And now the defense

Auburndawg

Auburndawg

New Fish
My main take away: we played man all the time. We were always man to man with every receiver, with one or two other guys playing zone, usually one deep, and one intermediate. No soft zones with receivers standing there wide open. We always rushed at least 4, and we did blitz frequently. Love it!

Against the run, they had some wins, and we had some wins. Some of their best runs came when we blitzed and left gaps open.

Our front 7 stuffed them three times in critical situations: 3rd and short in the first half to force the (blocked) FG, the 4th and 1, and 2nd and goal at the two, which forced them to pass on 3rd down.

Danny Shelton is an absolute beast. In on virtually every play. Always pushing the pile backwards. On the other hand, Hudson, IMO, got pushed around a lot, but Wilcox praised him today.

The front 7 did get penetration on passing plays. If Southwick didn’t throw it immediately we were in his face.

All the LBs and DBs seemed to tackle well, and I only remember one play where it looked like someone blew an assignment.

Our LBs and DEs are fast.

Southwick is the only reason the game was competitive, IMO. He couldn’t throw deep, but he picked up several big 3rd downs by sliding around and finding receivers who were just barely open.

Bottom line: Wilcox is worth twice what we are paying him. He has transformed this defense.
 
Aubs I'm actually in Auburn at a place called Oddfellas. Not a bad pub. Cute servers. No hot patrons. Was wondering if this was your film room. See a sausage fest at the bar and was wondering if one of these dudes was you.
 
If we had a second DT I think this could be a powerful line. We just don't have the pass rush/penetration to be truly disruptive but this isn't a terrible line. We may have gotten pushed back some but we stuffed them some too. As glaring as the DL was as a weakness I don't think it is as bad as it has been in past years. I think the other units have just made big strides to make the DL look deficient by comparison. It truly is upon the DL to take this defense from a serviceable Pac-12 level to an elite level where we can contend for Rose Bowls and National Championships.

That and consistency. This is all moot if that was a one-off we witnessed on Saturday.
 
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Aubs I'm actually in Auburn at a place called Oddfellas. Not a bad pub. Cute servers. No hot patrons. Was wondering if this was your film room. See a sausage fest at the bar and was wondering if one of these dudes was you.
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Do they have cold beer? The coldest in town? Solid pub grub? HD? Where your DAWGS at?
 
I won't claim to have done extensive research, but it seemed part of the gameplan was to get our DEs upfield to contain the pocket but not collapse it. Thus preventing scrambles and rollouts like those that killed us in Vegas. We did this against jason guesser (RIP ankle) in 2001/2 with great success.

So I don't feel worked up over no pass rush as I plan to LIPO.
 
I don't think we have much of a pass rush, but the Boise game was not a good barometer. There wasn't a large enough sample size of plays where Southwick held the ball for more than 3 seconds. It's tough to get sacks when the QB gets the ball out quickly.
 
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The defense played okay, and came up big a few times. However, they also go lucky a few times. Twice in the redzone BSU could have walked in for a TD if they had gone left instead of right. One play the QB had the left side wide open to walk in himself, but he locked on a WR and we all know how that ended. The other was when the RB Ajayaya had a free lane to the left but he decided to take the path of most resistance and headed to the right.

They can improve, but right now we have an average defense at best. That said, if our offense can reproduce that execution against everybody we play, then an average defense might be enough this year.
 
Saying our D is average at best is not accurate, IMO. Our DL, yeah. They are average at best, but our back 7 is pretty damn good. The LBs missed a few tackles, but looked pretty good overall. I was pleasantly surprised by how well Shamburger played, Parker did his thing, and Peters and Ducre played very well. Keith Heyward is the man. Our DBs have improved a lot since he got here. I don't think it's unreasonable to say that we have 7 guys on our defense that could potentially be all conference(Shelton, Thompson, Timu, Feeney, Parker, Peters, and Ducre). I'm not expecting these guys to be the '84 or '91 defensive units, but they're hardly what I would call average at best. I'd say our D last year was slightly above average, and I don't see any reason why it won't be better this year.
 
I will admit holding them to 346 yards (171 rushing) is much better than the usual 610(289) that used to be the norm. The back 7 are fun to watch, but our defensive line needs to fix a few things to be good. Like I mentioned, they may be good enough overall in conjunction with this years offense (if it continues as is).
 
I will admit holding them to 346 yards (171 rushing) is much better than the usual 610(289) that used to be the norm. The back 7 are fun to watch, but our defensive line needs to fix a few things to be good. Like I mentioned, they may be good enough overall in conjunction with this years offense (if it continues as is).
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Boise State had 88 plays for 346 yards. That is an average of 3.93 yards per play. To put it in perspective, Alabama, who was #1 in this stat last year, gave up 4.0 yards per play. With the no huddle/hurry up offense, we will give up some yards on defense, but when looking at the stats, it was a great defensive performance by UW, especially when you consider Boise State is normally a very good offensive team.

Sure, there are some things to improve on, but if we give up less than 4.5 yards per play, we will have a great season.

 
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We gave up less than 300 points in the regular season last year for the first time since the 2000 Rose Bowl season.

Our defense stopped sucking the minute Wilcox arrived.
 
We gave up less than 300 points in the regular season last year for the first time since the 2000 Rose Bowl season.

Our defense stopped sucking the minute Wilcox arrived.
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I am not ready to anoint Wilcox the savior, but I have not seen better tackling form, gang tackling, and defensive aggression in over a decade at UW. So, it's either him, the other Coaches, or all of them together, but this Defense is light years better than anything trotted out by Gilby/Ty/Holt(Sark V 1.0)...
 
Our front 7 stuffed them three times in critical situations: 3rd and short in the first half to force the (blocked) FG, the 4th and 1, and 2nd and goal at the two, which forced them to pass on 3rd down.

Danny Shelton is an absolute beast. In on virtually every play. Always pushing the pile backwards. On the other hand, Hudson, IMO, got pushed around a lot, but Wilcox praised him today.

The front 7 did get penetration on passing plays. If Southwick didn’t throw it immediately we were in his face.
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This was your takeaway from our D-line? Perhaps you were up getting a Zima in the first half, but Ajayi and his offensive line were consistently pushing our interior DLs and LBs backward. Even Don James noticed it. Read Derek Johnson's interview with him.

Also, I don't think we had one sack, and our pressure was inconsistent. Littleton was NO factor.

Sure there was some pressure occasionally, but it was too inconsistent. Heck, even Sark listed as one of his 2 two priorities over the next 2 weeks "getting pressure on the QB."
 
Based on Yards Allowed Per Game we went from something like 106th in 2011 to 31st last year. That's not just significant improvement that's a quantum leap. That's going from the cellar to better than top third.

I expect our defense to finish lower than that based on our offense but anything close with our offense playing well will mean a huge year. Oregon finished 44th in YAPG but opponents ran 120 more plays against them vs against Washington. The yards per play comparison was 5.37 for Washington and 4.94 for Oregon. As mentioned in a prior poast the less than 4 yards allowed against BSU Is elite. One game yes, but elite.

For my money it can't be understated how huge it was for us to get Keith Hayward. The DBs look fantastic and he made Trufant into a first rounder last year. Flat out great coach.
 
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