So, the consensus is that "Everything is well" because we were using the wrong measure against our defense. Sounds good to me! Down with yards! Up with points!... Hey, wait a second...
When I am asked to explain the difference between rugby union and american football to non americans I say that US football is a game of posession and rugby is about position, where you are on the field. In rugby it's harder to advance the ball so you will gladly give up posession to do so. Not so much in football. In football possession is king and position not so much. Keeping possession allows you to score. Taking posession prevents it. I dont care much about how many yards someone gets if I take posession before he scores. So if he gets 4 first downs and then has to punt, I don't care. Would I like a 3 and out? Definitely but im not pissed if we dont get it. Muschamp is right. I watched the game sunday afternoon due to the time difference but I read all the threads about how abysmally we sucked and expected a nightmare. I didnt see it. I saw an *** kicking and loved it. Obviously we can play better but i still have confidence muschmp knows exactly what he's doing.
How many starts does our defense have as a whole? A few of our starters are green as grass, a few more haven't played all that much, and every one of them is new to Muschamp's system. Give them a little time, because right now, the learning curve is VERY steep. How do you know it's football season? hornfans dissects every coaching quote six ways from Sunday.
from 2007... Total Defense (yards/gm): 1. OSU - 233 2. USC - 273 3. LSU - 289 4. VT - 297 5. Pitt - 298 6. Auburn 298 7. WVU - 302 8. Oregon St. - 306 9. Clemson - 307 10. BYU - 308 Scoring Defense (pts/gm): 1. OSU - 12.8 2. USC - 16 3. VT - 16.1 4. Kansas - 16.4 (ranked 12th in total defense) 5. Utah - 16.8 (18th) 6. Auburn - 16.9 7. Penn St. - 17.5 (11th) 8. WVU - 18.1 9. BYU - 18.5 10. TCU - 18.7 (15th) Noticing a trend here?
so if we give up 220 total yds against ARk and lose 31-27 i guess you will all be blaming the defense and i will be blown away. btw, above post sums it up for me.
I think the 2007 stats pretty well demonstrate the relationship. I too am concerned about the number of yards we've given up, however, I also believe the coaches are too. What Muschamp says in the media isn't necessarily what he says to the team and I think that's the case here so I'm not all that concerned about his quote or taking issue with it. He's saying what he has to say publicly. It's just a situation of a lot of young players combined with learning a new defensive system, further combined with keeping things vanilla and not showing too much in games you'll win anyway. Muschamp will get them where we want but it may be a several game or season long process that may include two or three frustrating losses if the defensive improvement doesn't come quicker.
Why do so many people have trouble understanding the fundamental difference between performance and achievement? Yes, achievement (wins) are what matter in the end. However they have much less predicative value than performance. Look, if you were trying to predict college success would you choose achievement (high school diploma) or performance (GPA) as your guide? It's not even close as to which metric has actual predicative value. SMQ has shown the correlation between defense and victorywww.sundaymorningqb.com/story/2006/12/19/19847/067. I think Ken Pomeroy, who does excellent college hoops analysis, summed it up best:
Be careful what you ask for, you just might get it. 2007 Texas vs UCF Texas Total Yards 488 UCF Total Yards 326 Final Score Texas 35 UCF 32
whatever... when we are 95th against the pass and 78th against the run at the end of the year, see how you feel about it then
I think it's funny that everybody here is just waiting to pounce on Muschamp like he's either the savior or the failure. The guy is working with an incredibly young defense and yet their performance is solely based on his? How about this -- maybe he's doing a great job given the circumstances and we'll never know because we don't have anything to compare it to. Oh wait, yeah we do...we have last year when a much more experienced team gave up chunks of yards and pts to lower-tier opponents. I'm not slobbering on Muschamp, but I'm not going to diss the guy's performance on any level. 23pts through two games??? That's pretty damn good people. And if we only give up 11.5pts a game this season I dont care if the other team gets 1000yds. Now..we will lose some games I'm sure..but it's because he's a ****** coach. His resume gives him the benefit of the doubt in my head. These threads are stupid.
I'm fine with Muschamp and think he was an incredible hire...He has skins on the wall, he's been there, done that...We are young though. As bad as I want a top 10 D again, it won't happen overnight. I DO believe he has what it takes to put us there.
What's funny is that just about everyone before the opener said something along the lines of "we have a green secondary, they're probably going to give up some plays early, but I think they'll pull it together." That's exactly what happened, and people complained. Folks, it's not like we didn't know this team was going to have some defensive issues early. I don't see the point in complaining that they're giving up plays when it comes with the territory starting two freshman safeties. If we don't see improvement through the year, it becomes a concern, but I think we need to just deal with the fact that this is not going to be a shut-down unit by OU, and maybe not all year. It has a chance to get there as these guys get more mature, but for now, it is what it is.
We have seniors on the D line and they gotta step up and get some penetration. Best way to get the secondary to play better is give them less time to have to defend. Kills me that RJ Washington is sitting on the gooner bench when he'd be a big part of the rotation here.
I'm not sure it's how many yards we gave up, but who we gave them up to. We did win the games handily, but the yardage is something to be concerned about and I am absolutely convinced Muschamp knows that and will do everything in his power to work it out.
