I was impressed with the ASU offense....I certainly didn't give them enough credit. I can't wait to see them play USC. That being said I saw four man rushes the whole game with Keller having all day to throw to wide open receivers. What happen to blitz packages and bumping receivers off the line. THere was very little of that if any. NO adjustments were made during the game. No pressure on the quarterback......I hope he is just that good. Please tell me we are not back to the bend but don't break philosophy of Lou Tepper.
Bad tackling is fairly normal in the first game. I expect that will get better in game two. Bad schemes are not so normal in the first game ... and I can only hope that will improve. If not, we'll be playing shootouts all year.
I agree with most on this thread that we have a lot of work to do in the defense department. I think why I was so disappointed is that this defense looks soooo different compared to the schemes that saban ran. I know these coaches watch hours of film and you would think that Pellini would adopt at least some of saban's defense, but the only defense he adopted was his pal lou's. he must of watched film from 1998 instead of 2003.
Well, it was unusual circumstances for an opening game with a new coach. Unexpectedly on the road against a top-15 opponent with a quarterback that will play in the NFL. LSU's offense had a lot of the usual first-game rustiness (dropped passes, foolish penalties) early, but they improved as the game went on and shined in the 4th quarter. The offense was balanced and the quarterback was effective. LSU is going to score some points this year. That's a good thing because this is not Nick's defense. Granted LSU will not face many other quarterbacks as good as Keller, but if they do they better fix some things. Bo Pellini's defense has none of the deception and blitzing that made Nick's defenses so effective. The players don't shift and stunt much and a good, modern quarternback can pick such a predictable defense apart and Keller sure as hell did. A nice home opener against UNT to work out the problems would have been nice, but we are proud of this team. A win is a win. We'll take it. :grin:
It is not a good sign when the opposing reciever catches the ball and not one defender is within the screen shot. Keller is not the best quarterback LSU will see all season. His arm strengh is pathetic and his motion is Danny Weurffelesque. I can list a few better quarterbacks -Rick Clausen/Danny er Erik Ainge -Chris Leak -Jay Cutler -Brodie Croyle -Whoever we play in a bowl game if we are lucky to make it. Sitting back passive zone defense is not a strength for this defense. What Pelini has to understand is that most of these guys were not defensive players in high school. Most were QBs, RBs or pretty much the stud athlete on their team. These guys do not have the instincts for zone, they need to play man to man aggresive attacking defense.
I recognize that I'm in the minority here. I'm not quite ready to jump on the FireBeauxPelini bandwagon after one game. He didn't start coaching defense last night, although at times it looked like it. :lol: Here's an interesting excerpt from his resume on the LSU web site: Prior to his season with Oklahoma, Pelini spent the 2003 season as the defensive coordinator for 10-3 Nebraska. At Nebraska, Pelini led a Cornhusker defense that tied the school record with 47 turnovers. In addition, the Cornhuskers were No. 2 in the nation in takeaways and they led the nation in turnover margin at +1.77 per game. Pelini's Nebraska defense also led the nation in pass efficiency defense (88.66 rating), ranked No. 2 in scoring defense (14.5 points per game), were No. 11 in passing yards per game (177.8 yards per game), and No. 11 in total defense (297.2 yards per game). That suggests IMO that the guy knows a little bit about coaching. Plus, we've got as good or better athletes than he had in the 03 season at Nebraska. Now, if we give up 300 yards passing to Appalachian St or NTSU, then sign me up as a member of the FireBeauxPelini group.
there were a few adjustments made but seemed to be worse. remember the corner blitz? the corner blitzed at the snap and the safety was really late to get there and keller hit the receiver that the corner blitzed from. we couldn't blitz our lbsbecause the saftes were having to play a deeper zone because of the problems with the corners. as for other adjustments, prude kept making mistakes in his techniques, would stutter step or be late to turn so they did adjust for him to play outside and with more cusion. prude's mistakes seemed more mental, remember the wide open wrs were in the second half when they had prude playing outside. our saftes were playing concerned with helping our corners so the te were open. no one really has mentioned the lbs, the lbs should have played the te's better and they were nowhere to be found on the screen plays, saftes weren't either but remember they were playing deeper to help our corners.
Yes. Tackling, even last season under Saban, has been a black eye for us. After watching a lot of games I've drawn the conclusion that we are not a good, sound, tackling team. We can have all the speed in the world, and swarm to the ball, but it does us no good if we can't wrap up and bring the carrier down. :dis: Yeah, we got our butts handed to us by UGA last year, but to our defenses credit, at least we threw everything at Greene. We blitzed, we stunted, we pressed, we played zone--he just beat us no matter what we threw at him. Last night, we played zone, zone, zone....we were constantly 8-10 yards off their receivers and the biggest concern for me was that after halftime, we STILL didn't adjust our defense for the 2nd half. Pelini still chose to just play that soft coverage and I could probably count on 1 hand how many times we actually blitzed and when we did, nothing was disguised. ASU easily picked up the blitz. Ok, so we played one of the best passing offenses in college football last night and I agree that Keller is probably the best QB we'll face (mainly because if we play defense like that all year, we won't have to worry about playing Leinhart--because we won't be in a BCS game to begin with), but if after the Tennessee game, and our defense is still this sloppy looking, Pelini will be in a whole world of trouble with the fans of LSU.
