re: Raymond/Diaco?

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Coach Kelly must keep Diaco as far away from the schematic side of defensive planning as possible. Diaco is a micro-managing clockwork mechanism defensive coach. And he's great at that. LSU on the other hand competes with the biggest boys by having elite athletes who are (with discipline) allowed to go full animal batshit when that moment arises. That is, they are NOT totally predictable as Diaco defenses were.

We saw to our great pain what a masterful strategist planner could do to a great set of defensive players constricted by absolute rigor to a plan. In Manti's great year, we should have at least been able to initiate defensive resistance to that Alabama team, but after the game we found out why not (and it was Diaco's constricted system.)

Alabama had a terrific OLine. Chance Warmack was the first or second best guard in the country, DJ Fluker was the third or fourth best tackle, and Barton Jones was the third best center. Jones was the spokesman for that line. After the game he commented on the ND defense: "They're good because they're simple; but they're simple." He went on to say that everyone on the Alabama line and the RB knew what every ND player was going to do precisely before the snap just by line-up array. No straight-up physical battles really needed to be won (and with guys like Tuitt, Nix, Teo, KLM that would not ALWAYS be an Alabama win) because all they needed to do on most plays was outposition the great players by superior angles. ND was NEVER in the game despite some really top players.

After the game, reporters asked Lou Nix about the game. Lou of course couldn't have known all this. He erupted at the reporter's thought that Alabama's OLine had dominated ND's DLine. "Do you think that Jones dominated ME!!!?" Well Lou, our happy DT warrior, Jones DID. He did it NOT by confronting you, but while you were making the big efforts to penetrate and stonewall, Alabama was running just the slightest other way, and you were always walled off and not an issue for them.

That was Diaco's micro-management rigid clocksystem losing the game. We might have lost anyway, but it would have looked like a ball game with some unpredictability. Kelly cannot let Diaco mess around with his DCs scheme, or LSUs traditional superior area of play will tank.

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