So not to beat a dead horse but...

at least as the sole coordinator

and do whole heartedly agree with you that this has definitely lead to the drop off in high ranked defenses in the Big XII. However I will follow that up by saying that Cosh needs to realize that while better than last years squad this years squad is still not on the athletic level needed to play his scheme…I can’t think of many defenses in the country this year that are at the needed level. If you take a really hard look at the defensive scheme in place it’s not very hard to beat because it’s passive. That statement right there already causes reason for concern. When i played in HS I was a D-End and LB and we were constantly drilled on being aggressive. I mean really that’s what defense is all about being aggressive, physical and bringing the wood. While the physicality of our defense this year has been nice the lack of aggression has not. I understand it’s done to keep from giving up the big play, keeping everything in front of you, and waiting for the offense to make a mistake and then jump on it. The problem with that coaching philosophy is it will never work with any kind of success in our conference due to the level of these offenses and how well coached the players in these systems are.

The defense being this way affects other aspects of the game as well. One of these being the offensive play calling. Snyder is a great coach and he sees and realizes the ability of our defense within this scheme. That’s why we used such a meticulous ball control offense because Klein, Hubert, Harper, Lockett, Thompson, and the rest showed all year that despite what everyone thinks the big play ability of this offense was there just not taken advantage of. LHCBS is an offensive schemeing mastermind all the different wrinkles he comes up with are amazing. That being said he can only take advantage of so many of those when he has to be conservative and not take chances with the ball. I mean lets be honest when our offense isn’t controlling the clock and our defense spends alot of time on the field it isn’t pretty.

Finally I don’t know who is teaching our defensive back how to run zone coverage but generally when you ran a zone similar to cover 2, which is what our regular pass coverage appears to be at least a derivative of. The LBs are generally used to watch the flats and middle of the field…staying UNDERNEATH the short crossing routes, corners jam off the line and drop about 8-10 yards (depending on the routes) staying OVER the hitch, slant, and out routes and under the deep crossing, post, corner, and go routes. Hopefully they will be reading the quarterbacks eyes to make a play on the ball (Nigel Malone) and finally the safeties drop into the deep halves and stay on top of everything. This coverage is designed that if ran properly is makes the quarterback throw into tight windows with every receiver ideally having a defender underneath and over the top of them.

There are two major concerns I have with our using this as a base defensive scheme.
1) If the defense is unable to generate a good pass rush with the front four you’re going to get burned often. All players and coaches know that these pass heavy spread offenses are very reliant on timing so the faster the ball comes out it will usually hurt the plays timing and inhibits the QB from going through all of his progressions comfortably.
2) How does it make sense to run this when our base defense is 4-3? It doesn’t LBs like Arthur Brown, that are dynamite against the run and have the physical skills required to drop into coverage, don’t just grow on trees. Also we don’t have the speed at safety to run with some of the better offenses ie ARKANSAS that we have to play. It was nice to see them both recognized by the Big XII today because not getting pressure on a QB like Jones or Weeden and giving them time to read and hit their playmakers accurately can make anyone look worse than they really are.

One final thing this is BY NO MEANS AT ALL a dig against any player what-so-ever. This is a criticism of the coaching because it has been obivous, and painfully so how much more succesful our defense has been against pass heavy teams when we brought +1 or 2 on disguised blitzes. It was more succesful from what i saw than when we dropped 7 back in coverage.

Ok I’m off my soap box now sorry.

One final thought…you want to see how to have a balanced defense that can defend the spread and the physical running game. Find videos and write-ups that break down the basics of Gary Patterson’s 4-2-5 that TCU runs, its very impressive.