Did I miss a Taylor Mack injury?

[Palatine]

Was he in the game?

 

[huskysupporter]

Mind boggling. And if Taylor Mack isn't the primary back up, then the primary backup should have been in. Part of making adjustments is analyzing how individual players are doing. And if they are playing poorly, in goes the backup. It's honestly a head scratcher.

 

[coachRD]

Mind boggling. And if Taylor Mack isn't the primary back up, then the primary backup should have been in. Part of making adjustments is analyzing how individual players are doing. And if they are playing poorly, in goes the backup. It's honestly a head scratcher.

Wilburn has been dominated since he came in. In his defense he had great coverage on the winning TD and the kid just made a great play, but man, he has been given a LOOOONG leash out there. We have only heard good things about Mack so I am surprised he hasn't gotten in there.

 

[huskysupporter]

Wilburn has been dominated since he came in. In his defense he had great coverage on the winning TD and the kid just made a great play, but man, he has been given a LOOOONG leash out there. We have only heard good things about Mack so I am surprised he hasn't gotten in there.

Have we heard good things from this staff, though? He got early playing time last year and reports were he had a very promising future. Not sure why he did not see the field.

 

[FfldCntyFan]

Wilburn isn't up to the challenge but on WMU's last TD he actually had pretty good coverage.

Our everagressive defense was seriously taken advantage of and what I don't get is that (per the four star announcing team of Picozzi and Bunting) WMU had backups playing at center and both guards. Why were we only able to get penetration during odd quarters in that game? Why did we need to blitz as much as we did (leaving huge cusions on their WR's) if we had the mismatch we should have had in the trenches?

Our defense is going backwards. I like being more aggressive than we were under RE but thjere has to be a happy medium.

 

[ibleedhuskyblue]

i hate to badmouth any of our players....but gary wilburn is the worst CB ive ever seen.

he was beaten like a drum all day long. off hand i can think of about 8 plays (and im sure there were more), where he was either late getting there, too slow, bad technique, or missed a tackle.

awful.

 

[Palatine]

So is Mack healthy?

 

[businesslawyer]

There has never been anything out of Storrs to imply that he's not. Although information is no more forthcoming under this regime than it was under the last one.

 

[Carl Spackler]

Wilburn isn't up to the challenge but on WMU's last TD he actually had pretty good coverage.

Our everagressive defense was seriously taken advantage of and what I don't get is that (per the four star announcing team of Picozzi and Bunting) WMU had backups playing at center and both guards. Why were we only able to get penetration during odd quarters in that game? Why did we need to blitz as much as we did (leaving huge cusions on their WR's) if we had the mismatch we should have had in the trenches?

Our defense is going backwards. I like being more aggressive than we were under RE but thjere has to be a happy medium.

We were getting into their backfield regulary. The ball was coming out of the QB's hands, faster. People are concerned with te roughing penalties. WE could have had more, there was one play early where I think Smallwood leveled their QB after he had let go, he took a while to get up. It was late. No flag.

They ran a bunch of wide receiver screens, timing slants, and quick outs that we simply didn't have covered. I was standing in my seat several times yelling for them to get into coverage as the offense was lining up, as if they could hear me....LOL. I'm not sure who wear's #12 for them, but that guy was lining up on more than one play as a flanker or further out as a slot Y receiver and we had nobody covering him until after the snap as they were sorting out assignments.

I blame coaching. Absolutely, but are you blaming the inability to coach well, or is it a new system iwth the players with their feet to the fire? I would bet that the coaches were preaching all week long how fast they need to get in and out of their sets on defense, but until you're in the game, you don't get it and face something like that, you don't get it, and if on top of that, you're still elarning assignments? You get what we saw on Saturday. I'll go out on a limb an dpredict you don't see a passing day like that against a Don brown UCOnn defense again any time soon.

When we went into a single deep safety look, we were able to cut off some of those timing routes, with the up DB and the LB"s but when you do that, it opens up the sidelines for the offense, and we got burned in one and one coverage on the sidelines, so it's pick your poison. WHen we did have a two deep look, they came out and burned us on the post pattern for a TD b/c everybody was late picking up their assignments.

That is a pretty good passing offense we played, and our defense wasn't ready for their speed and tempo when it came to knowing our own assignments and at the same time, had some significant mismatches on the field.

 

[Carl Spackler]

To show that the defense is going backwards, you have to actually show that it's a trend. What we saw on Saturday was a new defensive scheme put the test. WMU was moving up tot he line of scrimmage and snapping the ball within 20 seconds of the play clock all day. They had a spread offensive base formation that was shifting, and went with 4 wides most of the day. Their QB had hot reads with pretty much every single WR route that I'm sure he was signaling to prior to snap when we were showing pressure from different directions, that I'm sure they've looked at on film.

ANd you can't get over the fact that we had DB's in coverage, that simply didn't show the instinct, and ability to recognize when they guy they are covering is actually looking at a ball coming their way, and get your own head turned and make a play on the ball.

We just gave up a ton of passing yardage, way more than acceptable, and way too many big plays on defense.

It's easily explainable and correctable, and I see no evidence of defense that's going backwards. I see a defense that got lit up by an effective passing game.

Now - if it happens again, that the defense is getting beat to the line of scrimmage, and torched assignment wise - then the concept that our defense is going backwards is legit. but if you're going to argue that our defense has an issue and is regressing because a starter (starters) went down, then you're not really talking about our defense when it comes to what's regressing.

 

[mattp]

don't forget when we brought in Don Brown all the MD fans said it would take a year to catch on. we thought we'd have a quick learning curve b/c our guys had an aggressive mentality, but apparently it's taking us a little while to get assignments figured out.