Pelini did a nice job at Big 12 media day. I just like to hear the guy talk defense. Cogent, intelligent, very little cliche. In reading his comments, I was absolutely struck by his identification of the distinct folly of two of our longest tenured defensive coordinators. I'll be curious to see if you see it as well.
Q. Following up on what you said about spread offenses. What will it take for college defenses to catch up to what the spread's been over the last several years?
Well, I hear a lot about spread offenses. And the bottom line is every spread offense is different. And there's not one -- there's very few that are the same. Everybody features different things and they obviously have different personnel.
Defensively you have to be very multiple to be able to effectively deal with everything you're going to see on a week-to-week basis. And you can't just line up and have one base defense and expect to stop everything that you're going to see over the course of 12, 13 games. And you have to be multiple. You have to really teach your kids conceptually and teach your kids to be able to react and adapt on game day, because things are going to change. It's ever-evolving on offense and you have to have the same flexibility on defense. You have to be very flexible and multiple and your kids have to have a good understanding of what you're doing so they can make the changes on game day and easily make adjustments.
Two words for you: Gene Chizik
Q: Is it all scheme or what is the key, the one thing that you have to do to stop those offenses, maybe one or two things?
I think the key to playing good defense is evaluating what exactly an offense is trying to accomplish and what their strengths are and you have to develop a game plan to offset what they're trying to accomplish and take it away from them. So they have to get out of their comfort zone.
And I believe this. Defensively it's not just what you do, it's not all about scheme. You can -- everybody wants to -- every coach out there wants to have the pencil last. When you're playing on Saturday, you don't have that luxury. You're playing, in this conference, there's a lot of good coaches and they're very well coached. You're not always going to have the pencil last. It's not just what you do but how you do it. You can't just go get so wrapped up in outscheming the opponent. If you do that, you'll forget how you do it and forget about technique. Technique and fundamentals are essential.
And if you're playing very sound technique-wise and you have good fundamentals and you teach them, you have your guys understanding your scheme, you'll be able to match up and deal with any problems that offenses can associate or going to make you deal with a particular Saturday.
Two words for you: Carl Reese
The Tampa 2 Doppleganger and the Mad Scientist - may Muschamp erase their memories forever. Amen.