We spent all off season worrying about the offense, but this defense continues to look like swiss cheese 🤮. Narduzzi better get this 💩 together.
This Defense Is Disgusting
- Thread starter Usuallyunusual-partdeux
- Start date
They showed some good signs. It’s a young group. Too early to know what they’ll do but agree that there’s plenty to improve on.
They looked alright. Gave up 220 yards and forced some turnovers. They were playing an awful team, and yeah they’ll probably struggle at times. Don’t overthink it though. Only one game. At least the offense looks decent and we don’t have to deal with that Cignetti/Jurkovec crap this year.
Yep we will see how some of these young guys come along. Louis & Biles are young, but the showed talent. Ghost is a Frosh starting. Edwards will be real good, he showed some talent.
PJ gave up 14 pretty much himself. He’s always had the physical ability, but it’s the mental where he’s lacked, makes bad reads and gets out of position.
Chill. 17 points and like 220 yards.
Need to wrap up more. Started to fly around better late.
Need to wrap up more. Started to fly around better late.
they gave up less than 200 yards passing and less than 40 rushing. Yeah there were some breakdowns and for sure it was Kent st. But I’m not sure how you walk away and think they were horrible They played a ton of guys and that’s a good thing Edwards and Jimmy Scott looked pretty good. I don’t think Hayes and the other dude will be missed. They didn’t do much in their first game
What concerns me is the same thing that's plagued Narduzzi's defenses since he's been here - schematics. It's just way too easy to beat this defense by something as simple as formations. Too many open receivers running free in the secondary.
Yes. Chunk pass plays seemingly out of nowhere seem to occur too often. This year appears to be another year where that may continue.
I thought they played okay. O'Brien really struggled.
For all the shade thrown at the defense, and slobbering all over the offense, The D only gave up 40 yds in the first half. The offense found the end zone 3 times, and one of those they were bailed out by a totally boneheaded targeting penalty.
I wouldn't read too much into today. The jury is still out on both units, imo.
For all the shade thrown at the defense, and slobbering all over the offense, The D only gave up 40 yds in the first half. The offense found the end zone 3 times, and one of those they were bailed out by a totally boneheaded targeting penalty.
I wouldn't read too much into today. The jury is still out on both units, imo.
Sure - a couple times. But more times than not they were in the right spot and didn’t get guys on the ground. It’s like they were waiting for someone else to come in and clean things up.
Since we don’t have stars on the D, you can’t play like. Have to all fly to the ball and wrap up.
Kent State scored 17+ points 3 time last season.
My point being maybe Narduzzi has finally gone away from the meated headed archaic notion that you win football games 17-10. His defense has to stop the run and than sack the QB in that order to be successful. However since he always leaves his DBs on an island, they will always be burned on some passes. The key is to minimize it. He plays prevent defense very very rarely even when he has a big lead which frustrates me to no end.
That's actually never been his approach, nor has he ever hinted that you win football games by scoring only 17 points.
Without Pitt errors the score would have probably been 62-17.
Big difference between thinking 17 points can win a game and having a putrid offense that struggles to score 17 points.
Well if you were actually watching that game, they basically played like a prevent defense. They rarely rushed more than 4 the entire game.
They blitzed a lot. In fact that was about the only way they got pressure on the quarterback. Three of our five sacks were by blitzers. One of the others, the one that Neal and Borders split, was also on a blitz. The fifth one was the one that Matlack got, and I don't remember off the top of my head if that was off a blitz as well.
This was my takeaway. Sure it looks bad on PJ or whoever is playing DB back there on a big play, but the defense is designed for the QBs to not make that throw due to getting hit or pressured. I am still concerned about our D line after losing productive players from last year. Another part of the philosophy of quarters coverage is that college QBs aren't good enough to consistently make all the throws -- I'm not sure this is a good philosophy in 2024.
PJ had a really bad day. He failed to close out on a ball thrown well behind the sticks in the first half, then took a bad angle and let the ball carrier drag him him for a first down while PJ was trying to pull him out of bounds by the face mask. His piss poor play stood out, imo.
