Doug Mathews secondary suggestion

#52
#52
AndyMizunogolfer said:
Basically my thoughts as well. I think he knows that UT's offense is deadly. Basically able to put up points at will. He knows that they can score in 1 min or less. So letting a team eat up clock and moving it 20-20 doesn't exactly worry him much.

Now LB/DB pass coverage was overall terrible still. I do think they were worried on bringing pressure only to have AR outrun our LB/DB though.

Side note, we still won.
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I just don’t know if I can believe this. There is no way that Heupel doesn’t want a dominant defense. Why would prefer an average bend but don’t break scenario that keeps the ball out of the offenses hands? That’d be like owning your own store and being happy you sell just enough to keep the doors open. I imagine he wants a defense that will shut teams down, get off the field on 3rd (and 4th downs) and get the ball back to the offense so we can score even more. Florida had the perfect recipe to almost pull off the upset which is possess the ball as long as possible and limit our offenses possessions. It almost worked. Think about it, if we stop just 2 of those 4th down conversions, that game is probably 52-14 or worse. So I don’t buy that Heupel just wants a defense that can get a few stops here and there. He wants both sides of the ball to be the best they can be.
 
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#53
#53
Mathews' suggestions seem dumb to me. I don't get the flip WRs to CBs and Ss suggestion this season. I am pretty sure those are very different skillsets and I just cannot imagine WRs flipping to the secondary and being an upgrade this year. So, probably better focus on improving our secondary players and thinking about position changes, if needed, in the spring or during the bowl practices. And our LBs are also weak in coverage and so there's no way that putting another LB on the field results in better coverage.

I am having a hard time understanding why the secondary is so bad. The coaching staff brought in some transfers that seemed to have real talent (sure, transfers often got beat out at their prior schools) and I thought we had some decent players on campus before the transfers. Last year's 2022 class with just one CB doesn't look good right now, but, like someone else posted, there's a very good reason we have 3 CBs and 3Ss committed right now and are looking for more secondary commits still.
 
#54
#54
TMvol10 said:
I just don’t know if I can believe this. There is no way that Heupel doesn’t want a dominant defense. Why would prefer an average bend but don’t break scenario that keeps the ball out of the offenses hands? That’d be like owning your own store and being happy you sell just enough to keep the doors open. I imagine he wants a defense that will shut teams down, get off the field on 3rd (and 4th downs) and get the ball back to the offense so we can score even more. Florida had the perfect recipe to almost pull off the upset which is possess the ball as long as possible and limit our offenses possessions. It almost worked. Think about it, if we stop just 2 of those 4th down conversions, that game is probably 52-14 or worse. So I don’t buy that Heupel just wants a defense that can get a few stops here and there. He wants both sides of the ball to be the best they can be.
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Do I think he would love to eventually have a dominant defense? Of course he would. Although he knows what he has to work with currently. Right now we just don't have the players to be dominant.
 
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#56
#56
Hadden had an awful game by his standards, he's been playing fantastic so far this year though. The other side is pretty awful with Charles, Turnage, and Rucker barely covering anyone. McDonald was also not very good. I'd either like to see Wesley Walker play more, or move Turnage and even Slaughter back to the nickel. I know people don't like Burrell, but he's currently our best option there, and I'd very much like to see what Dee Williams can bring us. Might be time to move Charles back to safety as well.

The safeties are what they are at this point. I would think maybe Charles and McDonald would fair better back there honestly. They just don't seem like good fits in their current roles.
 
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#57
#57
The problem is very obvious…we are slow in the backfield…aka out of position, receivers running free, etc. Our lack of speed is also telling by how we line up…10 yards off the line of scrimmage. That said, to mitigate this, the coach has elected to put another body in the backfield to crowd the secondary. Unfortunately, the quickness of SEC receivers has shown that they will find the seams with their superior speed and exploit this methodology.

To fix this we either need more speed in the secondary or more speed on the pass rush so the qb will be forced to throw inaccurate passes bc of pressure (Matthew’s suggestion). I’m good with either fix…assuming we have the guys that can make it happen in the very near future.
 
#58
#58
Lets hope the coaches use this bye week to experiment with the secondary. There is no debate, position / personnel changes are needed.
 
#59
#59
We don’t need a dominant defense just a competent one. If you could have a defense in the top 50 then we would be dominate
 
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#61
#61
EtowahVol said:
Dudes it's the coach. Matthews knows the problem but want call out the name. Willie Martinez. He was the worst when butch was here. Couldn't coach um up then can't now. Go look at his Bio longest he stay anywhere is 2 to 3 yrs. Some of you older guys help me back several years ago we had a group of DB's that led the SEC and I think the nation for the season that had over 20 INT's for the year. Who was the coach?
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I especially liked the 4th and 24, last year at Kentucky, and that play happened right in front of him...Of course he was the first one to jump in Heupel's arms at end of game...
 
#62
#62
LittleVol said:
I agree with Doug somewhat. Move Calloway to CB .
McCullugh and Flowers continue to get beat in coverage. Two veterans that are used to being beat all game long. But they dominate in practice. Bench them
Move Charles back to safety.
Hadden has a shaky game but, he still made plays as well against Florida and otherwise has been very good all the other games

CB Hadden
CB Calloway
FS Charles
SS Slaughter
ST McDonald
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Good points. I'll send Holiday over too. He and Calloway can put their speed to use in the secondary.
 
#63
#63
EtowahVol said:
Dudes it's the coach. Matthews knows the problem but want call out the name. Willie Martinez. He was the worst when butch was here. Couldn't coach um up then can't now. Go look at his Bio longest he stay anywhere is 2 to 3 yrs. Some of you older guys help me back several years ago we had a group of DB's that led the SEC and I think the nation for the season that had over 20 INT's for the year. Who was the coach?
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Coach Larry Slade was our last great secondary coach
 
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#64
#64
Flowers gets trucked because he stops moving his feet and waits for the ball carrier to come to him. One of my favorite sayings is"you can be the hammer or you can be the nail", when you wait for a moving ball carrier he's the hammer and you are the nail.I'd bench both safeties immediately and as far as the CB's go, this could have been worked out if we would have tried them all out in press man against the patsies. Drives me crazy still we did nothing to improve ourselves games one and three and have these problems now. How do you defend the logic of those two games?
 
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#67
#67
cardvolfan said:
Tennessee’s defensive scheme is predicated on their prolific offense. Heupel is gambling that we are going to outscore almost all opponents, therefore it‘s “keep the plays in front of us” and don’t give up easy scores. Ultimately, the only “stat” that really matters is the final score.
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Probably right, but it sure looks bad.
 
#69
#69
I think our secondary will be fine. Nothing like live reps to improve yourself. Idk why people think these young men cant improve as the season goes lol
 
#70
#70
INDEFENSE said:
Flowers gets trucked because he stops moving his feet and waits for the ball carrier to come to him. One of my favorite sayings is"you can be the hammer or you can be the nail", when you wait for a moving ball carrier he's the hammer and you are the nail.I'd bench both safeties immediately and as far as the CB's go, this could have been worked out if we would have tried them all out in press man against the patsies. Drives me crazy still we did nothing to improve ourselves games one and three and have these problems now. How do you defend the logic of those two games?
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Tackling in traffic the hammer-nail analogy works. However, open field tackling is a different animal and an athletic ball carrier will make you look foolish of you focus on being the hammer. And then VolNation and Vol twitter will refer to.you as a matador.

Stopping runner is all that matters. How you do it isnt important.
 
#71
#71
The 4-2-5 is a good scheme and plays well against a pass happy team (which it seems is everyone these days). Its weak link is that it can be vulnerable to the run so you basically count on stud safeties to act as hybrid LB/DBs. You can run a myriad of coverages and blitz schemes out of it too which is nice. So scheme is not the issue in full, it is execution. Moving to a 4-3 or 3-4 scheme only puts more pressure on the secondary so not sure that is the answer.

DBs were playing very soft and did not have elite closing speed when the ball was in the air. Part of that is AR has a cannon and part of it is slow reaction to threats in zone. This is likely, as the broadcast called out, a focus on AR to avoid letting him get a head of steam.

DBs also struggled to press the WRs off the line. You have to disrupt the route and timing; didn't see that happening much (lack of speed?).

DB talent is questionable in all honesty. As someone else pointed out a few AR passes floated and should have been broken up fairly easily by either the CB or Safety. The 4th down against Hadden comes to mind. It was 1v1 and he was beat (playing the short route) allowing a good (but floaty) pass to complete 20-30 yards downfield. In all honesty that was a great play by the Gators. Quick pass avoids pressure, accurate throw makes it essential to stay over your man and we did not do that.

Martinez is a good coach (and I have been on a defense he coached). He is smart, passionate and produces good results. A lot of the moves for college position coaches are based on the HC or coordinator changes; not all are performance related. UGA was pretty good under his watch. I believe the move to DC was not the best for him and he enjoys being a position coach but that is my opinion.

Coaching a player to perform to the best of their ability is their job. If that ceiling is low you have to run a safe scheme that minimizes risk. As your talent level improves you can put guys on an island and be more aggressive (like Bama, UGA, OSU etc.). We will get there but, for now, I think we need to count on the guys we have improving.

GBO!
 
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#73
#73
Boone&Crockett said:
We're gonna have to use pressure to stop passing games, we can't count on coverage so putting in more playmaker up front may be the key, gotta try something...
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This. We play what appears to be a "soft zone" most of the time. If the QB has time, he just waits for the receiver to get into the open spot, add to that our lack of speed and for whatever reason, inability to make a tackle in the secondary, and you get what UF did to us the whole game. Maybe the game plan was to play zone and keep an eye on Richardson, I don't know, but our defense was much more aggressive against Pitt. Play man and bring more pressure...its more risky, but I'd rather get burnt trying to get to the QB than by allowing the QB to hit wide open receivers.
 
#74
#74
For the guys who know football, could Slaughter make a decent DB or is he stuck at safety? Remember him playing a decent bit his first year and has fallen off quickly since then.
 
#75
#75
cardvolfan said:
Tennessee’s defensive scheme is predicated on their prolific offense. Heupel is gambling that we are going to outscore almost all opponents, therefore it‘s “keep the plays in front of us” and don’t give up easy scores. Ultimately, the only “stat” that really matters is the final score.
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But Heupel has said (and it makes more sense) that he wants to be aggressive on D. Force turnovers and negative plays; take chances.

"Keep it in front of us" style 12-play drives keeps his offense off the field. That is precisely what he doesn't want, and it's exactly what the opponent does want.

I think the UF game was a calculus that AR could not beat us if we keep him in the pocket, make him read coverage, and complete tough throws. I think that gameplan was errant. Yes, we should have kept him in the pocket, but we also needed to bring 5/6. Bring LBs, bring safeties, bring corners, mix it up while having the DL keep contain and collapse that pocket right in his face. I think he would have struggled to make the quick reads. As it was, AR had more than enough time to read the field, set his feet, and made some excellent throws against the weakest area of our defense.
 
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