Tennessee defense observations

[EliteBlue]

1000% agree. Dont mind a draw here or there on pass sets as they can break some nice runs against agressive pass rushes, but otherwise love the quick hitters with a guy like Chris and against a team like UT that loves to blitz to cover a little bit of weakness up front it is the right strategy.

Also love the tweak Scangarello added with bringing CRod up to fullback against MSU on short yardage. Just drives me nuts to see almost every team nowadays walk the ball back 4 yards to a stand still RB on short yardage giving the Dline 1 to 2 steps of penetration before they even get started. When did that idea start? CRod is devastatingly hard to stop on under center short handoffs for short yardage. Helps your Oline too.

Exactly.

As far as “when it started”. I think it likely stems from wanting to capitalize on PA as much as possible. The same as it giving the LBs an extra second or two to see the run play develop when the handoff does happen…it also freezes them there while waiting on the QB/RB mesh point…so when the QB keeps and turns to survey the field it has given the receivers an extra second or 2 to get into their routes and held the LBs from immediately dropping into coverage.

May weaken the run game slightly but gives an edge to the pass game. That’s my best guess on how it became the norm

 

[K_TIME]

Exactly.

As far as “when it started”. I think it likely stems from wanting to capitalize on PA as much as possible. The same as it giving the LBs an extra second or two to see the run play develop when the handoff does happen…it also freezes them there while waiting on the QB/RB mesh point…so when the QB keeps and turns to survey the field it has given the receivers an extra second or 2 to get into their routes and held the LBs from immediately dropping into coverage.

May weaken the run game slightly but gives an edge to the pass game. That’s my best guess on how it became the norm

Yeah...but play action requires the Oline to pass protect a bit longer assuming the DLine doesn't respect the run fake and that is our kryptonite.....we just can't protect very long to allow Levis to throw the ball to our good WR core.

So I usually love play action but this year's team it has proven to hurt us more than help us over the year. If we could hold the TE to chip on the edge rusher...I'm probably for play action. But Flax/Horsey just can't hold up that long on edge rushers to allow for play action a ton during a game.