ACU should have won and would have won with some aggresiveness late in the game. They let us off the hook, a McGuire team would not have done that with roles reversed. The tiniest of silver linings I realize haha
