It’s a ranking of defenses over the next 3 years. Not just next year
Its a pretty good sign since we will Be losing lots of talent next year
Its a pretty good sign since we will Be losing lots of talent next year
2021 D somewhat undervalued on ESPN+
- Thread starter MuskieCy
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It's just another facet of Heacock's genius. He pulls together two defensive game plans. The first vanilla one for the first half that is conservative. He let's a team chew on that and they adjust at halftime with a good plan to probe any weaknesses of that plan. Then Heacock pulls out plan #2 at the half. I have no doubt that the team knows the basics of that plan and have practiced for it all week. He tweaks that more aggressive plan based on what the have seen from the other team and he unleashes the hounds. Now the other team has adjusted for a plan that doesn't even look remotely like the second half plan and they are forced to adjust on the fly.
Taking away a unit's second half adjustments is a huge advantage.
Consider this approach and what we did to KSU and WVU and those become more impressive wins. KSU was not good at all by that point but they weren't a pushover. WVU was solid. He shut them down with the basic scheme and then took their manhood with adjustments.
This approach should be even more effective this year assuming the offense can control the ball better and put up a few more scores in the 1st half.
These are their three year “future” rankings, which reflect both a defense with a lot of seniors, and a lack of glitzy rising recruits they can latch onto for “the next couple of years”.
I couldn’t find the original article, but other references (in an article about about QB’s) indicate they have our defense at #15 for solely the ‘21 season.
Which, considering as yet unanswered questions about our pass coverage, seems fair to me.
2022 is going to be a fun year. This year will be a lot more stressful in that any loss is going to really hurt our goals of B12 champs and playoff (whether those goals are reasonable or not). 2022, it's pretty much roll the ball out and see what happens. There is pretty much no position group that returns experience. OL is the closest and we're still losing (probably) 3 of 5 starters. That said, we're going to have a lot of backups this year that would be starting in a normal time, because the guys ahead of them would have graduated or declared. And, they are hopefully going to be getting plenty of snaps this year in mop up time or in a rotation. This is what the blue bloods have been doing forever. Obviously, we aren't doing it with blue chip recruits, but we're going to have guys that have waited their turn and start as an upperclassman instead of playing as a FR because we need them to.
