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Message: [QUOTE="DomeHolmes, post: 5510995, member: 10113"] I was pleasantly surprised by the aggressive defense we played. So I went back to look to see what kind of yards were gained against our new “aggressive” defense versus how many were gained versus “prevent/15 yard cushion” defense. In the first half Clemson gained 240 yards. Over the first 24:40 they gained 120 yards and in the last 5:20 they gained 120 yards, against our “prevent defense.” This was my only real criticism of Robinson for the game. Why go away from what worked so early? After we made it 24-7, he went into the prevent defense and you saw the big cushions again. It took four minutes, but Clemson dinked and dunked their way down the field, like teams have been doing. The next series Clemson got it back with 30 seconds (and we properly went into a prevent defense) but a horrible angle by Kerr (#10) allowed a six or 7 yard gain to turn into a 40 yard gain. That one was not coaching it was execution. In the second half, after we made it 34-14, we correctly went into a soft coverage defense again. Of the 263 yards gained in the half, 180 of those came in the last 17 minutes when we went into soft coverage defense. All we really needed was one first down in each of our final 3 drives to make that defense work, and that’s exactly what we got. So for the game, 203 of their yards came in 38 minutes of aggressive defense, and 300 came in 22 minutes of soft coverage, but again that was ok here. Why did this make sense? Clemson‘s first touchdown came on a safety blitz leaving Buxton one on one on their top receiver. That is the feast or famine of playing aggressive, and for the most part it worked, but you don’t want to risk those plays up 20. Also, Clemson was running out of time and had an easy 10 yard completion if they wanted it (on the interception play). We had a disguised man coverage turned into a 2 deep zoned and got an interception as a result. Had they taken the easy 10 yards they would’ve still been in the game, but the lead allows you to play this defense. A few notes too: -we clearly missed Grant. He was the best defensive player on the field Saturday . -Trimble would’ve had three sacks against a less mobile quarterback. He dove at the heels, but Klubnik was too elusive. As he learns the position better, he will break down better hopefully. -Samuel seems much more comfortable playing tight coverage than game 1. -Long to me is better than Deuce already -Connecticut quarterback was not mobile at all. We would not have had to sweat that game out if we played this defense against them. Very interested to see how aggressive we come out against Duke. [/QUOTE]

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