9 Comments

Just absurdly good offseason content.

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Appreciate it, brother. Thanks for reading!

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I loved this and thought it was great. However I would be remiss to not mention that literally every defense is effectively the same anymore. It’s all 3 true d lineman and 1 swing guy, two true linebackers, and 5 defensive backs. Whether it’s a nickel, 3-3-5, 3-4-4, it really doesn’t matter.

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Hi Eric,

Sorry for the late response; I was taking a little break from checking this before the season gets cranked up. Yeah, totally, I agree with your general point: The basic 2023 college defensive personnel is now "base nickel." And I don't think the 3-3-5 will be much of a change from what NU ran the last few years; the "Caleb Tannor" role from the 2-4-5 is probably now just going to play primarily at the second level as the strong backer instead of being on the line of scrimmage.

Where I do think it will be drastically different is how that personnel is used. The Chinander defense was primarily a two-gap, read-and-react scheme with defenders waiting on the offense to do something and then making decisions based on that. The 3-3-5 will be a one-gap defense where players are attacking the offense. You're going to see more guys shooting into gaps against the run at the snap, you're going to see more blitzing, you're going to see more coverage rotations and pre-snap gap switches. If you watched TCU at all last year, they transitioned from a 2-4-5 in 2021 to a 3-3-5 in '22 and it was a very different style of play. Thanks for the comment!

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Yep. And that has been my preference for years. I was a student-assistant on the defensive side of a little bit under the Pelini's. He was basically doing a lot of this, well ahead of his time. They didn't roll coverages as much, but he was doing things with gap switches and responsibilities, and 1/2 the defense in 2-gap, 1/2 in 1-gap - that no one else was doing yet. He was way ahead of his time and it was very complicated. I barely caught on enough to even talk about it. To be honest, I am not entirely sure the players even truly understood what they were doing. It was typically only someone very smart like Eric Haag, Austin Cassidy, O'Hanlan, or Anthony West that actually "knew" what was going on. The rest just said, "yeah coach I got it," and then went out and made plays. Prince, Dennard, some of those other guys, basically just winged it.

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Incredible stuff here. Thanks for bringing me up to speed on what will surely be an entertaining defense (one way or another).

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Allowing 60-yard gains is technically entertaining!

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Sure is! You officially have me in a full panic over the nose tackle starter.

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I wouldn't panic! The beauty of this defense is it's flexible. Hutmacher is the only "nose" on the roster but you can play with a smaller, faster guy, too. The player Syracuse was rolling out last year was like 270, if I remember. I'd love to just add more experienced d-linemen in general though.

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