Disconnect Between Players and Coaches

[GTripp0012]

Originally Posted by illdefined

you wonder why our scoring offense is so low? because most of our net yards are given to us by 'bend don't break' defenses. and thats exactly what they do.

of all the yards Betts and Mark have racked up, how many of those passes have been TDs? how many Brunell TD passes have been in the endzone and not YAC'ed in? i know, thats not a stat. but its a serious clue to why we've had endzone troubles. Brunell's horizontal game couldn't break through defenses as the field got shorter and that's why all of Brunell's 'productivity' has been utterly moot.

I don't know what constitues a "bend don't break" defense (because no defense tries to be bad with a lot of field behind them and then decides to step it up, so it has to be a philosophy thing), and I'm not sure there's anyway to prove that most of the teams we have played this year do that. I'm not completely sold yet that "bend don't break defense" is a term that the talking heads just made up to describe a defense that seems to get lucky at oppertune times (because luck is a significant part of the game, but no expert wants to admit that). But at the least, it's an interesting theroy.

Brunell's horizontal game was money in the red zone last year as we had no goalline running game early on last season. This season, the only thing that changed was the coordinator (well, and we lost Robert Royal, which is bigger than anyone realizes), so it would be hard to blame the players for any dropoff in redzone efficency. I think one contributing factor is that we have fewer field goals this season because our range has declined significantly. We are doing more punting from inside the opponents 45 this season than any other team.

At least Frost is having a good year.