Victory in Mt. Pleasant....and now the defense.

As I mentioned earlier, the defense really delivered for us.  They had the kind of game against CMU that we haven't seen in a long time, and CMU is a team that has been pretty successful moving the ball.  They are certainly in some turmoil, but they have been able to move the ball in other games, and I think we have to feel pretty good.

I think Falcon fans know our offensive coordinator pretty well, but I suspect most of the people in the nation would be hard-pressed to name our defensive coordinator.

His name is Mike Elko.  He came to BG after being the d-coordinator at Hofstra for the three years before that.  His defenses at Hofstra were among the best in their conference and in the FBS, and he had similar success earlier in his career coaching at Richmond.  

I just think it is worth highlighting because we said at the beginning of the year that we wanted to keep getting better, and while the defense had some dreadful days, they have been getting a lot better.  This has all happened while the defensive backfield is playing walk-ons and true freshman.



Let's look at some of the highlights for the defense.

• The defense game up only 7 points on the road to a proven MAC offense.
• Radcliffe dropped back to pass 31 times.  In seven of those, there was either a sack or an interception.  This is over 20% of their attempts, and is on the order of triple the normal average of negative plays per attempt.  He completed only 14 passes in those 31 attempts, and that's a pretty solid performance.
• Central was 4 of 12 on 3rd down, a game-changer for our D.
• The success started on the line.  Check out the day for Chris Jones.  6 tackles, 5 of them for a loss, 3.5 sacks and a fumble recovery.  And he's on the nose.  You don't see those numbers from a nose tackle.  He was awarded the national d-lineman of the week by somebody.
• The Falcons registered 12 tackles for loss on CMU's 59 offensive plays, meaning that one time out of every 5 CMU lost yardage.
• CMU averaged only 3.9 yards per play, which has to be a record for us over a couple years
• The defense forced a turnover when we absolutely had to have it.  The CMU boards were on fire last night that Cotton was in the game and carrying the ball in that situation--apparently he fumbles--but BG took advantage and got the ball back.

We'll have more special teams later, but in general we had a passable performance, making both of our placekicks, decent kick coverage and spotty but adequate punting.

So, this one goes to our much maligned defense.  Just a final point.  This defense is very young.  We have been making progress, and if that trend can continue into next season, we're looking at something we can really build on, with a great offensive coach stacked on top of a real defense.