If they had just played an exclusive 4-3 Cover 2, they wouldn't have been 102nd overall in defense (or whatever they were), giving up 447.9 yards per game. Instead, they tried to run a defense with a coordinator who didn't know it and they put players in positions to get their asses kicked.
-A 3 man front requires 3 man eaters up front who can force opposing OLines to double team them; Craig Roh was woefully inadequate given his size.
-An inexperienced MLB in Kenny Demens struggled to read and react before one of the OLineman got to him and locked him down. He didn't have a ton of time since our DLine wasn't made up of gigantic DTs who could eat up blockers.
-When the opposition did throw, we had our #6 WR starting at one corner and a slew of freshmen on the other side.
-We didn't blitz nearly enough behind our 3 man front, and so we asked a reserve WR and a bunch of freshmen to cover the other team's receivers for 4+ seconds, which was a nearly impossible task.
-Guys are a year older, more experienced, and hopefully better. Even when the right play was called, gaffes were made that could have altered games. Kovacs dropping a pick 6 against Iowa that would have put us up 14. On Iowa's final FG drive, a third down dump off becomes a big gain after Avery missed the tackle that would have forced a punt and given us a shot to win with the last possession. We'll still see mistakes made by players, just hopefully fewer of them.
The job of a coach is to put players in the best positition to succeed. Last year's personnel was in no way, shape, or form put in the best positition to succeed in that scheme. It wasn't the scheme necessarily that was destined to fail, but the players we had weren't built to run it. I was in favor of keeping RR as head coach and doing what Illinois did to Ron Zook, and tell him to fire his DC. I think a guy who understands the 3-3-5 and can teach it to kids while running it on gameday would have provided a pretty big improvement. Heck, I think our personnel right now is best fitted for a TCU style 4-2-5 (Roh, Martin, Campbell, RVB, Demens, Fitzgerald, Woolfolk, Avery, Floyd, C. Gordon, Johnson/Kovacs/Robinson/T.Gordon) but that's a different discussion for a different day.
By going to the 4 man front we should see the following immediate benefits.
-more pressure on the QB by virtue of nearly always having a 4 man pass rush.
-better run defense by not asking Craig Roh and Ryan Van Bergen to always have to take on 2 blockers.
-less pressure on our LB b/c they'll be more than 3 yards off the line of scrimmage and won't have an opposing team's guard on top of them after they bypass our DLine and get to the seocnd level. This will also allow them more flexibility in blitzing.
-less pressure on our secondary b/c they won't have to cover for as long, and they won't feel as much burden to stop the run. Hopefully doublemoves consistently working are a thing of the past. We'll still see instances of man coverages getting burned with Woolfolk coming off a horrific injury and a lost year of playing and Avery still only being a sophomore. But it should be a noticeable improvement.
-Plus our offense won't be snapping the ball when the play clock is still at 25, cutting down on the number of plays the opposition runs against us.
Shoot, just by limiting the number of plays run and the big plays allowed we'll see big improvements. A 50 yard per game improvement on defense seems pretty big, but in what games last year DIDN'T we give up a 50 yard gain?! I think that our starters have the ability to be a middle of the pack Big 10 defense next year. (Questions surrounding Will Campbell, our OLBs and still inexperienced secondary keep us just hoping for that) By last year's numbers, that's about 350 yards given up per game and 23.5 points. That's how much better I think the defense will be and why.
