Sunday, September 23, 2018

Sadness Accrues: The Defense

I think most people are talking about the offense today because they had some expectations for the offense.  The defense has played as advertised on the tin:  ineffectively.

Miami scored 31 points in its first three games and scored 38 Saturday.  Miami came into the game with the 126th ranked rushing attack (out of 129) in FBS.  And BG had the worst rushing defense.  So when the unmovable force meets the moveable object, what happens?

Yesterday, the force moved.  Miami entered the game with 237 rushing yards over three games.  Their season high was 91.  Against BG, they had 289 yards, at 5.6 per carry.   They had 2 runs over 30.  Miami entered the game as a team unable to run the ball and they ran the ball at will against BG.

They completed only 10 passes for 119 yards.  But six of those were for first downs and 2 were for touchdowns (they double count).  Five of their 10 completions turned into 3rd down conversions.  Overall, Miami had 6.1 yards per play.

It's tough to even comment much more on it.  BG's d-line simply cannot hold up and the tackling is terrible.  Coach said the poor tackling was a "want to" problem, which is equally discouraging if not surprising.  Our next four opponents are way better on offense than this one was and they are all willing to run the ball the whole way.

BG is 115th in total defense, 118th in 3rd down defense, 129th in rushing defense, 128th in scoring defense and 106th in pass efficiency defense.  We are 127th in yards per carry allowed. (The Miami game actually brought our average down).  We are 123rd in yards per play allowed.  Those are all out of 129.

We hope to see progress because we have some confidence in who is doing the coaching.  It's not going to be easy because people get confidence from success and the defense is just not having any. 

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