Still a chance that Mike goes THIS year...prolly why Monty got a promo...
Kish will go with Mike, Monty is sole DC. Bob's type of O coming with a
new OC, maybe a couple new position coaches...LB and secondary, BJW
goes "upstairs"...the moves are NOT done...jus sayin...
LB play was a strength of the defense under Venables. His last year here (2011), we had Travis Lewis and Tom Wort who were both producing at a high level. We gave up yards under Venables due to breakdowns in the secondary, not due to poor LB play. Prior to that, we had pretty solid LB play, with the exception of 2008 when Ryan Reynolds got hurt against Texas and we didn't have a replacement for him ready to go.Originally Posted by jkm, the stolen pifwafwi
Problem with LB play this year goes way beyond lack of effort. Have repeatedly had major busts in coverage assignments that contributed to problems in pass coverage.
I like Hoover as he isn't afraid to ask tough questions, but I don't get the reasoning behind him asking Stoops about his vacation. Does the entire program grind to a half if he isn't there overseeing everything? Isn't that part of the reason why we have assistant coaches and trainers? And we lost 4 other games, was Stoops on vacation before those losses too?
Walk on through the wind, walk on through the rain, tho' your dreams be tossed and blown, walk on.
Since DGB never took a snap for us, I don't think this is a big loss. That kid made me nervous anyway - just a bad vibe.
Glad to hear that Shannon will be back and Mixon too.
There's Only ONE Oklahoma!
If the vacation wasn't just before a four-point loss to TCU, which is now considered the top Big 12 program after bowl showing and playoff snub...maybe.
If the head coach's out of state, I can just picture a group of teenagers-to-early-20s dogging "optional" workouts, cheating on their diets and other things we all are doing right now to break our New Year's resolutions.
Does Stoops taking his vacation during the offseason make us four points better in Fort Worth that game? I don't know. As Stoops likes to say, I'm not going to sit here and...
We played better against TCU than Baylor. Baylor was at home and looked worse at the end of the season than TCU did.
I think the conclusion is obvious: Stoops should go on vacation as many times as possible.
I know that you weren't here, but we went into this in depth during those years. The basic gist is that our linebackers were good when the other team didn't attempt to block them. In several games, when the other team decided to block our LBs they might as well have not been on the field. As a matter of a fact, in Ryan Reynolds perfect game against UW the Huskies didn't attempt to block him once. Where we ran into trouble was when we ran into a team that had a decent enough OL to handle our DL and get to the LBs. At that point, the YPC ballooned from 2ish to 5ish and we had to bring more guys up to stop the run.
http://www.soonerstats.com/football/...8#.VKw6MivF_Qo
Well, if the other team's offensive line is blocking your LBs on a consistent basis, then your DL isn't doing its job. LB's, particularly in a 4-3 defense, shouldn't be taking on a lot of blocks from offensive linemen. Their job is primarily to fill holes and clean things up against the run and short/intermediate passing game, not to take on blockers (except for fullbacks or tight ends).
And as I said earlier, 2008 was a bit of a down year for the LBs because we never really found a solid replacement for Reynolds in the middle. Keep in mind that the year before that we had Curtis Lofton, who went on to be an NFL starter, so we were already lacking in experience prior to Reynolds' injury. But over the course of Venables' tenure, yes, I would argue that our LB play was generally well above average.
Venables' big problem with respect to LBs was that he too often stayed in a base defense against spread formations, causing LBs to have to try and cover WRs, or forcing us to play a soft zone coverage.
Last edited by graphster; 1/6/2015 at 03:01 PM.
This is one of those cookie cutter statements that isn't based in reality. If a DE is occupying a blocker then he isn't rushing the passer. If he isn't rushing the passer, your secondary is going to get torched. Secondarily, if you play read and react with a stud DT everyone and their dog will negative recruit you on it until your DT quality goes down or you let them free rush (which is what we did). Free rush DTs are easier to block by a single OL allowing more guys free releases on the LB. A secondary problem with this is that it created horrid rush lane discipline which just left the middle of the field open for running QBs to exploit.
What you see from a lot of teams these days is that they block the offside DE via scheme (zone read) which allows them to have 5 blockers on 5 guys (double play side DT, chip the inside DT, block the end and the OLB playside catching the ILB in the wash). The LBs are frozen in place via the zone read until the OL are on them. So you have to have LBs who can defeat a block (like we did pre-2005).
We had a series of plays from 2009 (I think) where a team repeatedly ran an ISO against Travis Lewis. The fullback blocked him 4 out of 4 times.
IMO, Shannon coming back is the best news of the day.
Remember when it seemed like Josh Heupel and Major Applewhite were on track some day to be head coaches on opposite sidelines of the RRS? The fun story of college football as the former QBs rise in the coaching rankings at their alma maters?
Pepperidge Farm remembers.
Remember this is an OU scale, not general scale. An OU scale means someone like Mike Coats would be considered average (where he'd be all world at most schools). OU has a tradition of having dominating linebackers so when your LB corps would be ranked 3rd to 4th in conference, that is below average. From 1999 to 2005 we had good linebacker play (meaning there were multiple guys on the field that were good OU linebackers). From 2006 to 2007 we field one good OU linebacker (out of 3). Since that point, we haven't fielded an average OU linebacker much less an average OU linebacker corps.
We ran a Man Press in 1999, a Tampa 2 (4-2-5) from 2000 to 2004, finishing with a 4-3 Man Under Variant during his last years. Every single year since 1999 under BV, we were in some kind of zone. In that time, our LBs have never covered WRs (nor have they covered TEs over the middle either heyo!).
Seems like forever since we have had a dominant LB like Lofton. I think Reynolds would have been a great one too had he not blown out both knees. I think it's telling when a walk-on like Gastelum gets on the field and looks like the best LB we have had in a long time when it comes to reading a play and being in the right place.
I would argue Austin Box would be/would have been a typical OU linebacker in his senior season. Other than that I can't disagree with your analysis, JKM. Bigger question is how do we fix?
This is kind of a pointless argument. Regardless of how good LB play was or wasn't under Venables, the fact is that it has been poor under Kish. Travon Austin ran for a billion yards against us in 2012 and we couldn't stop the run all year. 2013 we were a little better against the run, but were far from outstanding. Gave up huge yards against ND, and were honestly getting bullied in the run game by Bama in the bowl game.
This year they were average in the run game (largely because teams barely tried to run against us given how bad our secondary play was), and had multiple coverage problems and missed tackles against the pass. This was with a first round pick playing in front of them at Nose, and a couple other future NFL guys on the DL. And with virtually everybody returning for a second year in the system, except for Shannon.
On top of that, recruiting has been subpar, and several of the highly rated recruits that we have landed have not primarily been recruited by Kish.
Kish has done at least as bad a job with our LBs as Norvell did with the WRs or Heupel did with the QBs. And it isn't good enough for OU. Especially if we're going to run a 3-4 defense where we need the LBs to step up as big time playmakers.
With all the blame--much of it justified--thrown at our coaches of late, I cannot help but think we've had quite the storm of off-field drama: Mixon, Shannon, DGB, the death of Austin Box, serious injuries to major pieces of the player puzzle. Considering it all, it's really kind of remarkable we've been as good as we have. This season we finally cracked, I think, and this group didn't respond well to the pressure.
I wasn't able to catch the press conference so I didn't hear the question about the vacation. When did this scrutinized vacation take place?
Beware the man who would rule you for your own good. He will never cease. He will regulate every aspect of your life, destroy your liberty and enslave you, and sleep well convinced that he has made the world a better place.
Yes, I know that were were a dominant zone heavy team. Which turned out to be a liability against some of the spread offenses that we faced in the later years. But there were a handful of times when we had LBs getting matched up with slot receivers, and it generally resulted in big plays (which is why we were forced to almost always play some form of zone coverage, regardless of how good our CBs were).
During the bye week before the TCU game
Yeah, these are big ones, for sure. Very surprised. Also surprised about Mike. I thought he was going to turn over everyone on D but Montgomery.
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