Fire Willie Martinez

Makes good sense to me sadlerdawg. Attitude is the majority of the battle on D. I agree that the \"bend but don't break\" scheme doesn't work these days with how explosive these offenses are and you have to cover the whole field. These offenses really stretch D's and also feel you have to attack them before they CAN stretch you out. Oh well, we'll see......nobody's called me from Athens for my opinion, have they called you yet, sadlerdawg?



BTW NC_Dawg, we all actually agree with you but we have nothing better to do......we need to get a life I guess.

wlayton wrote:

nobody's called me from Athens for my opinion, have they called you yet, sadlerdawg?

Not yet, wlayton....but I have two teenage kids...maybe the phone was tied up when they tried to call!!

Having read and followed this thread, have tried to stay on the sideline. If I may, would like to say this. The key to playing a cover two is basically pretty simple. Four down linemen, playing one gap protection. If you do not get pressure on the QB from the front four, friends the cover two will get you beat. We all know that we lost our best defensive lineman this year. Apparently we could not plug the hole. Just my two cents worth, sometimes you have to understand your personnel as well as the system you are trying to run. Go Dawgs!

The problem isn't the system. The cover 2 is sound. The problem isn't the personelle... its the coaching! If you do not have the right personelle to produce an affective defense in a base cover 2, then you have to try to apply pressure in different ways. WM refuses to do this. This is a problem with the coaching and not the system.

Defense, Defense, Defense... I am in agreement with every person on this post by saying that nothing would make me happier then to see more pressure on opposing quarter backs. The only problem with that is that our defensive line has not gotten the job done. With out Jeff Owens at DT and the lack of speed at DE the line has failed to apply adequate pressure to force quarterbacks into making quick throws and bad reads.

The next thing we need to do is blitz. Correct? Well that is a questionable call. When it works its golden, when it fails the coach is an idiot. When a coach draws up a blitz, he does so knowing that he is going to put his defensive backs in a tough situation. If the blitz is ineffective, or your defensive backs have struggled in coverage then a blitz package creates a lot of holes in the defense.

In Georgia’s situation we haven’t had the production from our defense because of the lack of pressure from our defensive line. Plain and simple. We can’t blitz every play to get pressure because we do not have good enough coverage in our defensive back field to stop the pass. Besides Asher Allen, we do not have a solid second and third corner that can play good cover defense. Prince Miller has done a good job for the most part but he has had his struggles this season. Bryan Evans has under performed this year and continues to get beat at the third corner position. The second part to the blitz is the linebackers. Outside of Rennie Curran we haven’t had consistence from the line backing spot since Ellerbee went down in the Alabama game. Gamble had a great game against LSU passing attack but aside from that has played relatively poorly the following two games. Overall we have not had a strong defense that could step up and stop both the run and the pass.

The point I am trying to make is, maybe we aren’t as good as we thought we were. I know that is hard for a lot of people to take, but think about it. Due to injuries and some poor performances in key games we have not lived up to the preseason hype that had all of us starry eyed and dreaming of a national championship. We have gotten spanked twice this year against great teams. Despite looking oh so pretty in our black jersey’s, Alabama put it to us on our home turf and I don’t like saying it anymore than next guy but Florida flat out spanked us. If everyone could just take our heads out of the clouds and see the Bulldogs for what they really are. Our boys are a solid number three team in arguably the best conference in the country. That is something to be proud of...

prozacK07.......you are DEAD ON with your post. Couldn't agree with you more. UGA has ALWAYS had good, pressure DE's but not this year. No pressure from the edge or the entire front four (Buc)='s getting burned in pass D. AND, like you said, you can't blitz on every play. I mentioned a couple of weeks ago the same thing you just said......maybe we just aren't as good as we thought we were. Our offense is awesome but the D and special teams are lousy.