The mystery of Tenuta

Submitted by iawolve on
I read how if Jack Del Rio goes to USC, he has been calling Tenuta about his interest. Understanding that Jack knows a few things about D and there would be many people who would take that job, is pretty high praise for the guy. I always liked what Tenuta did at GT, feared his arrival at ND, but ultimately he never made much out of that unit (to which I am definitely not crying over). I never heard what the issue was there considering he had the talent. Not sure if anyone has any info.
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Sambojangles

January 12th, 2010 at 10:50 AM ^

Charlie Weis underrecruited the defense at ND, so I think TAH-NOO-TAH was working with a lack of talent and depth. I think they had something like 5 or 6 defensive recruits in the last couple of classes.

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CRex

January 12th, 2010 at 11:01 AM ^

Agreed. The Irish were kind of in the same boat as us, a guy with good defensive credentials, but little talent on the defensive side of the ball and not much in terms of a depth chart. Only difference is they went out and formed a lynch mob, whereas we're giving our DC a bit of time to recruit and train before we bring the tar to a full boil.

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AC1997

January 12th, 2010 at 11:31 AM ^

I agree that ND neglected its secondary for most of the past four years worth of recruiting, so I guess there is a parallel there. And only giving Tenuta two years isn't much to go on. But they do seem to have recruited a large quantity of 4+ star linebackers, a solid number of DTs with decent ratings, and a couple of good DEs. I figured they would be slightly ahead of us, but the parallel from a recruiting perspective seems accurate. You just can't blatantly neglect entire positions and expect to recover. That's why I love our DB recruiting this year but still worry about LB and OL. Getting Wilson on the OL would be good even though we wouldn't need him immediately - you just can't sign one OL in a class and not feel that effect down the road.

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clarkiefromcanada

January 12th, 2010 at 12:04 PM ^

A couple thoughts... I was not so familiar with Del Rio going to SC potentially. I looked it up a bit and there seems to be some opinion out there that Del Rio's rather firm style might contrast too much with the "celebrity" culture Carroll engendered. It is something of a step down from the NFL even to SC. I also was concerned about Tenuta when he came to ND; I suspect with the talent on the SC defense he could do some business.

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colin

January 12th, 2010 at 1:14 PM ^

with ND's recruiting on the defensive side of the ball, but class rankings suggest they had the talent. I do wonder if Tenuta's zone-blitzing schemes got countered before he came up with something new. Maybe I was watching badly, but it seemed like Tenuta played some sort of fire zone on every possible passing down and got ripped to shreds on the ground as a result. Of course I'm pretty sure those DTs were nothing special either.

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