Despite losing several standouts on the defense, including the coach, I still think we will be fine there.
It will be the same as last year. The difference between winning and losing will be the offense. And a ton of question marks remain. The hope is that a new O Coordinator, coupled with another year experience for the players (especially the O Line), will bring a bowl game. The line never played well together as a unit. And while Whitmer showed flashes, he made some pretty poor decisions with the football, which cannot be blamed on the O Coordinator at all. We desparately need a second running back to emerge to compliment McCombs. Again, people say it was the O Coordinator being stubborn, but I believe that the staff simply wasn't confident in the backup choices. As with other positions, we need to hope another year to get stronger, acclimated to the 1-A game has helped the backups.
GETTING THIS THREAD BACK ON TRACK:
Like I said the loss of Brown I don't think will help this team...actually (and bear with me) I think we will be BETTER on defense
While Brown's scheme was exciting and was statistically very good, it gave up a lot of big plays off the blitz and did not produce nearly enough INTs or Fumbles to be worth it......the numbers were skewed because the defense would have an amazing game (UMass) and then give up a ton of yards (WMU) and then that would average out pretty low
I'm especially excited about the Linebacking corps
- Vann, Ashiru, Stewart, Donohue, Smallwood, Hicks...I mean I could go one, but you get the point
The only area of concern is CB, but the young guns have had the chance to learn under Gratz/BWW for two years now so I think we will be pleasantly surprised (Williams, Clark, Stephenson and of course we have Mack returning)
Now the offense I'll leave to someone else to talk about, but I think this has excitement all over it with Weist coming in and Buggs talking about using AT LEAST two backs....CAN'T WAIT
