Defense 101: If you bring a LB or DB on a blitz, there's a receiver/TE getting 1-on-1 coverage. If you wanna rattle the QB, especially players of Tebow and Woodson's caliber, you better do it early. If the O-line and backs pick up the blitz and you have good receivers and tight ends (Percy Harvin for UF, several for UK), your DBs will eventually get beat on long balls. As good as our corners are, it's been shown that they can be beaten. You bring a blitz every other down, don't have an effective pass rush, and don't have the 1-on-1 coverage to compensate, these kind of QBs will eat up big chunks of yards. With our D-line struggling lately at the line of scrimmage, combined with losing Alexander, we simply may not have the speed or power to be a consistent blitzing team at the moment. And I'm not so sure we have the DB personnel to shift to a nickel defense on a regular basis. After the bye week with nearly everyone healthy, that may change, but that's my $0.02 on the defensive change. As for Corso, I wonder if he and Herbie's vaunted tOSU defense would look so good playing against our last 3 opponents. For a hint, check out the shootout performance by UK and UF on Saturday.
lsudolemite, I agree with your assertion. I'm not saying blitz every other play but once or twice over a span of 2 sets of downs wouldn't be too much to ask. Bring in different types of blitzes, mix the blitz packages up some. Not blizting a lot on Tebow I can understand. You want to do a containment type rush on a rushing QB and maybe bring a late blitz occassionally. But the UK and Auburn game I think should've had more blitzing. UK's running game was non-existent for most of the game, so you don't have to worry about that. Your argument goes both ways though. If they spread it out with 4 WR's, that means they only have 5 OL's. If you send 6 somebody goes unblocked and against a statue pocket passer that is a good thing. I'm not saying they should do it all the time, sometimes would be nice and throw different blitzes at them. Remember the success with all the confusing blitzes we had with Saban. Yes they got burned sometimes but very few times. Pelini has used similar game plans before but has seemed to shy away from it lately against pocket passers, which is when these things are successful.
:thumb: Exactly my point. I'm not saying the current zone scheme is the answer to all our problems (far from it), but there are a lot of people who think that the aggressive Saban-style blitz schemes will solve all our problems, and I'm pointing out that we may not have the ability to pull it off effectively at this point in time. I completely agree with your point about Kentucky and that mixing up more blitz packages would have been much more effective. I also wish they would have done a better job disguising coverage since Woodson kept calling audibles once he got a read. Against AU, aggressive blitzing may have backfired against their rushing ability. LSU's D did manage to hold their RBs to under 100 total yards rushing. However, IMO we'll need a mean streak against Bama, otherwise Wilson and Hall will pick apart that zone all day.
