Some disturbing trends on defense?

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MNVCGUY

MNVCGUY

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Being overshadowed by the struggles on offense and at the QB position are a few trends that seem to be developing on defense. Through 3 games we are averaging nearly 25 pts per game against and an average of 427 yards allowed per game. Now Eastern Illinois added a bunch of yards and points against the backups but TCU and MTSU did their damage against the starters for the most part.

Not really sure what to make of it at this point but would really like to see the defense keep SJSU under 20 points and 400 yards this weekend. I think we all feel the defense has been the strongest unit on the team this season but there are some warning signs there when you look at the stats from the first 3 games and factor in that 2 of our opponents were pretty weak.

Hopefully this is just a mirage and doesn't become a trend with the defense this year because we need that unit to dominate given the problems we have on offense right now.

Go Gophers
 

MNVCGUY said:
Being overshadowed by the struggles on offense and at the QB position are a few trends that seem to be developing on defense. Through 3 games we are averaging nearly 25 pts per game against and an average of 427 yards allowed per game. Now Eastern Illinois added a bunch of yards and points against the backups but TCU and MTSU did their damage against the starters for the most part.

Not really sure what to make of it at this point but would really like to see the defense keep SJSU under 20 points and 400 yards this weekend. I think we all feel the defense has been the strongest unit on the team this season but there are some warning signs there when you look at the stats from the first 3 games and factor in that 2 of our opponents were pretty weak.

Hopefully this is just a mirage and doesn't become a trend with the defense this year because we need that unit to dominate given the problems we have on offense right now.

Go Gophers
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I wouldn't really read too much into the points per game especially when you consider almost all of TCU's 30 came from a short field because of turnovers by the offense and a punt return. When TCU started out at their own 35 or worse the defense played pretty well and TCU had trouble moving the ball.
 

Goldy Gopher said:
I wouldn't really read too much into the points per game especially when you consider almost all of TCU's 30 came from a short field because of turnovers by the offense and a punt return. When TCU started out at their own 35 or worse the defense played pretty well and TCU had trouble moving the ball.
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This. EI added 3 touchdowns on our backups, and TCU scored most their points because we gave them the ball in excellent field position and our offense could never get anything going. Also some of the yardage teams are putting up against us are also on the offense since we can't move the ball. If we have a couple 8+ minute long TD drives (like the long one in the michigan game last year) every game it will prevent the other team from being able to run so many dang plays. The only thing i'm worried about with our defense is stopping a power run attack. We are blanketing receivers, getting pressure on the QB and getting turnovers each game. Our D is for real, they could just use a little help from our offense.
 

The defense is still passing the eye test for me. Don't pay so much attention to total yards, especially since we've played 3 teams who like to run a lot of plays (thus generating more yards). The D got the short end of the stick Saturday in terms of field position and not getting very much rest in between series. I still think the defense is very good, even with some of the injuries we've suffered.
 

Defense wasn't the problem. As mentioned they were on the field all day because of turnovers & often with a short field to defend. Also as pointed out many of those stats are padded. Still, if you can average 25 against in college football you're in the top 50 defenses & should have a shot to win just about every game. Problem is our offense. We could lose a lot of games 24-7.
 



Costa Rican Gopher said:
Defense wasn't the problem. As mentioned they were on the field all day because of turnovers & often with a short field to defend. Also as pointed out many of those stats are padded. Still, if you can average 25 against in college football you're in the top 50 defenses & should have a shot to win just about every game. Problem is our offense. We could lose a lot of games 24-7.
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THIS.
 

Also giving up some big plays - six of 25 yards or more against Middle Tennessee.
 

Costa Rican Gopher said:
Defense wasn't the problem. As mentioned they were on the field all day because of turnovers & often with a short field to defend. Also as pointed out many of those stats are padded. Still, if you can average 25 against in college football you're in the top 50 defenses & should have a shot to win just about every game. Problem is our offense. We could lose a lot of games 24-7.
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If I recall, they did not score a single touchdown when they started outside of our 40. Tough to keep the other team off the board when they keep starting already inside field goal range.
 



MNVCGUY said:
I think we all feel the defense has been the strongest unit on the team this season
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First of all, I would have to disagree with this statement. I believe BY FAR the strongest unit on the team this season is the kicking team.

Secondly I would like to know if the Gophers' defensive backs are coached specifically to never look back for the ball, let-alone make a play for it! There seems to have been multiple times in each of the games where we have a defender in good position but even though the receiver is slowing/looking/making a play for an incoming ball, the DB never looks back or defends. It is so consistent it almost seems like a defensive philosophy.
 

Spend time worrying about other things than the D.
 


Our offense helped score more points for TCU than they did for us. Cannot really blame the defense for that. Short fields and a few circus catches makes the 30 points look a lot worse for the defense than it actually is.
 



Agree with many that the issues were mostly the other side of the ball - too many short fields. One thing that really bothered me was Eric Murray - he had great coverage on the receivers for the most part but his hands didn't go up to defend a ball once. It's like he has no sense of where the ball is. It's great to run next to a guy the whole time - but if you don't disrupt the play a better QB/WR combo will destroy you!
 

Lakeville Goldy said:
Agree with many that the issues were mostly the other side of the ball - too many short fields. One thing that really bothered me was Eric Murray - he had great coverage on the receivers for the most part but his hands didn't go up to defend a ball once. It's like he has no sense of where the ball is. It's great to run next to a guy the whole time - but if you don't disrupt the play a better QB/WR combo will destroy you!
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I noticed that as well. Still dont understand it.
 

Lakeville Goldy said:
Agree with many that the issues were mostly the other side of the ball - too many short fields. One thing that really bothered me was Eric Murray - he had great coverage on the receivers for the most part but his hands didn't go up to defend a ball once. It's like he has no sense of where the ball is. It's great to run next to a guy the whole time - but if you don't disrupt the play a better QB/WR combo will destroy you!
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He's played against some pretty good QB/WR combos and he has yet to be "destroyed". In fact, he's been a very effective CB. The announcers on Saturday were giving him all sorts of props.
 

bleedsmaroonandgold said:
If I recall, they did not score a single touchdown when they started outside of our 40. Tough to keep the other team off the board when they keep starting already inside field goal range.
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Hadn't heard that before. Tough to put yourself in that position.

TCU Drive Summaries (edited to TD's only):
START QTR POSS. YARD PLAYS YARDS RESULT
13:19 1 00:35 MINN 18 3 18 Touchdown
14:45 2 00:55 MINN 27 3 27 Touchdown
10:13 2 01:12 MINN 39 5 39 Touchdown
 

If Eastern Illinois got their shotgun snap figured out before the game they probably would have scored a few more points.
 

bleedsmaroonandgold said:
If I recall, they did not score a single touchdown when they started outside of our 40. Tough to keep the other team off the board when they keep starting already inside field goal range.
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Agree that it is tough to stop them from scoring in that situation but you would at least like to hold them to a FG most of the time. Of the 4 times TCU got a short field it seems that they scored each time and 3 of the 4 scores were TD's. All the drives started outside the 15 yard line as well so holding them to a field goal was still a possibility. I feel bad for the defense being put in crappy situations time and again by the offense but at the same time they need to keep those guys out of the endzone.

And again I don't say any of this to imply that the defense is the problem, the offense is clearly the problem, I just wonder if the defense is really as good as it was last year given who we lost.
 

MNVCGUY said:
Being overshadowed by the struggles on offense and at the QB position are a few trends that seem to be developing on defense. Through 3 games we are averaging nearly 25 pts per game against and an average of 427 yards allowed per game. Now Eastern Illinois added a bunch of yards and points against the backups but TCU and MTSU did their damage against the starters for the most part.

Not really sure what to make of it at this point but would really like to see the defense keep SJSU under 20 points and 400 yards this weekend. I think we all feel the defense has been the strongest unit on the team this season but there are some warning signs there when you look at the stats from the first 3 games and factor in that 2 of our opponents were pretty weak.

Hopefully this is just a mirage and doesn't become a trend with the defense this year because we need that unit to dominate given the problems we have on offense right now.

Go Gophers
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Ummm..... No.

This is standard operating procedure for Kill and Claeys in the NC schedule; play a lot of guys on defense, who really gives a crap about yards given up, etc. EI and MTSU run high risk/high reward offenses; run a ton of plays, look for mismatches, capitalize on opportunities and hope to minimize their own mistakes. They both made mistakes, as expected, and that's why you play the percentages against teams with that style. It works in the long run.

The strategy they have used, and the one MOST teams use against the types of offenses the Gophers have played so far, is let them have the underneath stuff, make tackles for short gains, and keep them out of the end zone. And that's exactly what they've done. How many times do we have to see this before the fans figure this out?

TCU was 2-for-12 on 3rd down, Boykin was not much over 50% completion, and even frickin' Leidner averaged more yards per pass attempt than Boykin. Considering the position that the Gophers offense put their own defense in ALL DAY LONG, their performance was pretty impressive.
 

Ogee understands this, others don't.

There is a certain amount of inherent risk that goes along with putting the ball in the air. Especially in college! If you can keep completions over 15 yards to a minimum, tackle well, and get to the QB...the system does not really work. For it to work, you need a breakdown in defense. It gets you yardage, yes, but not wins. Tracy gets this. We do it pretty darn well too. It was working pretty well against TCU.

I don't give two sh*ts about yards given up. I care about points and time of possession.

We rushed for over 400 yards against Iowa in 2003. We lost--and it wasn't all that close. Talk about a meaningless statistic that day!
 

Studwell55 said:
Ogee understands this, others don't.

There is a certain amount of inherent risk that goes along with putting the ball in the air. Especially in college! If you can keep completions over 15 yards to a minimum, tackle well, and get to the QB...the system does not really work. For it to work, you need a breakdown in defense. It gets you yardage, yes, but not wins. Tracy gets this. We do it pretty darn well too. It was working pretty well against TCU.

I don't give two sh*ts about yards given up. I care about points and time of possession.

We rushed for over 400 yards against Iowa in 2003. We lost--and it wasn't all that close. Talk about a meaningless statistic that day!
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Yards given up do matter. There is a big difference between recording a three and out and getting your team the ball around midfield versus letting them drive to the fringe of field goal range and then coffin corner you back within your own five. This goes double with how bad our offense has been. If our defense gives up a lot of yards, I don't like our offense's chance of putting up whole lot of points when facing a long field that they have to drive down. We are almost going to need the quick stops to put our offense in a position to at least grab a field goal with a few first downs.
 

bleedsmaroonandgold said:
Yards given up do matter. There is a big difference between recording a three and out and getting your team the ball around midfield versus letting them drive to the fringe of field goal range and then coffin corner you back within your own five. This goes double with how bad our offense has been. If our defense gives up a lot of yards, I don't like our offense's chance of putting up whole lot of points when facing a long field that they have to drive down. We are almost going to need the quick stops to put our offense in a position to at least grab a field goal with a few first downs.
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Scenario one: opposing offense gets one first down, then D forces a punt. Offense gains 15 total yards

Scenario two: opposing offense gets 3 first downs, then defense gets us a pick 6. opposing offense gets 3 more first downs, then a punt gets us the ball at our own 10. Offense gains 70 total yards.

Pick one.
 

fryguy22 said:
Scenario one: opposing offense gets one first down, then D forces a punt. Offense gains 15 total yards

Scenario two: opposing offense gets 3 first downs, then defense gets us a pick 6. opposing offense gets 3 more first downs, then a punt gets us the ball at our own 10. Offense gains 70 total yards.

Pick one.
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I didn't say that yards surrendered were all that mattered, just that they did matter. Especially when you play a grind it out, possession game plan like Kill does. More especially when your offense can't move the football. Unless, of course, the defense is going to be able to run your "scenario two" multiple times every game and do all of the team's scoring. If they can rattle off a pic six every other possession, then you're right, and I won't care how many yards they surrender.
 

Studwell55 said:
Ogee understands this, others don't.

There is a certain amount of inherent risk that goes along with putting the ball in the air. Especially in college! If you can keep completions over 15 yards to a minimum, tackle well, and get to the QB...the system does not really work. For it to work, you need a breakdown in defense. It gets you yardage, yes, but not wins. Tracy gets this. We do it pretty darn well too. It was working pretty well against TCU.

I don't give two sh*ts about yards given up. I care about points and time of possession.

We rushed for over 400 yards against Iowa in 2003. We lost--and it wasn't all that close. Talk about a meaningless statistic that day!
Click to expand...

If you give up yards in the 400+ range a game, chances are you will lose. This is a strong correlation, which is why it is tracked. To say it is worthless is to ignore the strength of the correlation.

This is from a site called Queue Stats. And yes, I know their figure below is not the correlation coefficient.

While yards are not that important, teams that win the Yards/TD stat win the game at an alarming rate as well. In 2012, teams were 214-41 (0.839) when having a better score in Yards/TD.
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Dean S said:
If you give up yards in the 400+ range a game, chances are you will lose. This is a strong correlation, which is why it is tracked. To say it is worthless is to ignore the strength of the correlation.

This is from a site called Queue Stats. And yes, I know their figure below is not the correlation coefficient.
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I prefer Yards/play as a better metric, and so do a lot of the gamblers
 


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