Strength up the middle-not so much

Submitted by wolverine1987 on
Just got back from the game, and was thinking that while obviously a bunch of stuff went wrong today, too much to list in fact, one thing stood out about our defense--our safeties are really, really bad.  We all knew this was a potential weakness going into the year, but my God, the incompetence was breathtaking both on runs and passes.  If you get to the second level against us and you have talent--goodbye.  I wonder if Warren, with his size, would be a candidate to move over.
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MechE

October 4th, 2008 at 8:48 PM ^

I'm not a football technical expert, but from the stands it looked like Jonas Mouton had a career day of sucking.  We'll see if the UFR reflects that.

Joined: 06/30/2008

MGoPoints: 444

GeoTracker

October 4th, 2008 at 9:04 PM ^

our DC is not adjusting as fast when the other team's OC starts to pick up the blitz by going to max protect. A few times they kept guys back and let us over pursuit resulting in Juice pwning our secondary. Not saying Schafer is bad but I think we need to be a bit quicker in adjusting the playcalls on both sides of the ball.

Joined: 09/14/2008

MGoPoints: 945

cbuswolverine

October 4th, 2008 at 10:24 PM ^

on the defensive side of the ball as well.  The safeties are fucking horrible.  Mouton is a joke.  Panter, meh.  Let's get Brandon Smith, Demens, and Fitzgerald some playing time.  I wonder how ready they are and how much it really matters at this point. 

Actually, it's probably best to take a wait-and-see approach until after the Penn State game.  As competitive as Rod and this staff are, I wouldn't be surprised if they are thinking along the same lines.  If they drop to 1-2 in the Big Ten, sacrifice a little for the future and throw a couple more kids into the fire.  There has to be a breaking point somewhere.

Joined: 08/14/2008

MGoPoints: 5958

lhglrkwg

October 5th, 2008 at 12:14 AM ^

it looked like the reason the busted soo many plays wide open was because the safeties were so far up looking to stop the option. this led to passes of like 60 and 80 yards and didnt help against the option much anyway

Joined: 07/03/2008

MGoPoints: 87934

chitownblue (not verified)

October 5th, 2008 at 9:14 AM ^

Aside from Stewart getting pantsed on the one play, I don't recall the safeties messing up today. Warren got beat once. Graham gave up his gap on one play, Mouton got lost on another, and Thompson boned the screen.

Joined: 12/12/2017

MGoPoints: 0

turbo cool

October 5th, 2008 at 9:51 AM ^

i agree, although there were a few plays that stewart shit the bed on. however, i thought mgoblog's favorite safey stevie brown played pretty well. just the fact that he didn't let up on the play where juice basically ran 60 yards only for brown to have a shoe string tackle was pretty much awesome to me.

Joined: 07/10/2008

MGoPoints: 977

chitownblue (not verified)

October 5th, 2008 at 12:55 PM ^

cbuswolverine,

FWIW, Brandon Smith has mono, and won't be playing this year. Kenny Demens was thought to be way to small to play LB this year, and is concentrating on bulking up. Again, probably won't play. Fitzgerald already burned his RS playing regularly on special teams, so I see no reason not to give him a few snaps on D every now and then.

Joined: 12/12/2017

MGoPoints: 0