Re: "Look at the confusion on the Oregon defense...."
Posted: Mon Sep 07, 2009 2:53 am
echo, my take on it is that it was that way by design. The idea was, unlike last year, to play more conservative and force BSU to earn yardage with lots of plays.
The down side was that they had the ball for a long time. But, the up side was that they eventually would make mistakes. I think it worked as expected. While BSU had long drives, they didn't have many if any big plays, they made many mistakes and we kept their score down below most peoples expectations.
The problem is that our offense did way more poorly than expected. Allowing the long BSU drives, as you note, further exacerbated that problem by giving us fewer possessions. I don't think anyone saw that coming. Scoring 21 points would have been lower than most peoples expecations. Yet, it would have won that game.
I think that in future games when we play teams that we are more confident in predicting their offensive scheme, we will have a more aggressive defensive strategy. This game was, imo, being treated as an exception because they burned our aggressive play so much last year.
The down side was that they had the ball for a long time. But, the up side was that they eventually would make mistakes. I think it worked as expected. While BSU had long drives, they didn't have many if any big plays, they made many mistakes and we kept their score down below most peoples expectations.
The problem is that our offense did way more poorly than expected. Allowing the long BSU drives, as you note, further exacerbated that problem by giving us fewer possessions. I don't think anyone saw that coming. Scoring 21 points would have been lower than most peoples expecations. Yet, it would have won that game.
I think that in future games when we play teams that we are more confident in predicting their offensive scheme, we will have a more aggressive defensive strategy. This game was, imo, being treated as an exception because they burned our aggressive play so much last year.