11W faithful, I've been pondering this question a bit this season and some of the comments from Urban Meyer and Kwon McMillian regarding WMU and their ability to run on our interior defense this weekend reminded me of it. It seems as though every game this year we hear afterwards "They (opposing team) did a lot of things we weren't prepared for/things we didn't see on film". Has anyone else noticed this?
Granted, playing Ohio State is always going to be the proverbial Super Bowl for every team on our schedule, but I don't recall hearing about this so frequently in the last. Examples are:
VT in 2014 - the notorious "bear" defense. Obviously we weren't prepared for it, though the necessary corrections were made this season.
Hawaii/NIU 2015 - the now pesky 3-4 defensive scheme. It seemed like NIU in particular wreaked havoc on our offense with this formation; other examples would be the last couple times we've played Indiana.
WMU 2015 - the gashing of our interior run defense, which was basically left on an island with only 6 in the box due to our safeties and NBs all spread out in attempting to slow down WMUs 2 legit NFL WRs (which they did, to their credit).
First and foremost, don't take this as criticism. It's not. I'm a guy on the Internet with a rudimentary understanding of schemes, personnel and formations. I know the difference between a Cover 2 zone and Cover 2 man under, but would have a hard time identifying a "bear" defense from a standard 3-4 without pausing my DVR and looking for where the DTs line up over the guards. Basically, I don't know jack compared to the brilliant minds on our staff, so I'm not going there. It does, however, seem that opposing teams are finding ways to exploit certain aspects of our defense AND offense. Chalk it up to good coaching, but again, I don't recall hearing that so much until the last two years. Maybe I just pay more attention to that kind of stuff now than before.
Anyone else notice this? Maybe some guys with strategic knowledge can chime in. Basically, how can a team like Wisconsin or Oregon have zero impact to our offense with their 3-4 while Hawaii and NIU stump us to a certain extent? Is it really all about what was practiced in a given week? More importantly, Indiana has lined up in 4-3 all year. If they come out in 3-4, is it going to give us fits?
