Hear me out. I think it is very easy to game plan against LSU with Chavis as defensive coordinator. His philosophy is very simple. It equates to playing a prevent end of the half type defense for 60 minutes. There is nothing sophisticated about it. Little to no blitzes, little to no stunts, keep your db's 15 yards or more away from the line of scrimmage etc. You rely heavily on the base d line (front 4) to put pressure on the qb. Your linebackers and db's must keep everything in front of them. Everyone must tackle and wrap up (no miss tackles). The only time we tighten up our d is in the red zone. That is only because Chavis is forced to play everyone closer to the line of scrimmage because he runs out of real estate. The problem is everyone is able to dink and dunk there way down the field. All you need is a patient offense that takes what Chavis gives them, and they can drive it down our throats each possesion. It also keeps the d out on the field longer than they should. Without the proper athletes it almost makes you cringe watching it. I know everyone may say wait till Chavis gets his athletes here but still, his philosophy is too soft. I think Chavis is a good coach, and good man, but I don't like this basic vanilla scheme he uses for 60 minutes. Do you agree/disagree?
Chavis' defense is based on the front 4 getting pressure on the quarterback and forcing him to make mistakes and counting on our corners and safeties to make plays on the ball. Unfortunately our front 4 sucks, but they will be mostly gone next season. Nevis didn't see near enough playing time, i guess they wanted to award Charles Alexander with the majority of play time for being on the team since Cholly Mac was the coach. When we get a stronger, better front 4 i think you will see a difference.
I disagree. Chavis dialed up a LOT of blitzes in the 1st quarter, sometimes rushing 6, and they were completely ineffective, with NONE of them getting to the QB. Both of Penn State's big pass plays on the TD were off man-to-man coverage resulting from blitzes. If you can't get to the QB rushing that many, then there's no point leaving your corners or safeties on an island, so he held back on the blitzes in the 2nd quarter. I also think part of why Peterson and Chad Jones started playing softer coverages were the ticky-tack PI calls. Both were good defensive plays, and if you're gonna get called for that every time, then what's the point of playing aggressive coverage?
I've said this on other threads but the thing that bothers me about how we played D today was the many many 3rd and long that we had them in and then the Chavis soft D came in to play. That just kept there drives alive and killed any momentum we had.
Like some have said, the front 4 are the back bone of any D. Control the lines and control the game. You all know this...
I think the defense would do a lot better if they were not on the field 3/4's of every game, it's like tonight game the defense was on the field somewhere around 17 minutes longer (over a full quarter) than the offense, I think the best thing for the defense is to get a offense that will at lest play half of the game, under Crowton it want happen.
I only remember once. You can't rush 3 and 4 all game if you're not getting any pressure. Mix it up and run some blitzes. The prevent defense makes getting a first down too easy, which keeps the momentum on the other team's offense. It seemed that most of the time when LSU stopped Penn State it was down near the goal line.
Leadership is the only thing this team needs at this point. Once they find it, with in the players and the coaching, everything will fall in place.
