first 3 quarters
of the defensive break down is up, those of you that believe the crap about shafer not knowing what he's doing, or about bad schemes, or about us not playing man to man, and only rushing three, might be a bit upset about the first half... im sure the second half will be different, but only becasue michigan in the first half, stuffed what msu was trying to do. feel free to comment on the break down... Those of you that have listend to what i have been saying about what our main problems have been on defense, and what Shafer has to do to make up for them, will see what im talking about. Note without film, or brians UFR clips they might not be that good for ya, but oh well. I'm only doing it for you guys, so bite me if you dont like it.
since i have to have 200 words ill say this. The problem's are easy to see, but not easy to eliminate. I cant tell you how many times over the course of a season i have watched bad plays by bad players. You show it to them, you rep. it in practice, you think you get it, then BAM there it is again. If you have someone else that can play, then its an easy fix, if not, it takes months and months to teach technique that becomes second nature, and muscle memory.
October 27th, 2008 at 11:18 PM ^
October 27th, 2008 at 11:53 PM ^
October 27th, 2008 at 11:58 PM ^
October 28th, 2008 at 2:17 AM ^
October 28th, 2008 at 6:31 AM ^
October 28th, 2008 at 9:50 AM ^
helloheisman,
Criticize the defense, but at least criticize them for somethying THEY ARE ACTUALLY DOING. You want to criticize them for "soft zones with three man fronts".
If you read gsimm's post, you'll see that the D lined up in a 3 man front TWICE for the entire first half, blitzed around 10 times, and ran more man-to-man than they ran zone.
So drop the whole "3-man fronts are killing us!", because we rarely ran them. Drop the "soft zones are killing us!" Because we ran more man-to-man. Drop the "Shafer doesn't blitz!" because he blitzed 10 times in a half.
In other words, if you want to criticize him, you should criticize him for something he is actually fucking doing - not something that you see 20 other commenter who clearly didn't watch film complain about.
October 28th, 2008 at 10:07 AM ^
October 28th, 2008 at 10:44 AM ^
October 28th, 2008 at 10:46 AM ^
October 28th, 2008 at 11:03 AM ^
October 28th, 2008 at 12:18 PM ^
Thanks Gsimmons for putting in the detailed review of the defense. I expected many of the formations and terminology to be over my head and at times it was.
I don't want this to come off as harsh criticism since I have no interest in biting you, but I thought I'd try to offer some constructive feedback. Take it or leave it, that's all.
When you use so many specific terms for formations and play calls it is naturally going to be a complicated piece. But I think some of your analysis is lost due to some simple things:
-- Could you try to reference player jersey numbers more consistently? I think readers of your page will know the players by number and having that really makes things more clear. But too often you just refer to them by position, which is less clear.
-- Be careful with your abbreviations. Within the same sentence you used the same abbreviation to refer to two things: DT = Defensive Tackle or Double Team. That's just an example. They aren't really a problem, but keeping them to a minimum makes it a much easier summary to digest.
-- I know we're spoiled by Brian's UFR, but punctuation and capitalization would make this a really cool summary. It is pretty hard to read as written. Maybe you could keep the freeform style if you put it into more of a bulleted list.
Again, it was a GREAT summary that I think we all needed to read to learn what is and isn't working on the defense. And I understand and respect the amount of effort you put into it. I just wanted to offer some ideas to make this a really cool piece that everyone will anxiously await like they do with the UFR. Thanks for the insight!
October 28th, 2008 at 12:45 PM ^
October 28th, 2008 at 2:24 PM ^
October 28th, 2008 at 6:12 PM ^
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