Pass Defense - Really Bad

[Htowngriz]

Again, I think you have to take a look at the whole picture. Teams are averaging 129 rush yards/game, and 3.6 yards/rush against us. That includes current pac 12 power house Oregon, as well as some of the large chunk plays we have given up in the first ha.

Take out 9 plays from the season and those numbers become 98 and 2.9.

Now, I'm not saying that we are actually averaging those numbers because we aren't and the fact is that other teams made those plays, and the numbers are what they are because of it. But facing oregon, and the less that fantastic 1st halves we have had I try to look at other reasons our pass defense is struggling. Maybe we are having guys tighter to the LOS and in the box. Maybe Sac had us dialed up a bit.

I just don't think it's fair to point the finger at select individuals when in reality we have no idea what the issues consist of. Certain route combinations beat certain coverages, and while those things can be tweaked to help with that, if a team catches a defense in a certain look with the right play call, they are going to get separation. Look at how often our offense does it.

That doesn't excuse the fact that it happened. It does need to be fixed, but again we really don't know what's going on and where the blame lies on each individual play.

And that is why film sessions exist. I'm sure the coaches and players are just as disappointed in the performance as we are, and will do everything in their power to fix it.

 

[PlayerRep]

Again, I think you have to take a look at the whole picture. Teams are averaging 129 rush yards/game, and 3.6 yards/rush against us. That includes current pac 12 power house Oregon, as well as some of the large chunk plays we have given up in the first ha.

Take out 9 plays from the season and those numbers become 98 and 2.9.

Now, I'm not saying that we are actually averaging those numbers because we aren't and the fact is that other teams made those plays, and the numbers are what they are because of it. But facing oregon, and the less that fantastic 1st halves we have had I try to look at other reasons our pass defense is struggling. Maybe we are having guys tighter to the LOS and in the box. Maybe Sac had us dialed up a bit.

I just don't think it's fair to point the finger at select individuals when in reality we have no idea what the issues consist of. Certain route combinations beat certain coverages, and while those things can be tweaked to help with that, if a team catches a defense in a certain look with the right play call, they are going to get separation. Look at how often our offense does it.

That doesn't excuse the fact that it happened. It does need to be fixed, but again we really don't know what's going on and where the blame lies on each individual play.

I agree, but there is no excuse for the 2 big long plays with the receiver many yards behind our secondary. Those just had to be mistakes, really huge mistakes.

The great catches by the SS receivers, mainly up the sidelines, were just that. Great catches. We often had good or pretty good coverage. The long pass to 33 over 96 and the safety, was probably just a well-designed play with very good pass blocking. 96 actually had very good coverage, given the disparity. My recollection is that the safety didn't get there, in part because he got a slow start after watching a receiver come across, wide open, about 15 or 20 yards up field.

SS made a very large number of great or nice plays, and won so many battles, in this game. My view is that games are often decided by the percentage of plays each makes in these situations. SS won the bulk of the battles, and thus won big.

 

[Missoula223]

Again, I think you have to take a look at the whole picture. Teams are averaging 129 rush yards/game, and 3.6 yards/rush against us. That includes current pac 12 power house Oregon, as well as some of the large chunk plays we have given up in the first ha.

Take out 9 plays from the season and those numbers become 98 and 2.9.

Now, I'm not saying that we are actually averaging those numbers because we aren't and the fact is that other teams made those plays, and the numbers are what they are because of it. But facing oregon, and the less that fantastic 1st halves we have had I try to look at other reasons our pass defense is struggling. Maybe we are having guys tighter to the LOS and in the box. Maybe Sac had us dialed up a bit.

I just don't think it's fair to point the finger at select individuals when in reality we have no idea what the issues consist of. Certain route combinations beat certain coverages, and while those things can be tweaked to help with that, if a team catches a defense in a certain look with the right play call, they are going to get separation. Look at how often our offense does it.

That doesn't excuse the fact that it happened. It does need to be fixed, but again we really don't know what's going on and where the blame lies on each individual play.

I agree, but there is no excuse for the 2 big long plays with the receiver many yards behind our secondary. Those just had to be mistakes, really huge mistakes.

The great catches by the SS receivers, mainly up the sidelines, were just that. Great catches. We often had good or pretty good coverage. The long pass to 33 over 96 and the safety, was probably just a well-designed play with very good pass blocking. 96 actually had very good coverage, given the disparity. My recollection is that the safety didn't get there, in part because he got a slow start after watching a receiver come across, wide open, about 15 or 20 yards up field.

SS made a very large number of great or nice plays, and won so many battles, in this game. My view is that games are often decided by the percentage of plays each makes in these situations. SS won the bulk of the battles, and thus won big.

Yeah I don't mean to say that those things don't need to be addressed. You're right it's not okay, but I guess my point is that we has fans have no idea where the breakdown lies.

 

[PlayerRep]

Again, I think you have to take a look at the whole picture. Teams are averaging 129 rush yards/game, and 3.6 yards/rush against us. That includes current pac 12 power house Oregon, as well as some of the large chunk plays we have given up in the first ha.

Take out 9 plays from the season and those numbers become 98 and 2.9.

Now, I'm not saying that we are actually averaging those numbers because we aren't and the fact is that other teams made those plays, and the numbers are what they are because of it. But facing oregon, and the less that fantastic 1st halves we have had I try to look at other reasons our pass defense is struggling. Maybe we are having guys tighter to the LOS and in the box. Maybe Sac had us dialed up a bit.

I just don't think it's fair to point the finger at select individuals when in reality we have no idea what the issues consist of. Certain route combinations beat certain coverages, and while those things can be tweaked to help with that, if a team catches a defense in a certain look with the right play call, they are going to get separation. Look at how often our offense does it.

That doesn't excuse the fact that it happened. It does need to be fixed, but again we really don't know what's going on and where the blame lies on each individual play.

I agree, but there is no excuse for the 2 big long plays with the receiver many yards behind our secondary. Those just had to be mistakes, really huge mistakes.

The great catches by the SS receivers, mainly up the sidelines, were just that. Great catches. We often had good or pretty good coverage. The long pass to 33 over 96 and the safety, was probably just a well-designed play with very good pass blocking. 96 actually had very good coverage, given the disparity. My recollection is that the safety didn't get there, in part because he got a slow start after watching a receiver come across, wide open, about 15 or 20 yards up field.

SS made a very large number of great or nice plays, and won so many battles, in this game. My view is that games are often decided by the percentage of plays each makes in these situations. SS won the bulk of the battles, and thus won big.

Yeah I don't mean to say that those things don't need to be addressed. You're right it's not okay, but I guess my point is that we has fans have no idea where the breakdown lies.

Agreed. On secondary play, it looks like only 2 frequent posters get it. Ha.

 

[reinell30]

Every team the Griz have played has tried multiple deep throws. The difference between them and Sac State was, after a couple incomplete attempts the other teams stopped trying. Sac State on the other hand only missed on deep routes when the ball was over thrown. Then they came right back to it and completed them. I believe the corners and safeties can only be successful if the D-Line puts pressure on the QB. Thompson had ZERO pressure from the D-Line. Defense is only successful when the whole Defense play together, not only 1 or 2 guys. I missed any gang tackling in the Sac State as well. Dante was all over like usual but????

 

[uofmman1122]

Every team the Griz have played has tried multiple deep throws. The difference between them and Sac State was, after a couple incomplete attempts the other teams stopped trying. Sac State on the other hand only missed on deep routes when the ball was over thrown. Then they came right back to it and completed them. I believe the corners and safeties can only be successful if the D-Line puts pressure on the QB. Thompson had ZERO pressure from the D-Line. Defense is only successful when the whole Defense play together, not only 1 or 2 guys. I missed any gang tackling in the Sac State as well. Dante was all over like usual but????

This is a really good point. Sac got 288 yards on only 10 throws, 4 of which were TDs. Some of those were just circus catches, but a good lot of them were blown coverage. I think all 4 TD throws were to wide open receivers. The alarming thing is that Thomson missed on a few passes where our guys were essentially beat that would've gone for big gains, as well.

The good news for us is that that's not necessarily a talent issue, it's more of a "just do your job" issue. Bad news is that we've been having WRs running free in our secondary all year, which suggests a potential scheme problem, so it may be a problem that lingers even after this game.

 

[cclarkblues]

Again, I think you have to take a look at the whole picture. Teams are averaging 129 rush yards/game, and 3.6 yards/rush against us. That includes current pac 12 power house Oregon, as well as some of the large chunk plays we have given up in the first ha.

Take out 9 plays from the season and those numbers become 98 and 2.9.

Now, I'm not saying that we are actually averaging those numbers because we aren't and the fact is that other teams made those plays, and the numbers are what they are because of it. But facing oregon, and the less that fantastic 1st halves we have had I try to look at other reasons our pass defense is struggling. Maybe we are having guys tighter to the LOS and in the box. Maybe Sac had us dialed up a bit.

I just don't think it's fair to point the finger at select individuals when in reality we have no idea what the issues consist of. Certain route combinations beat certain coverages, and while those things can be tweaked to help with that, if a team catches a defense in a certain look with the right play call, they are going to get separation. Look at how often our offense does it.

That doesn't excuse the fact that it happened. It does need to be fixed, but again we really don't know what's going on and where the blame lies on each individual play.

I agree, but there is no excuse for the 2 big long plays with the receiver many yards behind our secondary. Those just had to be mistakes, really huge mistakes.

The great catches by the SS receivers, mainly up the sidelines, were just that. Great catches. We often had good or pretty good coverage. The long pass to 33 over 96 and the safety, was probably just a well-designed play with very good pass blocking. 96 actually had very good coverage, given the disparity. My recollection is that the safety didn't get there, in part because he got a slow start after watching a receiver come across, wide open, about 15 or 20 yards up field.

SS made a very large number of great or nice plays, and won so many battles, in this game. My view is that games are often decided by the percentage of plays each makes in these situations. SS won the bulk of the battles, and thus won big.

They certainly played like they wanted it more. Looking at the history, they probably did.

 

[Mo$$]

And as bad as the pass defense was last night, the real difference between this game and the ones before was just the inability of the offense to do absolutely anything. It's easy to give up huge yards on passes when your offense is controlling the game and dominating the other defense, but it was evident that things just snowballed, and the offense continued to put the defense in horrible positions.

A little off topic, but man, I really think our 6th drive just put us into a funk that we never got out of. We were playing relatively well, had held Sac to a field goal, and were only down by 6, 15-21: still very much in the game.

2nd and 5, and Akem knifes through the middle on a post route behind the defense, and has nothing but grass in front of him. Sneed throws the ball a little behind, but still close enough that it should have been 6, and at the very least a tie game. Sammy makes that catch probably 99 times out of 100, too. Then after a short catch by Deming, it's 4th and 1, and we try to draw them offside.

They jump not once, but twice, and for some reason we don't snap the ball, and instead take a delay of game. After our punt, they drive down to score a TD and put the game completely out of reach. Just a perfect microcosm of how the entire night went after that point.

 

[PlayerRep]

Every team the Griz have played has tried multiple deep throws. The difference between them and Sac State was, after a couple incomplete attempts the other teams stopped trying. Sac State on the other hand only missed on deep routes when the ball was over thrown. Then they came right back to it and completed them. I believe the corners and safeties can only be successful if the D-Line puts pressure on the QB. Thompson had ZERO pressure from the D-Line. Defense is only successful when the whole Defense play together, not only 1 or 2 guys. I missed any gang tackling in the Sac State as well. Dante was all over like usual but????

I agree that there wasn't enough pressure on their qb, but note that the d-line did get 2 sacks and those were the first sacks of a SS qb in conference play this year. SS has now played 4 conf teams. I'm assuming those were all conf games.

 

[Mo$$]

The defense tends to be taken out of their rhythm when the opposing offense goes in a hurry up and our coordinators aren't getting their assignments to the players on the field in time. It worked for the Cats last year and you have to wonder if more teams will catch on to that. There's an adjustment there for the coaches to take a look at. We weren't ready on several plays Saturday because guys were waiting for the sideline adjustments. Not sure how that impacts our pass coverage but it impacting our pass rush on a couple of the bigger plays.

The ball was a little behind Sammy on his drop but not by much if he extends to catch with his hands rather than his pads. He let a couple of balls hit his pads.

Sac St. looked to be timing our snaps quite a bit. That 4th down was case in point. We could stand to mix up our cadence a little more to keep defenses honest and reduce some of the stress off of our o-line.

I'd rather have our flaws exposed to be corrected against Sac St. than any of the teams we have remaining on our schedule. Things will be cleaned up and the Griz are going to be playing ANGRY on Saturday. Not a bad time for Eastern to be coming to town!

 

[AZGrizFan]

Every team the Griz have played has tried multiple deep throws. The difference between them and Sac State was, after a couple incomplete attempts the other teams stopped trying. Sac State on the other hand only missed on deep routes when the ball was over thrown. Then they came right back to it and completed them. I believe the corners and safeties can only be successful if the D-Line puts pressure on the QB. Thompson had ZERO pressure from the D-Line. Defense is only successful when the whole Defense play together, not only 1 or 2 guys. I missed any gang tackling in the Sac State as well. Dante was all over like usual but????

I agree that there wasn't enough pressure on their qb, but note that the d-line did get 2 sacks and those were the first sacks of a SS qb in conference play this year. SS has now played 4 conf teams. I'm assuming those were all conf games.

Yep. Unfortunately we had to sell out virtually every play to get to him...

btw: Their UNC game was a non-conf game...

 

[AZGrizFan]

Every team the Griz have played has tried multiple deep throws. The difference between them and Sac State was, after a couple incomplete attempts the other teams stopped trying. Sac State on the other hand only missed on deep routes when the ball was over thrown. Then they came right back to it and completed them. I believe the corners and safeties can only be successful if the D-Line puts pressure on the QB. Thompson had ZERO pressure from the D-Line. Defense is only successful when the whole Defense play together, not only 1 or 2 guys. I missed any gang tackling in the Sac State as well. Dante was all over like usual but????

This is a really good point. Sac got 288 yards on only 10 throws, 4 of which were TDs. Some of those were just circus catches, but a good lot of them were blown coverage. I think all 4 TD throws were to wide open receivers. The alarming thing is that Thomson missed on a few passes where our guys were essentially beat that would've gone for big gains, as well.

The good news for us is that that's not necessarily a talent issue, it's more of a "just do your job" issue. Bad news is that we've been having WRs running free in our secondary all year, which suggests a potential scheme problem, so it may be a problem that lingers even after this game.

It IS a talent issue if they're doing the job already to the best of their ability. And given your 2nd sentence in that paragraph, its either talent or scheme....because it's been a problem all year.

 

[sdk.catfish]

by uofmman1122 » Sun Oct 20, 2019 5:17 pm

We've got issues in the secondary, sure, but they've done well against other pass happy teams. We've played the #4, #12, #23, #29, #32, and #33 passing offenses in FCS (Not to mention the #23 passing offense in FBS). I think any team that's not NDSU would struggle to contain the pass every single week.

We could definitely be better, for sure. We've got the #9, #46, #66, #96, and #113 passing offenses remaining.

I wonder if the remaining five rankings go up or down after facing our secondary? I know this sounds inconceivable and unlikely at this point in the season yet it is possible that even Rovig goes for 300 plus (taking only half the snaps he went for 260 against Sac State) unless improvements are made.

 

[reinell30]

by uofmman1122 » Sun Oct 20, 2019 5:17 pm

We've got issues in the secondary, sure, but they've done well against other pass happy teams. We've played the #4, #12, #23, #29, #32, and #33 passing offenses in FCS (Not to mention the #23 passing offense in FBS). I think any team that's not NDSU would struggle to contain the pass every single week.

We could definitely be better, for sure. We've got the #9, #46, #66, #96, and #113 passing offenses remaining.

I wonder if the remaining five rankings go up or down after facing our secondary? I know this sounds inconceivable and unlikely at this point in the season yet it is possible that even Rovig goes for 300 plus (taking only half the snaps he went for 260 against Sac State) unless improvements are made.

One thing is for sure with those stats. We should definitely know what we are doing then or not doing?

 

[uofmman1122]

by uofmman1122 » Sun Oct 20, 2019 5:17 pm

We've got issues in the secondary, sure, but they've done well against other pass happy teams. We've played the #4, #12, #23, #29, #32, and #33 passing offenses in FCS (Not to mention the #23 passing offense in FBS). I think any team that's not NDSU would struggle to contain the pass every single week.

We could definitely be better, for sure. We've got the #9, #46, #66, #96, and #113 passing offenses remaining.

I wonder if the remaining five rankings go up or down after facing our secondary? I know this sounds inconceivable and unlikely at this point in the season yet it is possible that even Rovig goes for 300 plus (taking only half the snaps he went for 260 against Sac State) unless improvements are made.

Here are the national rankings for passing offense for our opponents if you take out the Montana game:

South Dakota (Currently #23) -> #21
North Alabama (Currently #33) -> #46
Monmouth (Currently #32) -> #45
UC Davis (Currently #4) -> #1 :lol:
Idaho State (Currently #29) - > #24
Sac State (Currently #12) - > #18

Again, a mixed bag, but the only "bad" games were UNA and Monmouth. Without playing us, most of our opponents are still torching other teams through the air.

To answer your question on Rovig, if the Cats want to try to beat us primarily throwing the ball, by all means let them try.