Interesting info about our defense

[Wildcat Jones]

I was at the spring game, but just watched the replay last night. It was said that in our 1st spring practice for RR and Casteel 3 years ago that we had only 21 scholarship players on the defensive side of the ball. And for this spring we have 47 scholarship players on defense.

The D got better in year two from how bad they were in year one. I am thinking and hoping our D will take another big step forward this year.

[b_dog]

And as you pointed out in another post, they showed absolutely nothing on Saturday. The entire point of the 3-3-5 is to disguise blitzes, and when you keep all of that under wraps and go vanilla, it doesn't take much to light you up, which the offense did. Makes sense to have a nice offensive show for the fans in a televised scrimmage and also not show anybody anything for the endless DVR analysis. One thing that would be a step forward this season would be if we didn't have to trade out personnel for third downs, as with the SWAT Team approach last year.

[Black Oaks]

The entire point of the 3-3-5 is to disguise blitzes, and when you keep all of that under wraps and go vanilla, it doesn't take much to light you up, which the offense did. .

And I would add that I saw a few nice offensive wrinkles in practice thaat I did not see in the spring game. Since we were televised by the PAC 12 you know darn well that every PAC 12 scout was watching the game.

Bearing Down on keeping a few secrets for game day

[b_dog]

Yeah, I was disappointed we didn't get to see that double reverse wide receiver option pass from Drake Pierre to Abraham Mendivil.

[excatdb]

I was at the spring game, but just watched the replay last night. It was said that in our 1st spring practice for RR and Casteel 3 years ago that we had only 21 scholarship players on the defensive side of the ball. And for this spring we have 47 scholarship players on defense.

The D got better in year two from how bad they were in year one. I am thinking and hoping our D will take another big step forward this year.

Only negative Jones is that about 31 of those 47 are in their first two years in the program. We still don't have senior or even junior depth on the defensive side of the ball.

[Trob]

Only negative Jones is that about 31 of those 47 are in their first two years in the program. We still don't have senior or even junior depth on the defensive side of the ball.

I think this is a really important point, that although we have a huge influx of players on the defensive side of the ball they aren't quite yet ready to play experience wise.

I think we are still another year or two away from seeing the total package from our defense, but things have still improved greatly over where they were when RR and staff arrived.

Playing freshmen in the defense is a sure way to have a lot of problems against Pac-12 offenses, so my hope is that we continue to see some improvement from year to year moving forward, and have what amounts to a pretty good defense by year 4.

I think the offense has benefited from the talent that was already here on that side of the ball that ended up being far better than anyone could have imagined when plugged into the RR scheme. We have been very fortunate to have two winning seasons and win two bowl games.

[Vegascat]

It was only that offense talent which kept us from the "lose big in the 1st year; lose close in the 2nd year" model referenced in "Three and Out". And it is sort of ironic as Mike Stoops who left that talent was supposed to be a defensive minded coach.