4th and 9 Defensive Call

[Willy75]

The bigger issue IMO was waiting until they passed midfield to start bringing the pressure. We should have went all out right away. You want a quick stop or a quick score. They took 2 mins off the clock just to get to midfield that we could have used to counter their score.

Yes, look at what FSU did to Cal last night when the Bears (needing a td) were driving late. Constant pressure.

 

[HRE Otto IV]

It would be interesting to know what percentage of drives end up in points. I feel like the FGs are masking how poor our D has been.

Ohio scored on 5 of 10 drives
GA Tech scored on 4 of 10 thanks to a missed FG
Stanford scored on 5 of 11

So overall it is 14 of 33 drives. Is that normal? For comparison our O has scored on 15 of 30 drives with a missed FG.


I consider our O to be pretty good. We are 27th in FBS ypg. While our 3 opponents are 81st, 49th, and 95th. But there isn't much of a difference in scoring drives.

So what happens when we play a good O? Luckily there aren't many on our schedule: 116th, 99th, 11th, 63rd, 50th, 94th, 58th, 2nd.

 

[swish7]

I had no faith in our D getting a stop. I wanted us to go all out from the get go that drive. Cause havoc. Who cares if you give up a big play, as you have the time to score yourself. Rather have the ball with a chance to win than being helpless as the clock rolls down. If we were up 3 that is a different story. But only 1 point, IMO there was more risk being passive.

Agree

After the 1st chunk play, I felt we were toast.

If you are going to river boat gamble on inexperienced coaches at nearly every position, and sometimes be aggressive on O, why are we running the D like it's 4 D chess?

It's disappointing that players like Barron aren't making that dynamic in the moment decision to go where the action is & try to disrupt things.

 

[shu 49]

Yes, look at what FSU did to Cal last night when the Bears (needing a td) were driving late. Constant pressure.

I agree kills me

 

[phil77]

The thing i see with Robinson is he doesnt seem to be a full pressure guy. I was hoping when he said he wants to hunt i was expecting a ton of pressure but he is a bit more prevent guy which we all know prevents u from winning yet coaches still go to it. kills me

I was thinking about this reply and came to the conclusion that he doesn't believe in blitz because he at his core is a defensive line coach and he believes that if you have enough people to cover the passing threats then his defensive line will get home. The base defense works really well if you can get home with the front 4 if you can't then good QBs will have all the time in the world to pick apart your zone.

 

[Millhouse]

I was thinking about this reply and came to the conclusion that he doesn't believe in blitz because he at his core is a defensive line coach and he believes that if you have enough people to cover the passing threats then his defensive line will get home. The base defense works really well if you can get home with the front 4 if you can't then good QBs will have all the time in the world to pick apart your zone.

It's a factory approach.

 

[SU91]

4th & 9 with an inaccurate, scrambling QB. Bring the house. Very simple. Anything else is overthinking.

 

[DomeHolmes]

There's an old axiom in sports - never let the best player on the opposing team beat you, in this case #13. First, I agree with all who say we should have brought pressure up the middle on the play. Instead we had 8 defensive players on 5 receivers. 2 of those defensive players should have been on #13. If that was not the coverage the defensive coordinator takes the blame.

I had the uncomfortable feeling that we left too much time on the clock when we scored the go-ahead TD.

Agree with your take. Since we left too much time, we could’ve made better use of our timeouts to get the ball again. Fran should have called the first time out before the 2 minute time out. Regroup to make sure everyone’s on the same page, and we could still give up one first down. Plus, you don’t need to use your timeouts if it gets to third down because Stanford needs to take time outs then. So theoretically, we could’ve given up two first downs and a FG and still had some time to get back in field goal range ourselves.

We played it as if we were going to stop them, or lose. No third option.

 

[anomander]

I want to know what Barron’s assignment on that play was.

Barron and Sparrow show blitz but back out of it.

They put a RB in motion and Clark goes with him. Not sure if the two RBs were back there assuming blitz and they used motion once Barron backed out (he backed out like a step or two ahead of Sparrow).

Ball snapped. Diggs immediately takes himself out of the play getting way too upfield. He does this a lot, btw. Has to work on this.

Leaving our guy on an island in man isn’t acceptable, but I have to know what Barron’s assignment was bc he ended up in no man’s land.

Basically out coached us for the win

 

[Louie and Bouie]

It would be interesting to know what percentage of drives end up in points. I feel like the FGs are masking how poor our D has been.

Ohio scored on 5 of 10 drives
GA Tech scored on 4 of 10 thanks to a missed FG
Stanford scored on 5 of 11

So overall it is 14 of 33 drives. Is that normal? For comparison our O has scored on 15 of 30 drives with a missed FG.


I consider our O to be pretty good. We are 27th in FBS ypg. While our 3 opponents are 81st, 49th, and 95th. But there isn't much of a difference in scoring drives.

So what happens when we play a good O? Luckily there aren't many on our schedule: 116th, 99th, 11th, 63rd, 50th, 94th, 58th, 2nd.

We are 66th in the country in defensive points per drive. Middle of the pack.

 

[HRE Otto IV]

We are 66th in the country in defensive points per drive. Middle of the pack.

That isn’t the same

 

[DomeHolmes]

We are 66th in the country in defensive points per drive. Middle of the pack.

Good info, what site do you use to find that stat? We are definitely trying not to give up the big play. It’s not as bad as people think. Other than the Ohio fiasco, (and the last pass on 4th down Friday) we have played “bend don’t break”. Not giving up long touchdowns and holding people to field goals. Hate watching the easy underneath stuff, but it forces teams to string together 10 - 12 plays to score a TD. Sooner or later teams make mistakes.

We are giving up just over two touchdowns per game. (A touchdown every 29 plays). We have only given up 4 plays of 30 yards or more. How many times under Dino have our defenses stopped a lot of short stuff only to give up the big play? This year tackles for loss appeared to be way down because of our scheme. Friday night several times we only had five in the box despite Stanford running the ball well. But they only had one offensive TD.

FWIW as good as Clemson has looked at the last few weeks, they played a tomato can and an underachieving NC State team and are still giving up 25 yards a game more than us! Our defense is the right defense for a team like ours that had good offense. Need to get the early lead.

 

[FrancoPizza]

It would be interesting to know what percentage of drives end up in points. I feel like the FGs are masking how poor our D has been.

Ohio scored on 5 of 10 drives
GA Tech scored on 4 of 10 thanks to a missed FG
Stanford scored on 5 of 11

So overall it is 14 of 33 drives. Is that normal? For comparison our O has scored on 15 of 30 drives with a missed FG.


I consider our O to be pretty good. We are 27th in FBS ypg. While our 3 opponents are 81st, 49th, and 95th. But there isn't much of a difference in scoring drives.

So what happens when we play a good O? Luckily there aren't many on our schedule: 116th, 99th, 11th, 63rd, 50th, 94th, 58th, 2nd.

Ncst is 11th???

 

[FrancoPizza]

FWIW as good as Clemson has looked at the last few weeks, they played a tomato can and an underachieving NC State team and are still giving up 25 yards a game more than us!

You don’t think playing Georgia is going to skew the stats?

 

[HRE Otto IV]

Ncst is 11th???

Pitt. Holy Cross was not included.

 

[Louie and Bouie]

Good info, what site do you use to find that stat? We are definitely trying not to give up the big play. It’s not as bad as people think. Other than the Ohio fiasco, (and the last pass on 4th down Friday) we have played “bend don’t break”. Not giving up long touchdowns and holding people to field goals. Hate watching the easy underneath stuff, but it forces teams to string together 10 - 12 plays to score a TD. Sooner or later teams make mistakes.

We are giving up just over two touchdowns per game. (A touchdown every 29 plays). We have only given up 4 plays of 30 yards or more. How many times under Dino have our defenses stopped a lot of short stuff only to give up the big play? This year tackles for loss appeared to be way down because of our scheme. Friday night several times we only had five in the box despite Stanford running the ball well. But they only had one offensive TD.

FWIW as good as Clemson has looked at the last few weeks, they played a tomato can and an underachieving NC State team and are still giving up 25 yards a game more than us! Our defense is the right defense for a team like ours that had good offense. Need to get the early lead.

BCF Toys - 2024 Points Per Drive

www.bcftoys.com

 

[Millhouse]

It would be interesting to know what percentage of drives end up in points. I feel like the FGs are masking how poor our D has been.

Ohio scored on 5 of 10 drives
GA Tech scored on 4 of 10 thanks to a missed FG
Stanford scored on 5 of 11

So overall it is 14 of 33 drives. Is that normal? For comparison our O has scored on 15 of 30 drives with a missed FG.


I consider our O to be pretty good. We are 27th in FBS ypg. While our 3 opponents are 81st, 49th, and 95th. But there isn't much of a difference in scoring drives.

So what happens when we play a good O? Luckily there aren't many on our schedule: 116th, 99th, 11th, 63rd, 50th, 94th, 58th, 2nd.

With McCord, sign me up for allowing teams to score 3/7 of a TD, that will work

Unless we are up by one at the end of the game cough

 

[Maisel123!]

Not bringing the blitz on 4th and 9, when it was the blitz that put Stanford in that situation, was absolutely inexcusable. A true meathead coaching decision. Gave the game away.

It reminded me of a NYGiants v SF49ers some years ago. Giants had a 4 point lead, under 1 minute on the clock, SF with no timeouts at their own 20. Single coverage on the NFL's best ever receiver: Jerry Rice 80 yard TD catch. Still can't believe single coverage in that situation.

 

[tbonezone]

really can't fault the dbacks on the td catch or the 4th down grab to ayomanor. perfect throws and great catches. ayomanor outplayed gadsden jr. in the draft pool today.

 

[DomeHolmes]

You don’t think playing Georgia is going to skew the stats?

Georgia had less than 450, and Clemson is giving up 415. they didn’t skew the stats that much. If Clemson gave up 400 to Georgia, our numbers would still be better. Also, Clemson gave up over 400 to the same NC State team that Tennessee held to less than 150. (Both extensively subbed in the second half).

The point I was making was that we have a high octane offense, and the type of defense we are playing was more than enough to win the last two games.

 

[upperdeck]

The offense didnt do enough to win the game when the D keeps it to under 25. Score a TD after the pick or dont get called for the holding or perhaps the phantom roughing call goes our way.

 

[kcsu]

The offense didnt do enough to win the game when the D keeps it to under 25. Score a TD after the pick or dont get called for the holding or perhaps the phantom roughing call goes our way.

Agreed. Sure the D should have taken 13 out of the last play but they played well enough to win. The O crapped the bed

 

[Pyle]

Syracuse football DC Elijah Robinson on 4th-and-9 defense: ‘I wouldn’t go back and change anything’

Robinson said he

www.syracuse.com

He's losing my support fast.

 

[OrangeinBoston]

Syracuse football DC Elijah Robinson on 4th-and-9 defense: ‘I wouldn’t go back and change anything’

Robinson said he

www.syracuse.com

He's losing my support fast.

Agree. That is nothing but Robinson's ego talking. If you are led around by your ego, you're due for a fall.

 

[CNYGuy]

Agree. That is nothing but Robinson's ego talking. If you are led around by your ego, you're due for a fall.

This is nothing more than a coach supporting Clarance Lewis and saying he has confidence in him in man coverage with the game on the line.

Don’t read too much into it. Coaches use these to send a message to their teams.

I said it in a different thread, but I can’t believe we’re still talking about this. Syracuse.com has now used three interview sessions (postgame, Monday and Tuesday) to write about one play from last Friday. Let’s move it along.