Defense

It’s gotta be a bit of everything really.

Experience – DL – Morgan was the only one with real game experience. After injuries we have two sophomores and a freshman plugging the middle (TJ Barnes, Logal Walls, Jason Peters). While we have a couple Juniors on the end beside Morgan, neither of them got much PT because of our 3 NFL D-linemen. Plus we lost 2 DLs to injury (Anderson, Hall)

LBs – Sedric Griffin was really the only guy with experience. Jefferson had played in 20 games, but only had 30 tackles. Kyle Jackson had the second most experience to Griffin but got hurt. Ended up having to play Sylvester (never started, 11 career tackles), and a couple of Freshmen.

Secondary – More experience here, but not incredibly experienced. Bigger problem was line giving the QB all day to throw, although being out of position hurt some too.

Overall, if you look up and down our roster, we have very few seniors and a truckload of freshmen. Only had one senior who played – Griffin.

Injuries – definitely hurt, but no worse than what most teams face. Really, you should have replaced “injuries” with “injuries/depth.” We got beat up pretty badly on the line and linebacker positions, but the hard part was not having people to replace them. Even when we had other people step up, we lost depth that we could have drawn on to keep our D fresh.

Talent – this one takes the cake for me. I don’t see us getting a pass rush aside from Derrick Morgan. To me, that’s not coaching, that’s just the fact that we can’t get a pass rush. Morgan is getting double teamed every play and still gets sacks. The end on the other side is getting single teamed and isn’t getting sacked. I can’t remember how many times I saw Mario Edwards or Brad Jefferson miss tackles for one reason or another. No pass rush + missed tackles = bad defense. Also seemed like we were missing coverage assignments at time too. While you might be able to coach general technique, you can’t coach around missed tackles.

Coaching – maybe a close second. At times, it seemed like our scheme just wasn’t adjusting. uga. Clemson. Miami. Miss St. FSU was particularly weird, we threw just about every scheme we could think of at them and they kept moving the ball.

There were times, however, where the defense looked great. First half against VT. Whole game against UNC. A good portion of the game against Wake.

So I’m not sure entirely if coaching or talent is to blame. I’m certain we don’t have a truckload of all-americans. I’m not ready to write all of them off as no-talent hacks, either. Sometimes we seemed to get outschemed (uga cut back runs up the middle) and others it just seemed like we were giving the quarterback an eon to pick us apart. (FSU, Miami). Any QB will pick apart most defenses with that much time.

We have a relatively inexperienced group. Talent also comes with experience. We also had to change defensive schemes a couple of times this year because of personnel. We’ll be much deeper on defense next year (year of experience + RSs & true freshmen, losing only Sedrick and maybe the Morgans). That depth should help all aspects of the above. I’ll be much more confident in a determination if Wommack is to blame at that time.