Here is my take on the defense and what has been going on. A lot of fans who are quick to judge the coaching being bad and they aren't doing this and not doing that and they need to do this. Relax!
The defense will get better. It will but it won't be at a pace some of you want, which is by next week.
A lot of you just look at the numbers and think our defense is horrible. But the numbers don't tell the whole story. Some of you compare how much better we were last year on defense than this year. You're right, we were better last year, but it's not because of the reasons you're thinking.
The reason we were better last year was because our defense had leaders in key positions on defense that grew up in this program and lived the Montana way of football.
Braxton Hill, Levi Janacarro, Nash Fouch and Alex Gubner all grew up in this program and weren't transfer implants. This is huge to have whether on offense or defense. The continuity of playing together for 5 years straight makes a vast difference. They all understood the goals and team values of doing there 1/11 and no one guy is bigger than the team.
This defensive scheme relies heavily on every single person doing there job. All it takes is one person to go off on their own and everyone suffers for it.
Now you come to this year where some key positions were filled with transfers. Whole some of them are talented, the defense as a whole isn't playing as one. A lot of these guys are learning to play alongside one another for the first time. So it's going to take a while for them to get used to each other. But I noticed in the first few weeks, guys weren't doing their assignments and then everyone pays for it. And this is normal when you have guys transferring in, some guys are going to take it upon themselves to try and make the play and want to stand out but that's not how it works in this defense.
Our defense will get better slowly but surely and they are on track. We have 7 games left and it's a good sign that we aren't playing our best football right now because we want to play our best towards the ending of the season headed into playoffs. We want to get better each week and get towards the end. A lot of teams are shooting their loads in the first half of the season and then fall off towards the end.
Our coaches are doing a great job with what they have. Some of you u guys need to just relax