[NU Sports] El Painful El Paso

[SjT (Stephen J. Truog)]

> What about a 28 point lead that WV almost blew last
> night?  For those who argue that ball control would
> prevent the blowing of leads this is a good counter
> example.  WV barely passes, being almost entirely an
> option team, yet Georgia came back and almost won.

Except that West Virginia runs a spread attack in
their offense -- the spread does a lot of great
things, but shorten the game it does not. The problem
isn't whether you run or pass from the spread, it's
how little time it takes to do either out of the
spread.

Teams that run the spread across the country almost
always have horrible defensive numbers because whether
the offense does good or bad, the D is on the field
much more than D's on teams with a traditional
offense.

NU's offense all year was a rhythm offense - when it's
on, it's tough to stop. When it's disrupted, it's a
3-and-out taking maybe only 20 seconds off the game
clock and giving the D a minute or two of rest -- so
it does wear out a defense.

Of course, on the flip side, Tressel went away from
the spread yesterday to milk clock and almost blew a
game where OSU was absolutely dominating Notre Dame
but hadn't put the game away.

> Our defense this year was porous, but they were also
> opportunistic and bend, but don't break.  They
> caused the 30 turnovers, which is the 2nd most in

It'll be interesting to see what Charlie Weis does in
South Bend, becuase the statement above could almost
be applied exactly to ND's defense. All year, they
were opportunistic, bend-don't-break and bailed out by
a big-play offense (and the fact that their soft
schedule didn't include many high powered opposing
offenses save USC and MSU). 

BTW - Weis also took some big gambles in the game
(going for it on 4th down early only down 14-7 with a
chance for a FG) -- so I wouldn't get too upset with
Walker for trying for the TD at the end of the first
half instead of the FG when we'd had two kicks blocked
already.

> our history(33 in 1995).  Special teams were by far
> the number 1 reason we had tight games/losses this
> year -- bad placekicing, bad punting, bad kickoffs,
> and bad coverage.  Our porous defense and an offense
> that would go into funks for quarters at a time(see
> Q3 vs. UCLA, Q3/Q4 vs. Michigan) were also
> contributing factors.

Good analysis - special teams needs to be addressed
first. That's a huge hole right now. But there have
been flaws all over -- including the offense, which
couldn't keep big leads built by the D vs. PSU or UCLA
or get back in the game vs. Michigan despite numerous
chances from the D.

> Next season our defense has to improve to be
> competitive, but it does not have nearly as far to
> go as special teams.

Amen - and the good news is that if you focus on
special teams, it is the area that can be turned
around the quickest, see Beamer when he came to
VaTech, Snyder at KSU and Barnett at NU.

GO CATS!!!
-SjT

* * * * * * * * *
STEPHEN J. TRUOG
sjtruog at yahoo.com
GO CATS!!!


		
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