Defensive HAVOC rate Week 3

Imma blame Penn again bc it feels like a safe bet unfortunately.

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let’s say, a very poor run fit by Whit Weeks on that long TD run? Probably a combination of both.

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I’m actually gonna blame the DE for crashing inside. Absolutely no reason for that. Weeks already had that gap.

Weeks didn’t have his best game, that’s for sure, but that was all on the DE.

Weeks had some issues

Don’t feel good about playing Dart and Milroe this year

Anyone have pff player grades on defensive guys? Whit Weeks, Greg Penn had very rough games. Curious how everyone graded out.

Boom or bust is the correct approach for this defense. We are very solid at CB, but outside of that, without Baker’s playcalling & blitz looks it’s just bust.

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a very poor run fit by Whit Weeks on that long TD run?

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If you notice on that play, Reliford crashes into the C gap on the snap. That makes me think that Weeks missed a call. No way the design of that play intended for the defensive end to come across the tackles face and leave the edge unattended. By the looks of it, weeks was supposed to either blitz or fill off the edge

The most pathetic play of the game was when Gilbert decided that it wasn't worth his time to continue chasing sellers on his long run. Gilbert was actually gaining ground and potentially could have tried to strip the ball from behind near the goal line if he hadn't quit twice on the same play. He should be called out in film and have some sort of extra running punishment at practice for being lazy and quitting. Also, someone teach him how to wrap up

This defense still has some problems. But, there is clear improvement over last year. We don’t see receivers constantly running free in the secondary. Several catches by USC and USEe receivers were contested, but the receiver just made a fantastic play. You can’t really complain about athlete vs athlete, one guy making a good play over another guy.

The defensive front 7 is consistently getting pressure on the QB. They’ve seemingly caused more havoc the past 3 games than all of last season combined. But, they’ve also had a couple breakdowns. On one of the long TD runs, Weeks #40 crashed down and in instead of setting the edge, which opened up a huge hole. The safety was already running across the field, he tried to turn around, but he had already taken himself out of the play, as well. That said, either the DE or Weeks missed an assignment. I’m not sure whose responsibility it was to set the edge on that play, but it was clearly not done. This is fixable though. Yes, it resulted in a huge play. But these are much smaller problems than we’ve had the past two years. It’s certainly encouraging.

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However, a very clear trend is developing- LSU has a boom or bust defense.

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No doubt. And we’re getting better at the booms. I think we had 5 sacks, 9 TFLs, 4 forced fumbles, and 2 picks (if you count the one on the 2-point conversion) and a number of pressures that forced bad throws.

And I think that’s really our only chance of getting the multiple stops per game that we’ll need. With our limitations on the interior DL, the OL is getting to the 2nd level to get to our LBs. So I don’t think they have the luxury of just sitting there and waiting to read. They’ve got to come downhill a million miles an hour at the snap and hit our gaps to fill the run. And when we fill the wrong gap, we’re exposed and it opens us up to explosive runs. That’s just gonna happen. We are going to give up big plays.

BUT, we’ve got 4 weeks before Ole Miss, including 2 weeks with a bye to work on getting better at filling the right gap. And that big run by Sanders late was mainly due to Reliford losing contain. He’s a true freshman and will lead from that.

So I think we can get more disciplined, continue to make those boom plays, and start to at least limit some of the busts. We can’t get rid of them completely, but we limit them to 3 a game instead of 6. We’re gonna give up some yards and some points, but if we can continue to get stops and give our offense a few extra possessions a game, we could be a lot better. The offense just has to be more efficient when given those possessions, especially in the red zone. We’ve got to come away with TDs once we get down inside the 10. Defense got 2 turnovers deep inside our own territory and I think we turned them into 0 points. Or maybe one of those was a FG. So 3 points at the most. That’s got to be 14 or at least 10. Offense is great between the 20s, but need to get better at punching the ball in once we get down there. Maybe Durham helps with that.

But we’re in a great position these next 4 weeks to get better and healthy, and we should see the best version of this team at home against Ole Miss in 4 weeks. We’ll see what that looks like.

{Double post}