re: Is it safe to assume Orgeron was more than happy to see Aranda leave?

Coming into this thread fairly late. But I was once a football schematic junkie. Loved learning about the game simply because:

A.) I did not play it at a very high level.
B.) I derive a tremendous amount of enjoyment out of watching it.
C.) I love understanding the why about how something works. The underlying pieces that create an outcome greater than the sum of the whole.

One of the blogs I read relentlessly re: Football was Chris Brown's Smart Football Blog. He once broke down Monte Kiffin's 4-3 Under Defense as it was in its heyday at the time in the NFL in Tampa Bay as he and Tony Dungy combined to create the personnel and scheme behind the, "Tampa 2," Defense out of the 43 Under front.

The story was actually about Pete Caroll's 43 Under Defense, which he learned while at Secondary Coach at Arkansas under Kiffin way back when. For many years he never deviated from that base 43 front. He has since shifted to a 34 front running both 1 and 2 Gap principles using his DL and LB's based on a pre-and-post snap read. In other words, he continued to run a 43 front but shifted personnel on the field to give him versatility.

Anyway, I digress. Carroll's talk at a coaching clinic at Texas was very interesting. Consider that Orgeron's first time ever coaching a 30 front Defense was under Aranda and later with Aranda as his DC. Prior to his time with Dave, Orgeron coached a 40 front and a 43 Under look for the entirety of his coaching career. The vast majority of which occurred under Pete Carroll and Monte Kiffin.

What follows is what I think is as close to Orgeron's philosophy and an explanation as to why he is happy to be back to a 40 front (and perhaps an underlying reason for his recent comments re: Pelini and the return to the 40 front at LSU recently)...

The entire section is what's needed for proper context I feel. But the sections in bold are the real takeaways and explanations for me.

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I was asked to speak about defense today. I’ll try to give you some general thoughts that might help you on this topic. I’m not trying to get you to change your defense, but I’ll show you what we are doing.

In order to be successful on defense you need to develop a philosophy. You have to know what you want to do, how you want it to look, and how you want it to feel. A philosophy is like a railroad track. You have a clear cut direction in which you are going. If you start to get off track it becomes real obvious to you. If you don’t know what you want and what you are about you won’t know when you are off course. If you do realize you are off course you won’t know how to fix the problems you are having without a philosophy.

If you can’t write down your philosophy then you still have some work to do. If you don’t have a clear view of your philosophy you will be floundering all over the place. It you win, it will be pure luck. One year you will win, it will be pure luck. One year you will run a 3-4 defense and the next year you will run a 4-3 based defense. You will never get zeroed in on what is important.

I am an example of a person who got zeroed into a philosophy early. I went to Arkansas many years ago to work for Lou Holtz. Monte Kiffin was his defensive coordinator. He had just come over from Nebraska to take that job. He is now of course the defensive coordinator for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and is one of the best coaches that has ever lived. Under Monte I was a part time coach in the secondary at Arkansas.

Monte ran what is known in coaching circles as the 4-3 under defense. That was his base defense that he had developed and perfected at Nebraska as a gap control defense to stop the run and pressure the passer. That was the first time I started to get hold of something that had a philosophy to it. I started to grow with this defense. After all the years I’ve been in football I’ve never coached anything but the 4-3 under defense. So I know this defense inside and out. I know the good side of the defense and I know the problems and weaknesses of this defense. I run it with one gap principles but can also make it work with some two gap principles.

What I can give you today is a real basic understanding of this defense. I am not trying to sell this to you as being the best defense. What I am saying is that for me this is the defense that I know best and can make work. The reason I run this as a base defense is that I know how to fix any problems that may be created.

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For those that want a deeper dive into Carroll's Clinic discussion on the Kiffin 43 Under Base Defense, the link is here...

saying defense is ahead this year at this point is not meant to compare Aranda to BP. Having said that, Aranda had a lot of talent to work with but his results were not what you expected from the highest paid DC in the land.

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I thought it has already been proven that was false.
Thought o wanted aranda to move on
There were rumblings of the 4-3 way before aranda was even in contention for the Baylor job

I think you’re right over the target. I think O knew how valuable Aranda was so he’d never push him out but at the same time O withdrew from meddling in the new offense and he’s someone who’s always been a hands on guy causing him to wanna get involved on the defensive side. So Aranda leaving was an opportunity for Orgeron to go back to his style of defense and you’ll see the defense look a lot more like the defenses Os been a part of than what Pelini is used to running. There was a story about Pelini studying and implementing Pete Carroll’s defense which signals a move from his own style to more of that type of 4-3 scheme. If we can marry some of Pelinis blitzes to Carroll’s shell it could lead to great things.

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LSU won those games because of offense. Normally LSU loses the game when they give up that many points.

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Are you drunk? Go back and see what OU and Clemson averaged for the year, then tell me what our defense did to them.

What’s with all the Aranda disdain lately? He was arguably a top 3 DC in the nation for his entire tenure at LSU and was praised by most on here when he first arrived. Not sure what happened.

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I think O would like to be more aggressive whereas Aranda would rather sit back in zone and keep everything in front.

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Like the bama game?

I like Pelini, but he isn’t some miracle worker. We need DL. There has been a trickle of elite talent between 2016 to 2020.

And almost all of them were NT.

I love this freshmen class, but it’s a hard position to come in and play right away.

Honestly, Aranda was great for the most part. People can tag on the A&M game but
1. They scored a defensive TD so if they don’t we lose 31-24 in regulation
2. They stopped them and all the offense needed was 1 first down to win.
3. We ended up missing a few players in that game at the end.
4. Whenever we held them to a FG in OT the offense choked