Tim Banks is our coordinator. A coach of some resumes in the big ten type teams most notably Penn State. He’s been named as a contributor on the roster of different teams of defensive accomplishments and rankings in sacks/tackles for loss/pass defense yards etc. what do we know about him that gives us confidence especially on 3rd down defense? He claims he won’t use youth as a crutch as butch did, you wear the colors you’re expected to improve and impress. Will it be an attack defense or bend don’t break? Defense is the big unknown variable this season!
Realistically, until we see the improvement, it's hard to know where it will be. They were great at penetrating(hehe) and getting tfl, and with Garner coaching the DL is going to continue to improve, but you're counting on unknowns to improve a secondary that's going to likely be on the field a LOT. And we lost our best defensive player, who was a DB. I have no faith in that secondary until I see tangible improvement. The MCB was sickening to watch.
If we coulda stopped qb runs on 3rd and 4th down we would’ve been able to get off the field and wouldn’t have looked so bad at times. Didn’t bama go 15/20 or something crazy like that on 3rd downs? And we were in the game late in 3rd. What if we held them to 50% and got the ball back to our offense for 5 more possessions. Hopefully we look different this year but we do have some difference makers coming in this year and next. I don’t recall many horrible calls or telegraphed blitzes leaving us in bad matchups. We just truly only had a couple players who would start on other sec defenses. We blitzed, we mixed up man and zone and we dropped 8 at times so we tried everything. Have to stop qb runs this year.
Yeah we went 2/13 on 3rd downs and bama was 15/20. That’s the game right there. 13 more possessions extended. We get a couple more and stop 5 of theirs that’s 7 more possessions to our offense, 7 fewer for them, and getting D off the field so we don’t wilt in the 4th
And fatigue was certainly a factor. We would play have the snaps pretty solid-- good enough to win. And then the frequency of bad snaps increased as the game went on.
Sounds like under conditioned players, and coaches limited in their choices by personnel. Also I hope they improve the process of getting players on and off the field faster. I wouldn’t be surprised to find that vandy or Missouri had better numbers on defense.
I don’t think we were out of shape. We just didn’t go to the bench much and defense was on the field for 80 plays.
My dude, they were a short bench and on the field a LOT. Go look at time of possession. Their margin for error is small. If the offense is going to be that fast, it has to be a lot more efficient. Along with the defense. Like Ssmiff was saying, we were a lot closer than people think in many of our games. Just a slight difference of efficiency and those losses are at least down to the wire.
Banks got every bit he could out of that defense and then some. How quickly we forget some were saying that defense was going to be worse than the 2021 Sunseri disaster and compete for worst defense in SEC history. It wasn't great by any means, but I'm not sure how you could have reasonably wanted more given what we had out there. Average talent and no depth. We got all we could have hoped for.
Don’t need a coach to get you to stop the qb run after awhile. Somebody just step up and don’t let it keep happening. Huddle leader tell them to stop letting the qb loose.
The defense was a revelation in the first half of the season and was quite bad in the last month. Is that just depth, or did we get figured out? Depth seems plausible, but the contrast was stark. Nobody in the first half of the season got to us like Purdue and Kentucky did.
Alontae missed the bulk of the UK game and all of Purdue. He was able to take his side of the field away in passing situations. Now, it's Hadden, Turnage and the juco signee's time to show up. I'm pretty bullish on Christian Charles being very good, but I think he's more safety/nickel than a true cb.
Depth is the biggest thing Tennessee needs and it's still one more round of transfers and signees away.
I’m definitely taking the approach of not expecting much from the defense. Just show flashes defensively and score a [uck fay] ton of points on offense and I’ll take it.
Better our thinnest unit be the secondary rather than Dline. Hoping that Rodney Garner's unit can give the D a fighting chance. Also, we really really need Banks to stay healthy all year.
