An attempt to explain the drop off in defensive performance

#27
#27
Rocky Top T said:
Is something wrong with you? Seriously
Click to expand...
Is there something wrong with requesting that my fellow Vols fans dive a little deeper beneath the surface and try to examine things closer instead of just committing to a witch hunt every game? I literally just want you guys to do a little bit of thinking from time to time before shooting off from the mouth.

All of this negativity that vols fans spit out after losses and close wins is seen by players. It's seen by recruits, and it is not an attractive quality for a school to have. "Come to our school where every mistake you make will be met with public demands to remove your father figures from this institution on every single post about the team".

Just dive a little deeper and maybe you'll learn to enjoy football again. This teams not perfect. It's never going to be perfect.
 
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#28
#28
BigorangeBoy said:
We are dreadful in zone, I know a running QB makes our staff wet their pants, but playing zone is just giving up yardage
Click to expand...
In time, they'll get better. These are young guys playing in a new system with a next level speed of play

Some are still in the "oh ****, what's my assignment, where do I go" phase.

Pretty soon they'll be in the "ok, my assignment is this, I need to go here" phase

With more game experience, eventually it'll just be "GO"

I don't know. I'm seeing random improvements from different players throughout the season. I just think we're seeing a lot of learning curves going on all at once. It's rarely a dude getting beat. It's almost always a dude being out of position or getting caught watching the QB in zone and not breaking to the ball quick enough. I just hope things keep improving because we have a lot of talented guys
 
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#29
#29
My opinion, we struggle with tackling as a whole. Our LB seem to always take a bad angle, lose gap assignments and struggle to shed blockers.
Oir safety play is non existent. So many times a safety comes up,loses his feet,ends up on the ground while never touching the carrier. Our LB are mid but our safety play is the worst part of this defense. Rarely in on tackles. Lost in coverage. A liability.
 
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#30
#30
Heupel's Offseason Beard said:
I want to start by saying that I am not saying that Banks is free from ridicule or judgment. The defense has left a lot to be desired. We give up too many points and too many yards. I just want to take this opportunity to point out a few things that might explain the drop off in performance from the elite defense of last year (top 10 in PPG, YPG, rush defense, etc) to this year. These are not "excuses". These are just observable catalysts that can and do affect a defense's performance. I hope that you all will take all of this into consideration when the thought "FIRE BANKS" comes into your mind.

1. Our biggest strength from last year is replaced by 2 newcomers with McCoy and Gibson out. These guys were invaluable and while the new guys have played good-elite, there's still an obvious drop off.

2. We lost a first and second rounder on the d-line to the NFL, and our biggest space eater to graduation. We've still got dawgs on the DLine, but way too many run plays are getting through the line.

3. We don't have a true coverage safety who can break on the ball. This is one that is fully on Banks since he coaches and recruits safeties. Fortunately we have 2 borderline 5 star safeties/ athletes committed for next season

4. Our EXPERIENCED linebackers are not the most athletic guys. They regularly get beat to the sideline, but they are the guys that know the defense, know their role and can read the play better than young guys

5. We are playing a TON of young players. It's what happens when you have a covid year where everyone gets another year of eligibility, and then everyone runs out of eligibility at the same time. We've had 11 true freshmen play snaps on the defense this year.

6. Our offense is running up tempo again which leaves our defense with little time to catch their breath. They've played close to 40 minutes pretty much every game.

7. The offense struggles on third down at times and rarely goes for it on 4th. Which puts the defense back on the field

8. A lot more teams are running no-huddle offense now. Watching the Mississippi state game was the first time I've been on the other side of a "Heupel" offense and it was a nightmare. More and more teams are adopting this mindset and it keeps us from substituting/ getting properly aligned

9. Mediocre teams are just generally more talented than they used to be. Teams like Mississippi state and Kentucky used to literally be 98% 3 stars with maybe a handful of 4 stars. They had no chance against good teams. Now these teams are getting much more talented guys from the portal/ high school because of NIL.

10. Tennessee is coming out of one of the strictest recruiting probations of the modern era. We haven't been afforded the same amount of scholarships, official visits, or unofficial visits as other teams for the past 5 years. Hell we couldn't even call or text recruits for 28 weeks out of a 5 year period. That's SEVEN MONTHS where we couldn't even send a "good morning" text to recruits. That's a disconnect that has greatly affected our recruiting. I mean, look at the jump in this years class. The amount of elite talent we've able to snatch once the shackles are off should show you how much probation affected recruiting.

Again, these are not excuses. These are just observations of things that might explain the drop off in defensive performance. Games could be called differently, sure. But I don't know how you expect another top 10 defense (which banks and Heupel had in basically every defensive statistic last year) with all of this going on. You fire banks, you probably lose 10-20 guys in the portal. But you probably lose the entire defense's morale as well.

We're six games in and are on pace to be 10-2 again. Remember when everyone was predicting 7-5/ 8-4 this offseason? Remember when we were picked to finish 9th in the SEC? There are still 6 games this year. Six more weeks of film and game prep to tighten things up.

Lastly, I just want to point out that the defense HAS shown flashes of hope. We are:
#1 in the country in sacks
#2 in defensive touchdowns
#7th in tackles for loss
top 5 in fumbles recovered

Let's not give up on them yet. There's still a lot of football to be played. Take a breath and realize that this is an absolutely ridiculous season across the board and that this sport has changed in a lot of ways. Look at how much Florida scored on Texas's $40 million roster. Look at who Ole Miss almost lost to today. Look at who Penn State DID lose to today. Hell, this might be the most exciting overall season in college football history. All we can do is survive and advance. And this team has survived a lot of games that I've seen other Tennessee teams lose.
Go Big Orange.
-Beard
Click to expand...
Finally, someone with some football common sense concerning our defense. This defense is not broke. We are just waiting on the correct parts to plug it up.
 
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#31
#31
ALLVOL 4LIFE said:
Pretty well written journal. lol JK

But the remark about us still having some dogs on the DL requires more explanation. I will try!

We lack rabid dogs. When you are shorthanded at that position, which we clearly are, the dogs you have need to be be really nasty dogs. Unfortunately, they are not the level of nasty they need to be. We need some swagger on the DL and that would make a HUGE difference!
Click to expand...
People complained about ONL last year because of the penalties, but he played with edge that we don’t have right now. The closest we have is Tyre West.
 
#32
#32
Jimmyandjoes said:
My opinion, we struggle with tackling as a whole. Our LB seem to always take a bad angle, lose gap assignments and struggle to shed blockers.
Oir safety play is non existent. So many times a safety comes up,loses his feet,ends up on the ground while never touching the carrier. Our LB are mid but our safety play is the worst part of this defense. Rarely in on tackles. Lost in coverage. A liability.
Click to expand...
When you realize that the angles aren't bad, they're slow. We miss Jakobe Thomas and Will Brooks a lot. They were tremendous in run support.
 
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#33
#33
Getting McCoy back will be a steroid shot. If you have a guy like that, you can put him one on one on the outside and blitz more, helping stop the run. I don’t know if we get Gibson back, but we can roll with McCoy and Hood.
 
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#34
#34
Heupel's Offseason Beard said:
I want to start by saying that I am not saying that Banks is free from ridicule or judgment. The defense has left a lot to be desired. We give up too many points and too many yards. I just want to take this opportunity to point out a few things that might explain the drop off in performance from the elite defense of last year (top 10 in PPG, YPG, rush defense, etc) to this year. These are not "excuses". These are just observable catalysts that can and do affect a defense's performance. I hope that you all will take all of this into consideration when the thought "FIRE BANKS" comes into your mind.

1. Our biggest strength from last year is replaced by 2 newcomers with McCoy and Gibson out. These guys were invaluable and while the new guys have played good-elite, there's still an obvious drop off.

2. We lost a first and second rounder on the d-line to the NFL, and our biggest space eater to graduation. We've still got dawgs on the DLine, but way too many run plays are getting through the line.

3. We don't have a true coverage safety who can break on the ball. This is one that is fully on Banks since he coaches and recruits safeties. Fortunately we have 2 borderline 5 star safeties/ athletes committed for next season

4. Our EXPERIENCED linebackers are not the most athletic guys. They regularly get beat to the sideline, but they are the guys that know the defense, know their role and can read the play better than young guys

5. We are playing a TON of young players. It's what happens when you have a covid year where everyone gets another year of eligibility, and then everyone runs out of eligibility at the same time. We've had 11 true freshmen play snaps on the defense this year.

6. Our offense is running up tempo again which leaves our defense with little time to catch their breath. They've played close to 40 minutes pretty much every game.

7. The offense struggles on third down at times and rarely goes for it on 4th. Which puts the defense back on the field

8. A lot more teams are running no-huddle offense now. Watching the Mississippi state game was the first time I've been on the other side of a "Heupel" offense and it was a nightmare. More and more teams are adopting this mindset and it keeps us from substituting/ getting properly aligned

9. Mediocre teams are just generally more talented than they used to be. Teams like Mississippi state and Kentucky used to literally be 98% 3 stars with maybe a handful of 4 stars. They had no chance against good teams. Now these teams are getting much more talented guys from the portal/ high school because of NIL.

10. Tennessee is coming out of one of the strictest recruiting probations of the modern era. We haven't been afforded the same amount of scholarships, official visits, or unofficial visits as other teams for the past 5 years. Hell we couldn't even call or text recruits for 28 weeks out of a 5 year period. That's SEVEN MONTHS where we couldn't even send a "good morning" text to recruits. That's a disconnect that has greatly affected our recruiting. I mean, look at the jump in this years class. The amount of elite talent we've able to snatch once the shackles are off should show you how much probation affected recruiting.

Again, these are not excuses. These are just observations of things that might explain the drop off in defensive performance. Games could be called differently, sure. But I don't know how you expect another top 10 defense (which banks and Heupel had in basically every defensive statistic last year) with all of this going on. You fire banks, you probably lose 10-20 guys in the portal. But you probably lose the entire defense's morale as well.

We're six games in and are on pace to be 10-2 again. Remember when everyone was predicting 7-5/ 8-4 this offseason? Remember when we were picked to finish 9th in the SEC? There are still 6 games this year. Six more weeks of film and game prep to tighten things up.

Lastly, I just want to point out that the defense HAS shown flashes of hope. We are:
#1 in the country in sacks
#2 in defensive touchdowns
#7th in tackles for loss
top 5 in fumbles recovered

Let's not give up on them yet. There's still a lot of football to be played. Take a breath and realize that this is an absolutely ridiculous season across the board and that this sport has changed in a lot of ways. Look at how much Florida scored on Texas's $40 million roster. Look at who Ole Miss almost lost to today. Look at who Penn State DID lose to today. Hell, this might be the most exciting overall season in college football history. All we can do is survive and advance. And this team has survived a lot of games that I've seen other Tennessee teams lose.
Go Big Orange.
-Beard
Click to expand...

excellent post.
 
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#35
#35
There were some good points from the OP but seriously, "mediocre teams are better than they used to be"?

Arkansas going off on our defense had little to do with an up tempo offense. They marched down the field on the first drive of the game. Unless you're saying our defense was mentally exhausted knowing our uptempo offense was coming onto the field.

I thought Mississippi State had a a good offense until they played Texas A&M the next week and got shutdown.

And in all seriousness, Gunner Stockton played his best game of the year against this defense in Neyland. We all thought it was Georgia just waking up and being Georgia. However, Stockton did not play that well before and hasn't since. Overall, Austin Peay played better defense against Georgia.

I can't say I know what the solutions all are and what's causing all the problems, but it's easy to see gaping holes and lanes not being filled consistently, misalignment, poor 3rd down defense and too many open receivers in critical situations.
 
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#36
#36
First defensive play of the game was a sack by our D and then, well, they couldn’t get off the field.
The D play is generally better second half but there needs to be continued improvement earlier in the game.
Yes, there are a lot of younger players on the field learning as they go and I’m hoping this pays dividends soon.

Isn’t the Arkansas offense pretty good generally? Maybe this explains something as their QB is really good.

Go Vols
 
#37
#37
BigorangeBoy said:
We are dreadful in zone, I know a running QB makes our staff wet their pants, but playing zone is just giving up yardage
Click to expand...
It’s because Banks and Martinez can’t coach it. Our guys drop and just stand still and stare at the QB. We might as well be cones or tackling dummies in our zones.

You’re supposed to be aware of what routes are being run and adapt to them, but we don’t even look at the receivers. That’s why they’re open EVERY time we play a zone snap and why it’s never going to get better with this defensive staff. They coach it incorrectly.
 
#38
#38
Heupel's Offseason Beard said:
In time, they'll get better. These are young guys playing in a new system with a next level speed of play

Some are still in the "oh ****, what's my assignment, where do I go" phase.

Pretty soon they'll be in the "ok, my assignment is this, I need to go here" phase

With more game experience, eventually it'll just be "GO"

I don't know. I'm seeing random improvements from different players throughout the season. I just think we're seeing a lot of learning curves going on all at once. It's rarely a dude getting beat. It's almost always a dude being out of position or getting caught watching the QB in zone and not breaking to the ball quick enough. I just hope things keep improving because we have a lot of talented guys
Click to expand...
That is what our zone has looked like for 5 seasons. The only time it looked different was last year when we had McCoy, a massive talent that could mask coaching inadequacies.
 
#39
#39
As a fan who didn’t play or coach but who loves to watch and cheer, it sure looks to me like our run defense doesn’t know how to handle a running back that changes direction and cuts back across our defensive backfield (if that makes sense).
 
#41
#41
We knew pass coverage would be weak, the troubling thing is teams have figured out they can run right up the gut on us and they and easily run their QB on us.

Oddly, I thought Arkansas got away from that for a while after exploiting it so well I'm the first half. Once they stopped fumbling, stopped trying to run East/west and started working the middle of the field again they went right down the field on us again in the 4th quarter.

I for one am not excited to see how we stack up next week against a QB completing 70% of his passes and leading the SEC in TDs
 
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#42
#42
#1fulmerite said:
You obviously didn’t read an earlier post I made about how Arkansas would be different because Petrino “is calling ALL the shots now.”

Saying that, yeah, Arkansas is still a terrible team.
Click to expand...

Yeah, Arkansas played three ranked teams on the road and lost by a combined ten points! They suck!
 
#46
#46
VolCalls said:
Our front 7 were great today. At some point you have to acknowledge we played a well-coached team who put together a game plan full of wrinkles we hadn’t seen on film and threw the kitchen sink at us. We won anyway. This wasn’t a Sam Pittman-coached team.
Click to expand...

Lol. Hopefully nobody buys this. Our defense is mediocre at best right now with plenty of blame to pass around. Front 7s don’t get pushed around and give up over 2 bills on the ground while playing well. Arkansas is bad team. There’s no “wrinkle” that we shouldn’t be prepared for with basic assignment football. It is what it is. Thankfully they’ve been able to force a few turnovers or were sitting at 3-3 right now. Hopefully something magically clicks going forward.
 
#48
#48
Heupel's Offseason Beard said:
I want to start by saying that I am not saying that Banks is free from ridicule or judgment. The defense has left a lot to be desired. We give up too many points and too many yards. I just want to take this opportunity to point out a few things that might explain the drop off in performance from the elite defense of last year (top 10 in PPG, YPG, rush defense, etc) to this year. These are not "excuses". These are just observable catalysts that can and do affect a defense's performance. I hope that you all will take all of this into consideration when the thought "FIRE BANKS" comes into your mind.

1. Our biggest strength from last year is replaced by 2 newcomers with McCoy and Gibson out. These guys were invaluable and while the new guys have played good-elite, there's still an obvious drop off.

2. We lost a first and second rounder on the d-line to the NFL, and our biggest space eater to graduation. We've still got dawgs on the DLine, but way too many run plays are getting through the line.

3. We don't have a true coverage safety who can break on the ball. This is one that is fully on Banks since he coaches and recruits safeties. Fortunately we have 2 borderline 5 star safeties/ athletes committed for next season

4. Our EXPERIENCED linebackers are not the most athletic guys. They regularly get beat to the sideline, but they are the guys that know the defense, know their role and can read the play better than young guys

5. We are playing a TON of young players. It's what happens when you have a covid year where everyone gets another year of eligibility, and then everyone runs out of eligibility at the same time. We've had 11 true freshmen play snaps on the defense this year.

6. Our offense is running up tempo again which leaves our defense with little time to catch their breath. They've played close to 40 minutes pretty much every game.

7. The offense struggles on third down at times and rarely goes for it on 4th. Which puts the defense back on the field

8. A lot more teams are running no-huddle offense now. Watching the Mississippi state game was the first time I've been on the other side of a "Heupel" offense and it was a nightmare. More and more teams are adopting this mindset and it keeps us from substituting/ getting properly aligned

9. Mediocre teams are just generally more talented than they used to be. Teams like Mississippi state and Kentucky used to literally be 98% 3 stars with maybe a handful of 4 stars. They had no chance against good teams. Now these teams are getting much more talented guys from the portal/ high school because of NIL.

10. Tennessee is coming out of one of the strictest recruiting probations of the modern era. We haven't been afforded the same amount of scholarships, official visits, or unofficial visits as other teams for the past 5 years. Hell we couldn't even call or text recruits for 28 weeks out of a 5 year period. That's SEVEN MONTHS where we couldn't even send a "good morning" text to recruits. That's a disconnect that has greatly affected our recruiting. I mean, look at the jump in this years class. The amount of elite talent we've able to snatch once the shackles are off should show you how much probation affected recruiting.

Again, these are not excuses. These are just observations of things that might explain the drop off in defensive performance. Games could be called differently, sure. But I don't know how you expect another top 10 defense (which banks and Heupel had in basically every defensive statistic last year) with all of this going on. You fire banks, you probably lose 10-20 guys in the portal. But you probably lose the entire defense's morale as well.

We're six games in and are on pace to be 10-2 again. Remember when everyone was predicting 7-5/ 8-4 this offseason? Remember when we were picked to finish 9th in the SEC? There are still 6 games this year. Six more weeks of film and game prep to tighten things up.

Lastly, I just want to point out that the defense HAS shown flashes of hope. We are:
#1 in the country in sacks
#2 in defensive touchdowns
#7th in tackles for loss
top 5 in fumbles recovered

Let's not give up on them yet. There's still a lot of football to be played. Take a breath and realize that this is an absolutely ridiculous season across the board and that this sport has changed in a lot of ways. Look at how much Florida scored on Texas's $40 million roster. Look at who Ole Miss almost lost to today. Look at who Penn State DID lose to today. Hell, this might be the most exciting overall season in college football history. All we can do is survive and advance. And this team has survived a lot of games that I've seen other Tennessee teams lose.
Go Big Orange.
-Beard
Click to expand...

Why do Tennessee fans continue to make excuses for an average coordinator? It’s baffling. He just isn’t very good at his job. A defense that had been torched at Arkansas looked better prepared and coached in two weeks under a new coordinator than a staff that has largely been together for five years. It’s inexcusable. Every team deals with injuries and mobile quarterbacks, yet that is always an excuse for Banks.
 
#50
#50
There are 2 glaring weaknesses on this defense that hurt it badly. This year we are undersized on the interior dline compared to last year when we had Big O anchoring the middle. Its easier for teams to get push on the line of scrimmage and open up run lanes. Next is we dont have a safety that can explode to the ball to seal those open gaps. Farooq isnt scared of contact and will hit anyone, but still needs a lot of work in run support. Turrentine is the worst player on our defense and maybe the worst defender in the SEC. I appreciate him as a Vol and the works he has put in but sometime the overall ability isnt there and he doesnt have IT.

Another smaller weakness but still a weakness none the less is Telander, I love the tenacity and grit he plays with but he is just too slow to seal the edge on most plays. He had one play last night where he beat his block to seal the edge but he was already on the outside of the play. He cant beat anyone to the edge, as we saw on the all out blitz that should have been a big loss and then Green got outside because Telander took an atrocious angle and got beat outside.
 
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