How in the hell did we become so soft on defense?

The intensity of a team is typically a reflection of the head coach.

We've been soft for a long, long time, which is one of the reasons I wanted to get rid of Baker. I do give credit to Baker for improving our defense, but we were so bad before he arrived, that anything he did was going to be an improvement.

IMO, Baker is just not an elite DC. Since arriving two years ago, our defense has improved, but we not anywhere near elite. We still can't stop a running QB and teams are still having a lot of success running the ball right up the middle. He also struggles making the right adjustments in a timely manner.

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We've been soft for a long, long time, which is one of the reasons I wanted to get rid of Baker. I

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2 years ago we were one of the worst teams in cfb in opponents points per game. This year we were top 15.
we went from 112th in defensive takeaways per game to 12th in the country.
He took over the worst lsu defense in a quarter century and in 2 years has them as one of the best defenses in cfb.
He did it while having all of 1 sure-fire 1st rd pick in Delaney.

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but we not anywhere near elite

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So top 15 in scoring defense and top 15 in defensive takeaways per game is no where near elite?

Bad players and worse coaches.

Coaches that are soft, coddling players and wanting to be their friends. There has to be a higher level of expectations and accountability. This is one of the reasons Saban stopped coaching, his control, depth and high demands got taken away with the portal.

We've been soft on both sides of the ball since Kelley. He fired Tommy Moffitt and brought in a much softer strength program.

Kelley was more into players being intellectual and responsible, no focus on physicality and violent.

Needed more Big Cat drills.

This a thousand times over! Hes a good DC but not great or Elite at all. Prove me wrong if ya downvote! He just doesnt have the Saban, Smart, Muschsmp, Dan Laning intensity. When Weeks went down we were not that good at all. One player shouldn't have that big of an impact if you put your.guys in the right position and they do there job. Hes just not that good

Kiffen needs to court Miami's S&C coach

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We've been soft for a long, long time, which is one of the reasons I wanted to get rid of Baker. I do give credit to Baker for improving our defense, but we were so bad before he arrived, that anything he did was going to be an improvement. IMO, Baker is just not an elite DC. Since arriving two years ago, our defense has improved, but we not anywhere near elite. We still can't stop a running QB and teams are still having a lot of success running the ball right up the middle. He also struggles making the right adjustments in a timely manner.

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Baker wasn’t the issue in terms of physicality. House and company and the revolving door at DL/DT Coach has really hurt the interior of the DL. Just remember how mediocre our rotation looked after Guillory went down last year. We played 2 freshmen and a JUCO guy who barely gets a snap now a ton.

It was a little better this year with McKinley and Breaux in year 2, Guillory healthy and the addition of Gooden, but we still don’t have any dominant DTs. We haven’t in a while. And once Reliford went down, we had a lot of depth guys starting at DE.

Add to this the fact that Baker had to ask for more physical practices after the coaching change and you can see there are some deeper issues that he couldn’t fix if Kelly was focused on running things a certain way.

As for the DL- we just signed one of the best classes in LSU history. Add some help from the portal and develop the young guys we have and this situation can change very quickly.