Where Will the Defense Rank in 2020?

Topic

[Chest]

Here are some stats. TOF = turnovers forced in league play.

2015- S&P 27, FEI 5, TOF 16
2016- S&P 4, FEI 6, TOF 23
2017- S&P 13, FEI 14, TOF 14
2018- S&P 4, FEI 8, TOF 18
2019- S&P 22*,FEI 16, TOF 13

• This topic was modified 2 years, 6 months ago by Chest.

Replies

I think the DL and secondary play will improve but LB remains a question mark. It’ll move up a few spots in FEI but I’ll need to see how the LBs look before I project them as a top ten D.

Agree with the above. I’ll need to see it from the LBs before I completely doog out over the D. But I feel like I can get to serious doog status in a hurry.

I do need to see this D get off the field when it has to though. Stats will probably disagree with me, but it seems like whenever there are “those” plays that are critical, this program d tucks. Hoping Jimmy changes that.

Color me not worried about the ILB.

Last season was essentially worst case scenarios. The expectation was that
Beavers and Welly would be the starters and the odds were that Calvert would be
the likely choice as one of the backups and probably Manu.

We’ll not only did Beavers medically retire, but Calvert gets injured and Danny Hammer has
some sort of strange injury. We essentially end up playing guys that were largely expected to
be 3rd string.

After that pain we now know a couple of things. Sirmon wasn’t ready but he progressed as the season
went along. Tafisi is a hitter but he needs to be strong on his instincts because he’s a bit
lacking in speed. Ulofoshio was the biggest surprise and one of the better guys at getting pressure
on the opposing QB when sent.

This season we should phase Calvert in slowly to make sure his knee is solid. ILB competition should be
great with Danny Hammer, Miki Ah You, Drew Fowler, Tupatala and incoming frosh in the mix.

Getting a lion’s share of the reps is going to require a lot more work this season as compared to last
The starting ILB should be ready and prepared after good practice battles.

The Depth is there…we just need the talent to rise to the top.

Woof wrote:

I think the DL and secondary play will improve but LB remains a question mark. It’ll move up a few spots in FEI but I’ll need to see how the LBs look before I project them as a top ten D.

Quote

Defense only gave up 11 points per game with Ulofoshio as a starter. Four games is a small sample size but we’ve already seen an obvious improvement at ILB. No need to wait till next season. It’s already there and will only get better. Top-5 defense in the country next season. Book it.

I like that confidence Ulofoshio was a game changer still unbelievable it took all year for him to play. But Gregory is still manning the ship so I have little confidence he will play the proper rotation until it’s too late

Eddie was really good against the run, which we struggled with the most with the other ILBs in there, but he was pretty weak against the pass. Hopefully he can improve that in the offseason. I would love to see Danny Hammer take over the other spot, but we have lots of guys there who I think can be at least solid. No matter who it is, should be a huge upgrade over last year, which was the worst ILB play I have ever seen on this team. Worse than 2008 imo.