Listened to the whole thing. The GAST guy they brought on seems pretty knowledgable. He obviously felt confident in his team.
GAST has a first year DC who installed a completely new scheme. They also lots of a lot of their best players to P5 schools. This explains the many, many miscommunications and breakdowns on defense I saw against Rhode Island. It's highly unlikely these issues will be resolved in one week.
GAST's strength on offense is their running game. Their o-line is their biggest strength, but they also have a very experienced dual threat QB (Grainger, #3) and a workhorse RB (Carroll, #23). The GAST guy said the key to stopping their offense is to stop the run. They use a very similar zone blocking scheme to us and we supposedly have a more experienced defense. They aren't very deep on offense, so they don't sub a lot. If the aforementioned #3 and #23 are having a tough day, then that's it for them. (Everything matches up with what I saw and typed out in a previous post.)
Keys for us:
- Can we tackle a running QB?
- Can our offense improve more than their defense needs to improve?
- Can we stop their run game?
- Can we get anything out of our passing game?
- Can we stop with the untimely trick plays?