Game Report (Defense)

[PirateVOL]

We were down right OFFENSIVE on defense for 58 minutes, then the defense of the first half of the year showed up.

DL:  For the most part played to about a B.  Stopped their inside rung game for the most part, though were gashed a couple of times.  Seemed unable to get pressure on the QB without blitzing but did seem to not wear down as much as their OL.  Vereen seemed to have an off night.  Barnett had another huge night with a couple of late sacks that were HUGE.  The DTs are beat-up and thin but hung in for the most part.

LB:  For the 2nd week in a row had a bad, bad night.  Reeves-Maybin had a bad first half (the big TB pass down the left side in the 1st quarter was on him for example) but made a couple of big pursuit plays in the 2nd half that saved us.  He needs to keep his head up and watch for the QB when playing zone.  AJ for the 2nd straight week had a bad game, often out of position.  He doesn't get enough depth when we play zone and SCe exploited that, repeatedly.  Maggitt when playing LB was very active, IMO was the best of the LB group.

DB:  We proved one thing last night, Coleman cannot cover Cooper, at all.  Almost all of Cooper's big plays were against Coleman.  SOS would shift him to slot and we never stopped him (he was wide freaking open on one of their plays in OT, nobody within 15-20 yards).  We played a lot of zone, not effectively.  Sutton was beat a couple of times early but came back.  Randolph had his best game of the year in run support, and that was a problem at times (see coaching below) and had a couple of big hits after receptions.  Moseley played the opposite corner and for the most part had a quiet night (when you match up your best receiver against someone who can't cover him all night there really is no need to go elsewhere).  There were at least four times when it appeared that nobody was covering Cooper, all on Coleman.  On the long TD pass play I don't think Cooper had taken 5 steps when it was clear he had beat Coleman and my comment was oh crap (or something similar).  BTW there was no safety over the top (see coaching below).

Coaching:  Not observed.  We did NOT adapt all freaking night.  It was clear that SOS was shifting Cooper to the slot to go against Coleman and we did not adapt or substitute.  We played zone too much, after proving repeatedly we had issues with zone.  We often went back to the scheme we used at Oregon last year where we brought the strong side safety up in run support, exposing the back of the defense.  In the end we went all-in on the blitz and it worked but I was not happy with Jancek's game plan and coaching all night.

[BanditVol]

I was disappointed in Coleman...he had been playing much better.  He made a nice play early last night in fact, but obviously it went way south from there.

It's the second game in a row that the best WR on the opposing team was wide open all night and we had no answer.  SC jr obviously studied the film from bammer.  At least against bammer we did tighten up eventually.  This is something that must be fixed....NOW!

Scary thought about Cooper being wide open in OT...that could have been the W for them right there.  Thank goodness we had pressure.

[Tnphil]

Who would have thunk 2 weeks ago that today we would be happy with the offense and not the defense? I'm not sure our offense was playing so bad thet we thought the D was pretty good.

The last 2 weeks have been Sal-ish in some ways.....Really disappointed in the play of the defense for the most part. In OT they came alive. After we kicked a FG.....I'd never thought we would have kept SOS and USC out of the EZ.