[NU Sports] El Painful El Paso

Tue Jan 3 15:15:45 CST 2006

Good point, Louie.  Also, even within our own conference, just look at
Purdue.  For a few seasons prior to this year the Boilermakers had great
defenses, and, of course, they have run some variant of a spread offense
since Joe Tiller brought it with him to West Lafayette.  Heck, some
people--including me, I admit--thought Purdue would have one of the best
defenses in the country this year, with 11 returning starters from one of
the nation's best defenses last year...but look how that played out.
Anyway, the point is that having a spread offense (or a powerful,
quick-strike offense of any kind) doesn't necessarily mean that we should
expect poor defensive performance.  -Joe

-----Original Message-----
From: nwu-sports-bounces at tssi.com [mailto:nwu-sports-bounces at tssi.com] On
Behalf Of Louie Vaccher
Sent: Tuesday, January 03, 2006 2:43 PM
To: SjT (Stephen J. Truog); nwu-sports at romaine.tssi.com
Subject: Re: [NU Sports] El Painful El Paso

I don't agree that a spread offense automatically means that your defensive 
numbers will suffer. You could make the time-of-possession argument in the 
early '00s when Northwestern was running it without a huddle, but now that 
they've modified it and huddle after every play, the time-of-possession 
factor isn't that big a deal. This year, Northwestern averaged 29:39 in TOP 
and their opponents averaged 30:21. That's pretty darned close.

And yes, West Virginia may have blown a big lead last night, but the 
Mountaineers went into the game ranked eighth in the country in total 
defense and 10th in scoring defense.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "SjT (Stephen J. Truog)" <sjtruog at yahoo.com>
To: <nwu-sports at romaine.tssi.com>
Sent: Tuesday, January 03, 2006 2:23 PM
Subject: RE: [NU Sports] El Painful El Paso

>> 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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