State of the Huskies - Defense

Just the cliche in general.

As you said, it was a matchup issue. And the matchup allowed Auburn’s D to look pretty good that day. Making Oregon a one-dimensional team (especially when the dimension taken away is the run) is impressive.

In 2004 Oklahoma had a better defense than USC; USC obliterated their defense in one of the most crushing bowl games in history.

That’s a subjective argument. USC allowed fewer points per game (taking out the championship game for both teams) against arguably a tougher schedule.

There’s no doubt it’s a generalization. But if you look at all of the BCS winners, the team with the better defense wins far more often than not. That doesn’t mean it didn’t also have a better offense to go with it.

What about June Jones at Hawaii? Many various formations from ace to shotgun with many different plays.

Meyer’s offense had counters and leads and various other plays like shovel passes and screens to get the ball into the hands of Tebow, Harvin and their running backs.

I admittedly gave a weak example.

My point is that Sarkisian does enough things that aren’t really in the realm of the way “pro style” has traditionally been defined to call him “pro style.” But I suppose it’s a moving target.

60% completion rate. 250 yards in the air. The worst stat was only 6 yards per catch.

And it didn’t matter at the end of the day because even with that defensive speed and power the game was close well into the third quarter. Oregon had been able to mount long methodical drives (Oregon had an 18 play drive against LSU!) Oregon did, however, have big turnovers – two special teams turnovers, another fumble by a rookie RB, and those three plays gave LSU the ball at the Oregon 28 or less. Two other LSU drives started in Oregon field because of punt returns.

LSU’s defensive team speed was great, but Oregon didn’t lose because of it. Oregon’s offense was slowed down, but Oregon didn’t lose because of it. Oregon could have won that game if that’s all it was. Oregon lost, plain and simple, because LSU had 5 drives that started inside the Oregon 40 which led to 31 points by LSU. That’s really not a difficult concept to grasp, is it?

Especially when it was clear from the getgo that Oregon’s plan was to pass more and attack the secondary. It wasn’t stellar, but it wasn’t bad.

Did LSU’s defense dominate the game? Hardly. Oregon scored 27 points. They had an 18-play drive that ended in a TD. If you believe this is what ‘dominant’ means I’m not sure we can converse; this is not a particularly dominant performance.

“Yes they were, especially in the first 40 minutes of the game. Oregon averaged about half the yards per rush outside the tackles as they had the rest of the season. No runs longer than 13 yards. No big plays on the ground, period”

This is also what Washington did against Oregon. Oregon did just fine against Washington. Oregon doesn’t need plays longer than 13 yards; they’re perfectly fine as long as they get plays around 5-6 yards, which is easily what they averaged for their first drives. Again, Oregon fumbled twice, unforced, inside the red zone and turned the ball over. How this is ignored by you is beyond me.

Similarly, while Oregon didn’t have big plays running they had big plays receiving. Their first scoring drive had 35 and 29 yard pass plays, one of which was essentially a bubble screen. Oregon doesn’t need big plays running the ball to beat you; any kind of big play is perfectly fine.

What made me mad in a lot of ways was that I felt we could run on them and we chose not to. Our first drive we come out and run the ball once. It even gained yardage that was decent. We throw the ball 4 times, get 2 bad incompletes and punt. Second drive DT fumbles with no contact. Third drive we throw another 5 passes and run twice – and each run was for 4 or more yards. 4th drive we gain 5 or more yards on every run but get a holding penalty that kills the drive. Next drive we run it almost every down (getting again 5 or more yards per run) and we fumble it again on no contact in the red zone. Next drive we have DT running for his life three times after trying to pass. Drive after that we score with two running plays that go for more than 6 yards each. And then after that it was a rushapaloozza, as you hint at.

Where was the ‘disrupting the running plays’ in the above? there was no disruption; they weren’t being called. When they were being called they were working fine. We had exactly one negative running play the entire day! They didn’t take us out of our rhythm at all; we decided for some reason that running the ball was a bad thing early on.

I think at this point you’re just trying to defend an indefensible point. Go look at the play by play. Show me where the running plays failed. Show me how those turned the tide in some fashion. Because right now you’re just reaching.

And never claimed otherwise.

You really aren’t actually reading what I’m writing, are you? Like, not at all? You’re trying to make points off of me when I’ve already conceded them days ago. It’s quite disappointing; at least respond reasonably to the question.

As to Stanford/Oregon, it looks a lot like the USC/Oregon game in 2011. Oregon got dominated (by offense…hmm) early on and had to struggle to make a comeback when they were too far behind, and ran out of time. In both cases the defense of Oregon struggled a lot more than the offense did. In both cases teams had breakout stars on offense. In both cases, oddly enough, Oregon was coming off of a huge nationally recognized win that catapulted them to the top of the standings and wasn’t a requirement for winning the PAC.

But hey, let’s look at the actual game of the Oregon/Stanford thing in 2009 and see how many stops there were. Oregon started badly – a three and out – after two failed passes and a 1-yard run. Guess that’ ‘disruptive’. Their next drive was a fast 93-yard scoring drive capped by a 60-yard run by LMJ. Uh…ok. Next drive was a 40 yard drive stopped by a fumble in around the 30. Drive after that was another fumble (both fumbles were by receivers, in case you were wondering). And once again, there were almost no negative running plays; the worst was -1. Most running plays went for 4 or more. And then there was that 60-yarder. The big key? Oregon had 2 drives total in the 1st quarter. They had 4 in the first half, and of those 4 two ended up turning the ball over. They drives that ended quickly ended because of incomplete passing. Whereas Stanford held the ball on long, methodical drives and kept Oregon off the field.

So there’s the first half. Third quarter starts with a long Duck drive with multiple rushes, none negative, and a TD. Next drive has 3 positive rushes, then two penalties in a row (false start and OPI) and a punt. Next drive has Oregon score again – and again, no negative runs, multiple runs of 10 yards. The drive after that is the only defensive real ‘stop’ of Oregon, where Oregon had 4th and 1 and failed to convert at the 40. But that happened late in the 3rd quarter!

Oregon had two more drives in the 4th, both scoring TDs. Total time was 3 minutes. Stanford had 12 minutes of clock killing drives in that quarter. Total drives for the game was 12, which is about 4 fewer drives than Oregon normally does.

The reason Oregon lost was simple: they did not stop Stanford at all in the first half. 5 of their 7 drives scored, I believe. And they kept the ball away for long periods of time too. Oregon got a bit hot later, but those turnovers that killed drives killed Oregon. If you want to say that two fumbles are entirely ‘holding Oregon in check’ I guess that’s your perogative, but to me the game was decided because Stanford simply couldn’t be taken off the field and scored more often than Oregon did.

2 won Heismans, 3 (soon to be 4) were 1st round picks, and all played in the NFL.

Saying that he can’t evaluate QB talent is idiotic. It’s made even dumber by your rationale of “well, one of the backups wasn’t as good”. There’s a reason they’re backups.

Wroten is making us all frustrated but don’t take it out on the us, Casino

The defense did its job against Cal, Utah, Colorado, and WSU. You can make an argument for Hawaii as well.

Let’s not forget the purpose of ANY defense is to prevent the other team from scoring, not merely giving up yards.

Firstly though, before I get to the defense, let’s look at the Huskies offense first: The offense had their mistakes too: They fumbled twice and lost the ball twice, one of which led to a Cal touchdown, not to mention they missed a field goal. That’s at least a 10-point swing.

The stats that are more telling for a defense during a game is their performance on third downs, the average distance on third down, forced turnovers, forced punts, and most importantly, red zone scores-chances.

So with that in mind, the defense held the Bears to 7 for 17 on third downs, a 41% conversion rate, which is respectable. The average distance on third down was 7.56 yards. The Huskies forced two turnovers on downs, forced the Bears to punt three times, and allowed a touchdown to the Bears in the red zone on one out five drives, and allowed three field goals in the red zone out of five times. They also forced three fumbles, but sadly, they did not recover them. That’s pretty damn serviceable, especially when you factor in the fact that the Huskies offense gave the Bears a 10-point swing in the Bears’ favor.

Only problems were the mental execution, penalties, and a lack of pass rush on first and second downs. I say that because the Huskies allowed the Bears to get 12 first downs on first and second downs, coupled with three more first downs through penalties. This was primarily due to a lack of a pass rush, and avoidable penalties. The Bears got their remaining first downs on third and fourth downs.

But let’s look at one important fact:

The Huskies played stellar defense against the Bears in the second half, holding them to only three points on the Bears’ first possession, and forcing them to punt on all of their remainings possessions and forcing turnovers on downs on the Bears’ last two possessions. Short of forcing third and outs thereafter, that’s exactly what a defense is supposed to do help win a game – keep the other team from scoring – when the offense is not exactly at their best.

They also did have their mistakes.

I agree completely how could we get much worse – for $650,000 we are noting getting much bang for the buck.