Will Mark Stoops Bring The Pass Rush Back To Florida State?

It all just depends on how fast the players can pick it up…
EXCITING!

I hate to sound like a whiner, but PLEASEEEE make our D better. Last year was so frustrating. It was like watching our basketball team on offense. Just plain brutal.

I was an economics major at FSU for all of 20 minutes. But the one thing I took away from that line of thought was that ANY graph needs to have a baseline of 0. Otherwise, it is fundamentally flawed. These two bar graphs have baselines of 3.5 and 2.5 percent respectively. Bit of a pet peeve of mine…

Here’s a look at who is getting it done in preventing sacks on offense and getting them on defense as a function of their differences:

(data source: the above article and Bud’s 2009 Offense Review piece)

“FSU’s defense doesn’t have that dominant defensive end and that is what’s *ONE OF THE THINGS wrong with the defense.”

There is absolutely no doubt that bigger, stronger, and smarter DT’s in the middle will collapse the pocket and push back their blockers into the QB’s face and block some of the passing lanes. Throw in some well timed zone blitzes, and a good zone-based secondary where the players know their assignments and know how to pass off receivers while continuing to maintain coverage in their zone, and I expect our defense to become a top third ranked defense by 2011, instead of the defensive laughingstock of the NCAA we fielded last season.

However, I don’t believe anyone will argue that a well coached, smart, and fast defensive end is also instrumental in reaching that goal, and that the loss of Everette Brown was a huge factor in our defense collapse to ineptness.

In the 13 games he started in 2008, Everette accounted for 13.5 sacks (#4 in the nation), 3 QBH, 21.5 TFL, forced 4 fumbles and recovered one, had 30 unassisted tackles with another 6 assists for a total of 36 tackles, broke up 2 pass attempts, and defended 2 passes.

The loss of this type of dominating player is only one of the main reasons why FSU finished ranked nationally 33rd in 2008 [in simple total defense without any advanced metrics] and dropped to #108 in 2009, after Brown forsake us for the NFL.

This is why, all things even, a defensive end with speed off the edge, while indeed an old technique that college coaches can scheme around if not back up by a solid secondary and LB’s, is essential and unquestionably very important for any successful defense to have.

What I would find interesting would be to see is the difference between the first graph (ACC Sack Frequency) in the story compared to the same graph for 2008.

Stoops finished first in sacks in his conference and FSU finished last. Those kind of results are hard to skew.

I agree some sites are discouraging simply due to the clueless rhetoric of some fans. Maybe it is designed that way. Sign up for the real stuff and getaway from the nonsense. It is hard to imagine any large segment of the fan base actually advocating keeping the status quo at FSU last year.

Maybe the defense can pick up the scheme faster than we believe right? FSU is due for some kind of miracle. It can’t continue to be walking miles of bad road.

I’d like to know what sort of multiples we’ll be running (and why); how much man we’ll be running; and if our players’ experience playing man under Mickey will help playing man under Stoops. The upshot, however, is that I probably won’t be able to understand everything about his D!

can we expect that when we run man it will be Cover 2 man, and not Man Free? Possibly some Cover 1 Robber similar to Saban?

Last year (ok, laster) our defense found myriad ways to not stop anyone. Consequently, in many games we were behind, tied, or barely ahead. So the defense rarely got to play downhill.

If our offense is as good as last year (damn, laster), and our defense can make stops, force turnovers, etc. once in a while – we should find ourselves in better situations with commanding leads and force our opponents into playing more one-dimensionally on offense. For example the late 3rd quarter/ 4th quarter of the BYU game and the end of the WVU game. And all of the 2008 Maryland game.

If we can do that a few more times this year, our defensive ranking (NCAA not so much DFEI which adjusts for garbage time) will improve accordingly. Even DFEI will improve however somewhat – playing defense with a 21-14 lead is much easier than when you’re down by 10 or so (like we were against BC or UF). The opponent has the advantage of running their entire playbook at you at that point.

What do you think Bud? Is that stretching it?

that long lost art form that hasn’t been seen in ages at Doak Campbell. Last year our defense performed blitzes that were ill-timed, poorly planned, and poorly executed. I think some guys hit it on the nail above with some of their comments as well. FrankDNole’s assessment of the end position is accurate and I believe we have some ends that can perform at Everette Brown’s level. The improvement of the entire defensive line will be crucial however into how well our overall defense performs. GraniteStateNoles comment that playing from behind last year was not helpful for our defensive ranking was also on point. If we can gain some leads this year and make some opposing teams offense predictable then I think we can improve our ranking as well this year. I saw Arizona play a few times (my wife is from AZ) and their defense has always been impressive. A lot of diehard AZ fans were hoping they could get back to the “Desert Swarm” defensive years. Expect to see a lot of zone with blitzes mixed in throughout. He also uses fire zone blitzes. Multiple alignments of 4-3 and 3-4 should be expected as well and all of Stoops’s alignments are built to confuse the qb. The talent level here compared to AZ’s talent though is noticably different(as you noted above Bud) and if the defense can improve at least to top 50 then we are going in the right direction. Anything in the top 30 next year and I might pass out. It should be noted as well some AZ fans believe that Mike Stoops was the real man behind the Wildcat’s defense and Mark was simply a figurehead. I never saw that and I expect our defense as well as our blitzing to improve.