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The French Connection · Boundary Corner Podcast

• 1:47
  And welcome back to the Boundary Corner podcast.
• 1:50
  Along with my partner, Brian Siegler, I am Curtis Wilson.
• 1:54
  We are a part of the College Huddle Network.
• 1:56
  And this episode, as always, is brought to you by Doctor Jeremy
• 2:00
  Counts down at Counts Family Pharmacy, your friendly
• 2:02
  neighborhood pharmacy three O 1 S Main St. in Blacksburg.
• 2:07
  Bryan, just me and you tonight. It seems like Tally was a late
• 2:11
  tap out for us. Tally was a late tap out.
• 2:14
  We might get him at the end here.
• 2:15
  We'll see. But we're riding a a duo for
• 2:18
  now. About to be a trio in a couple
• 2:19
  minutes here. We have a pretty fun guest
• 2:22
  tonight. Curtis, you've been busy man.
• 2:24
  We I know it's been a couple weeks since we tapped in here.
• 2:28
  Busy dude. Everybody's playing baseball.
• 2:30
  I got home at almost 10:00 last night from a scrimmage.
• 2:34
  The little one start, the middle one starts this week.
• 2:37
  We got a game this weekend. We got to practice this weekend.
• 2:39
  Look, you showed up. Hey.
• 2:43
  You ain't that late. Hell and hot water.
• 2:46
  I fucking thought 9:00 I've seen nine and thought 9 my time and
• 2:52
  then when you like oh Mama was saying I'm like why the fuck
• 2:54
  will he be in so Oh fuck. Man Alabama.
• 2:57
  Problems, Man, Alabama. Problems.
• 2:59
  Well, Tally, he just asked if I'm busy.
• 3:01
  I've been at the baseball field all week.
• 3:03
  How about you? Well, baseball, we had baseball
• 3:06
  this week because it's spring break.
• 3:08
  I feel like spring break is worse for me because there's so
• 3:12
  much other shit that happens. Kids are trying to go places.
• 3:16
  Work has been very busy, which is a good thing.
• 3:20
  So when me working from home, I've learned that my sweet spot
• 3:24
  is getting on early and staying late.
• 3:28
  So it sucks to have to do that, but my sales reflect that it's
• 3:32
  beneficial to do that. So I have been, I'm, I'm
• 3:36
  supposed to be on by 7:45 in the morning.
• 3:39
  I've been getting on at 6:45. And usually when everybody else
• 3:43
  gets on, I've already got about $1000 worth of sales for that
• 3:48
  day. And like I quota, yeah, I quota
• 3:50
  is like 2500 for the day is what you really want to be at.
• 3:53
  So I've been hanging since, since, you know, the weather's
• 3:57
  kind of better. I've been hanging around about
• 4:00
  35 to 4000 a day. Hey, there you go.
• 4:04
  So you, you you closing about half your your day before people
• 4:09
  even show up. Right.
• 4:10
  Yeah, and they're pissed. The dudes, they have to go to
• 4:14
  the office. I've been mad.
• 4:16
  You know, he's getting on. He's getting on at 6:30.
• 4:19
  We can't do that, right? Well.
• 4:24
  Too bad I'm so sad. Too bad.
• 4:26
  You doing business? I'll bet you, Brian, you've been
• 4:29
  busy. Man, not quite drinking from the
• 4:32
  fire hose quite as much as I was with the new position, but but
• 4:35
  still rocking and rolling. Kind of starting to settle in a
• 4:38
  little bit. Had a little fun little happy
• 4:41
  hour tonight. Had some dinner, went up to Easy
• 4:43
  Burger, got some brews at Ardent.
• 4:46
  All my RVA folks are what I'm talking about here so.
• 4:48
  Exactly. Great burger.
• 4:50
  Great. It was a good trip, got a good
• 4:52
  burger, got got a couple beers in me, had some good times with
• 4:55
  some some Co workers and headed home and got this thing ready to
• 4:59
  roll. We are ready to roll in tonight,
• 5:03
  although we lost Ally already in tonight.
• 5:04
  It's a fun one we are going to be having.
• 5:08
  If you have ever read the key play, which probably everybody
• 5:11
  out there watching, listening has Frenching from the bench.
• 5:16
  That's where it was titled long, long time ago, some of the best
• 5:19
  write ups about skiing technique and what was going on with the
• 5:22
  Hokies. Well, he is joining us and I can
• 5:25
  remember, Brian, probably when we started this thing five years
• 5:28
  ago, me and you talked like one day we got to have him on and
• 5:32
  why not now? So for everybody out there, I'm
• 5:36
  going to say this. If you're listening to the
• 5:37
  podcast, I'm highly suggesting you go to YouTube.
• 5:41
  You can watch it because we're going to have some screenshots
• 5:43
  and some things as French pointing us out a few things.
• 5:46
  But without further ado from the key play writer and analyst,
• 5:50
  they call him French. French how you doing tonight
• 5:53
  man? I'm I am upright and ambulatory.
• 5:57
  So that's that's better than I can say for Justin Fuentes
• 6:01
  coaching career. So.
• 6:03
  I'm going to end with the jokes. Singer right out the gate.
• 6:06
  Love that. Sorry, after seeing him at
• 6:09
  Kabuki's talking with Vance Vice in the corner instead of talking
• 6:12
  to this top running back recruit never forgave him.
• 6:15
  There you go respect on that well branch.
• 6:19
  We appreciate you coming on with us tonight and breaking down
• 6:22
  this new defenses of Sam Cephas. Y'all know I'm a butcher?
• 6:26
  That name so much. Except if you have a you're.
• 6:28
  Right there with me. I've misspelled it 40 times
• 6:31
  already. If he ever comes on I'm
• 6:33
  literally going to have the pronunciation guy to the right.
• 6:35
  Yeah, I've got to. I've got to start doing better
• 6:37
  than the notes, man. I got.
• 6:38
  I got to put everything phonetically in there so that
• 6:40
  we're good. That's all I'm going to say.
• 6:43
  All joke, but we're going to get into it tonight.
• 6:45
  You've got some things obviously to go, But French, give us a
• 6:48
  little bit of your background, how you became a Virginia Tech
• 6:51
  fan it and when you play, where you play collegiate ball, what
• 6:56
  positions give a little bit about yourself to the folks out
• 6:59
  there. Sure, I know who you.
• 7:00
  Are embarrassing history now I I grew up in Abington Virginia and
• 7:06
  didn't play any kind of organized football other than
• 7:10
  flag football until I was a freshman in high school wanted
• 7:15
  to be a wide receiver. I was a chubby kid I wasn't
• 7:17
  going to get to play wide receivers so I focused on doing
• 7:20
  other stuff A colleague of my mom whose son was the starting
• 7:24
  quarterback on the varsity when I was a an eighth grader kind of
• 7:29
  harangued me into going out for JV and didn't know what I was
• 7:33
  doing. I was a just blocking bag
• 7:38
  getting flown around. I had no idea how to even take
• 7:41
  contact and fortunately had a good experience there running
• 7:47
  wing T offense and tore up my ankle right after we we lost to
• 7:51
  Gate City in the 95 playoffs team that Jake House right, Chad
• 7:55
  Beasley, Josh Shoemaker played basketball at Wake Forest AS69
• 8:00
  playing quarterback and like three days later I had an A
• 8:04
  hunting accident where I tore up my ankle.
• 8:06
  So I figured that's into sports and I went to Emory and Henry
• 8:10
  was close to home. Felt good about being there and
• 8:13
  after a year I said Mac and play with some of those guys.
• 8:16
  So I talked to the coach, Fred Self, who was the long time
• 8:20
  offensive coordinator and offensive line coach there and
• 8:25
  ended up working out in the spring and played.
• 8:29
  You know, back then everybody dressed out by actually got to
• 8:32
  play in the very first game I ever dressed out, we played
• 8:35
  Washington Jefferson. They were ranked 6th in the
• 8:37
  country. They came down to Emory and our
• 8:40
  tailback Oliver Jordan, who ended up making All American
• 8:43
  that year, had a huge game, so good that even a scrub like me
• 8:46
  got to play. So I played three years Emory
• 8:49
  after missing that first year and was kind of the undersized
• 8:54
  guy who knew all the blocking assignments, and they tried to
• 8:58
  make me a center. I never could get snapping down,
• 9:01
  but God bless centers. And you guys know J.
• 9:05
  Cole from Halifax County, I don't know how those guys were
• 9:10
  able to do it, but I always struggled particularly with
• 9:13
  shotgun snaps. But I played every other
• 9:15
  position at one point or the other on offense line.
• 9:19
  And most of my last year when I was, you know, getting to play a
• 9:22
  little bit more, it was a right guard running I formation
• 9:26
  offense. And at the same time, you know,
• 9:29
  when I was a kid, Virginia Tech was a non entity in football.
• 9:33
  I was right on Tennessee, Virginia State line.
• 9:35
  We got Tennessee games. I didn't see a Virginia Tech
• 9:37
  game on TV until they beat UVA the year that Sean Moore was
• 9:43
  quarterback and UVA had been ranked number one and they had a
• 9:46
  game on ESPN. So they were a non entity by the
• 9:50
  time 93 comes around and they're start to get that, you know,
• 9:54
  reputation, the, the defense, the special teams, all that,
• 9:59
  that, you know, they had an identity that I liked sort of
• 10:03
  the underdog. We're going to hit you in the
• 10:05
  mouth, we're going to work harder in the weight room type
• 10:08
  of stuff. And they built on that and it
• 10:12
  was an easy team to root for, especially being close to home.
• 10:15
  So that that's really where my fandom came from and ended up
• 10:22
  living in after college, living in Northern Virginia for a while
• 10:25
  with a bunch of BT grads that brought me more into the fandom
• 10:29
  rather than, you know, sort of the analytical watching.
• 10:32
  I can, you know, drink fish bowls and watch Marcus Vick flip
• 10:37
  off West Virginia fans. And but I was away then when
• 10:43
  they moved, like I was away from anybody at talk sports.
• 10:47
  So 2010 comes around and Hokies played Stanford in the bowl
• 10:53
  game. And I was really pissed about
• 10:55
  how that went. And I had an account on.
• 10:58
  I can't even remember the website.
• 10:59
  It might have been Gobbler Country.
• 11:01
  And I forgot my password. And I went over the Key Play and
• 11:04
  wrote up my here's my thoughts about how that Stanford game
• 11:08
  went out. And Joe, the editor of the key
• 11:10
  play that summer, asked me if I wanted to do film reviews.
• 11:14
  He said I'll provide the tape. So all you got to do is tell me
• 11:17
  where the clips are and then write, you know, what you think
• 11:19
  of the clips. And the whole idea of me doing
• 11:22
  it was I got really irritated sitting in a sports bar at a,
• 11:27
  you know, in the seats of the game.
• 11:29
  And people were like hit that guy and had no or the offensive
• 11:32
  line didn't block anybody. And it may have had nothing to
• 11:34
  do with the offensive line play getting blown up.
• 11:37
  And I just said, OK, I'm arrogant enough that I'll tell
• 11:41
  everybody what I think's really happened.
• 11:44
  And Lord knows people called me an asshole a bunch of times.
• 11:48
  I don't know what I'm talking about.
• 11:49
  Sometimes I do sometimes don't don't have any insider
• 11:51
  perspective. And somehow that's turned into
• 11:54
  doing it for goodness. We're on year 14 of doing it.
• 11:59
  So that's pretty much my story. I haven't coached any.
• 12:04
  So I I try to come at it from how do I talk about this in a
• 12:07
  way that I can get technical enough, but a fan will
• 12:10
  understand and I try to stay away from, Yeah, I know, I know
• 12:15
  you guys have probably done a little coaching, but there are a
• 12:19
  lot of coaches who think that they're curing cancer or they,
• 12:23
  they're geniuses and they'll talk above you or talk over your
• 12:26
  head the whole time. And the reality is like, dude,
• 12:28
  all you're doing is when you say all that terminology, you just
• 12:31
  mean taken on a block with your right shoulder rather than the
• 12:34
  left shoulder. You can simplify it, make it
• 12:37
  easy. You don't have to.
• 12:39
  And Coach Self was a big influence on me because I
• 12:41
  learned more from him probably my first week of the first set
• 12:46
  of 2A days and Emory than I'd learned but knew about football
• 12:49
  for my entire life up to that point.
• 12:52
  So I've always, always tried to share things the way he did.
• 12:59
  Yeah, I'll go ahead, Brian. Go ahead, Sal.
• 13:01
  You're good. I was.
• 13:02
  Just going to say I'm going to throw something at you.
• 13:04
  This ain't wasn't on a rundown anything, but just listen to
• 13:07
  your story, how you got started, and that's pretty cool.
• 13:11
  But I'll ask over your years of watching Virginia Tech football,
• 13:17
  what's the maddest that you've been watching the game?
• 13:20
  Like which game was? I know you can pick any year but
• 13:24
  which? Product, yeah, I won well I at.
• 13:27
  Least one every year. I can tell you one because I was
• 13:30
  so emotionally invested in it, and it wasn't because of what
• 13:35
  happened on the field. It was the Boise State game.
• 13:40
  And it wasn't that they blew the lead, although they were.
• 13:43
  I mean, you watched it in person, it definitely looked
• 13:46
  like Boise sort of had the finger on the pulse and how to
• 13:50
  manipulate Bud's defense into creating space for them to throw
• 13:55
  the ball. But what drove me nuts, it's
• 13:59
  first down. Virginia Tech's got the ball in
• 14:01
  the last drive and they hand off to I think it was Evans and
• 14:06
  there was a fumble and they recovered it.
• 14:07
  They got like two or three yards and there are two plays away.
• 14:11
  Get a first down game's probably over.
• 14:14
  And the fellow Hokies fan base people around me start chanting
• 14:18
  overrated. And I just was like, you don't
• 14:23
  as a former player, like you don't fuck with, don't don't
• 14:27
  tempt you don't do thing. You don't tempt the gods because
• 14:31
  the gods will strike Thunder down upon you.
• 14:34
  And sure enough, they didn't get the first down and Kelvin Moore
• 14:37
  comes down, wins the game. I've never been so angry.
• 14:42
  Can I ask, can I ask a question about the third down play
• 14:44
  though? What is it?
• 14:46
  Third and three, Third and four? It was not a long short.
• 14:49
  It was not a long play. Did.
• 14:51
  You did you throw things at FedEx Field when Brian Stein
• 14:56
  Spring decided to go for a shot with David Wilson, Darren Evans,
• 15:00
  Ryan Williams and Tyrod Taylor all in the backfield?
• 15:03
  Because I was up to 3:00 in the morning talking to my buddy Biff
• 15:07
  in San Diego because we were so fucking pissed.
• 15:11
  I guess that might have been Curtis's game too.
• 15:14
  And here's. The thing I was so seeing red
• 15:17
  because of the chanting, you're now saying that I didn't even
• 15:21
  remember that they threw deep on that play.
• 15:24
  I was just, all I could remember was the, the, the taunting and
• 15:28
  the timing of it and thinking the karma gods are just going to
• 15:33
  screw us. I was convinced on 2nd down they
• 15:36
  were losing the game because of that.
• 15:38
  I'm, I'm weird about that with momentum.
• 15:41
  And you know, I went from at, at Emory.
• 15:44
  We didn't lose a home game. We had won for years before I
• 15:48
  showed up, but we had won something like 56 straight home
• 15:51
  games. We believed in winning.
• 15:53
  We had games where we played like absolute crap and we would
• 15:57
  pull something out we want to get.
• 15:59
  I think we blocked a field goal against Washington Nose
• 16:02
  Bridgewater late in the game. Like, I was sort of bred to
• 16:07
  believe you were going to win. But my high school program
• 16:09
  wasn't great. So that kind of creeped back in
• 16:11
  when I became a fan and started to believe bad things were going
• 16:15
  to happen. I'm a New York Rangers fan
• 16:16
  hockey and nothing's good has happened for my team for 30
• 16:20
  years now, So I've sort of got accustomed to expecting the
• 16:24
  worst. And there was just something
• 16:25
  about that moment that trigger like I was I, I stood in my seat
• 16:29
  and start pacing back and forth in my little 12 inches of space.
• 16:33
  These stupid sons of bitches, don't they?
• 16:36
  No, don't. You don't do this.
• 16:38
  You don't do it. You sound like you had a
• 16:41
  similar. Winning because you're getting
• 16:42
  laid or you're not getting laid, then you are.
• 16:45
  Leave it alone. Don't, don't tempt it.
• 16:49
  Don't push it. Don't push it.
• 16:51
  Yeah, it sounds like you had a, you had a similar.
• 16:54
  Chanted all you want, send the 4444 folks back to Idaho.
• 16:58
  That's the first time they'd ever left, anyway.
• 17:01
  Sounds like you had a similar high school and college set up
• 17:04
  to me because we lost a lot in high school and then I got to
• 17:09
  hand in City and that was that was in the run where Hand in
• 17:12
  Sydney was playing some really good football early in the Marty
• 17:14
  Fabrett tenure there and. Yeah, I missed the whole coaches
• 17:19
  because that was a that was a game where us scrubs always got
• 17:21
  to play like half the game was playing.
• 17:24
  Oh, yeah. But Coach Wacker was going nuts
• 17:26
  for that. God damn it.
• 17:28
  Don't you know what they did this.
• 17:29
  He had that real bad list. Yeah.
• 17:31
  See him getting voted into the I think there's a YouTube video of
• 17:34
  him getting in the Hall of Fame and he's he's got the list
• 17:37
  going. And he he would, he would that
• 17:40
  week, boy, he was fired up. See, been the coach of Hampton
• 17:43
  Sydney. Exactly.
• 17:43
  He and he was he was out for blood.
• 17:46
  We were all like this is Patty cake week.
• 17:48
  This is, you know, we we weren't worried about it.
• 17:51
  That that was definitely not the sharpest week of practice when
• 17:54
  oh, I'm sure. We we had a similar, similar set
• 18:00
  up when we were playing Guilford.
• 18:01
  I know Guilford kind of turned it around in the last decade or
• 18:03
  so and kind of came a pretty good team there, but they were
• 18:06
  really down in the early 2000s. You know, Bridgewater was kind
• 18:10
  of our our bugaboo when we were there.
• 18:12
  You know they were. Coming, Jason.
• 18:13
  What? Sarah?
• 18:14
  Yeah, coming off. A stag bowl.
• 18:16
  That game with a field goal? That was his first game as a
• 18:18
  starter. Yeah, they were coming off that
• 18:21
  Stag Bowl appearance when I first got there.
• 18:25
  You know, they were, they were really good football team.
• 18:28
  And you talk about momentum, we had a game in O3 when we played
• 18:33
  then we were, I mean, statistically from the NCAA
• 18:36
  standpoint, we scored the most points per game across all
• 18:39
  divisions that year. And they came into into
• 18:43
  FarmVille and Hamilton, Sydney there.
• 18:44
  And man, we dominated them in the first half and then like
• 18:48
  left points on the field at the half and then flipped it.
• 18:52
  And then when when they came out in the second-half, just
• 18:54
  completely different team. First they they kicked off to
• 18:57
  us, they kicked it short. We kind of miss field that they
• 19:01
  jumped on it. They went down and scored and
• 19:04
  like, it just felt like the shift in the momentum and we
• 19:06
  just never really got our footing back.
• 19:08
  And then we got some some tough calls at the end there that kind
• 19:11
  of went the wrong way. And you know, that was really
• 19:14
  that was the only loss that season.
• 19:16
  It was a three-point loss and everybody felt it and it it kept
• 19:20
  us out of the playoffs. So it was it was it was it?
• 19:22
  Was Momentum's a weird thing, man, And it's the things that
• 19:27
  happened. Like I said, you don't, you
• 19:28
  don't do anything to mess with it.
• 19:30
  So the the some of the penalty stuff like it, it's not always
• 19:36
  like the penalties you get or the mistakes.
• 19:38
  It's when they happen and you just watching the game and
• 19:41
  there's especially guys that play, you just feel it like, Oh,
• 19:45
  shit, you get up three scores and you just go, oh, no, no, no,
• 19:48
  no, no, no, not the not the time, not the time.
• 19:54
  Oh. Man, you would probably be like
• 19:57
  us watching a game. You'd probably be, we could
• 20:00
  probably all force sit in a room together and watch a game and or
• 20:04
  in the stands and we would have similar demeanors so.
• 20:07
  Y'all wouldn't have any fun with me.
• 20:09
  I'm miserable watching. People would say I look like I'm
• 20:12
  getting ready to have a stroke. I don't talk.
• 20:14
  I'm like, shouldn't ever bite my tooth.
• 20:17
  Well, you got to have the, you got to have the variety because
• 20:19
  I'm loud and I don't care. Curtis Curtis is animated.
• 20:22
  He's I'm animated. Sit down.
• 20:24
  Stand up. Sit down.
• 20:25
  Yeah, I'm up and down. Tally is tally.
• 20:27
  I guess you. Tally is Tally leans negative.
• 20:31
  Yeah, I say you lean negative. The game we watched together.
• 20:35
  And Brian, I don't know what you are.
• 20:37
  I've watched games. If you use you, you're to me.
• 20:38
  You're all over the place. It depends.
• 20:41
  It depends on what I'm seeing, man.
• 20:42
  Sometimes I can get really into it.
• 20:45
  Sometimes I'm sitting there and thinking it through with like,
• 20:47
  what the fuck happened? We got to fix that.
• 20:48
  And then sometimes I'm like just like so in my own nerves that
• 20:53
  I'm not really even talking about anything so.
• 20:56
  The worst is when they're playing poorly and I know I've
• 20:59
  got to write about it. So if I say anything nice, then
• 21:03
  I'm going to have people saying that I'm, you know, I'm, I'm
• 21:07
  just, well, I'm just kissing up or, you know, I'm, I'm not being
• 21:11
  objective. And then if I blister everybody
• 21:13
  that I'm treating the kids like garbage and there's no, there's
• 21:17
  no happy middle ground there. Yeah, there isn't.
• 21:19
  I try, I try to be honest about it and I've I've had a lot of
• 21:22
  former players and guys who were playing at the time would reach
• 21:26
  out to me and say, yeah, pretty much got that one.
• 21:30
  And some cases didn't. I'm not going to say who it was,
• 21:33
  but I had a player texted me the morning of the Purdue game up in
• 21:38
  Lafayette. That's one of the one of the
• 21:40
  games I travelled to and was telling me, you know, it's like,
• 21:43
  you know, we're going to we're going to go after a punt today.
• 21:47
  He was involved in the the pump block in that game.
• 21:49
  And so we're going to go after one today.
• 21:51
  Look for this this so well, I won't reveal who that was, but
• 21:57
  you know, some of the players will give me some positive
• 21:59
  information. Other ones I heard are not
• 22:01
  particularly or four players are not particularly fond of me.
• 22:04
  I can think of a couple of offensive lineman who don't I've
• 22:07
  heard don't like me very much. One of them rhymes with Ron T,
• 22:13
  the Richmond guy. Yeah.
• 22:18
  We, we, we need to talk about that.
• 22:19
  It's something that we don't like either.
• 22:24
  They're nice guys. Most of the most of the former
• 22:27
  players I've met have been wonderfully nice to me.
• 22:29
  So even even James Gale, who he and I had a little bit of a
• 22:33
  Twitter spat there after the Duke game his last year.
• 22:38
  And he came up and asked me when I was going to find some frozen
• 22:41
  fish at the grocery store because that's all I've ever
• 22:43
  held up in my pictures. So even he was aces, you know,
• 22:47
  he was great. Awesome.
• 22:49
  All right, well, let's get into it.
• 22:50
  We've been talking 20 minutes already, but we're going to go
• 22:54
  in tonight. Sam Siski's defense, French is
• 22:57
  currently working on an article for the key play about some
• 23:00
  breakdowns on the defense. I know you said it's going to be
• 23:02
  a 2 parter, which we definitely look forward to reading.
• 23:06
  Obviously with the key play, we like reading their stuff, not
• 23:10
  only for French but Shelton, who's usually a part of us.
• 23:12
  But Shelton is completely it immersed right now doing work.
• 23:18
  So we're not sports, spring sports with that young.
• 23:21
  Man, that's going around, man. Yeah, it is.
• 23:23
  But let's get into it French. And the first thing I wanted to
• 23:26
  kind of break with you is let's talk about position of what
• 23:30
  we're going to see from this new defense.
• 23:33
  I want to start with the D line, if there's certain position
• 23:36
  names or techniques. But with Sam Siski's defense,
• 23:40
  with what you've seen on tape studying, what are we seeing for
• 23:44
  defensive line? First things first, it's going
• 23:48
  to be 3 down lineman most of the time.
• 23:51
  You're going to see true nose, you're going to see 2.
• 23:56
  I believe the new what's called in house 4, I would call it head
• 23:59
  up over both of the offensive tackles.
• 24:04
  You're going to see 2 edge players.
• 24:06
  You can call them linebackers, you can call them that.
• 24:09
  I've heard a Jack and spur used as terminology, but it's a
• 24:14
  boundary side outside linebacker and a field side outside
• 24:17
  linebacker. Most of the time they're going
• 24:20
  to be walked up to fly scrimmage.
• 24:21
  If the guy's backed off, it's going to be usually the field
• 24:24
  side guy because he's kind of lining up like a sort of like
• 24:29
  the star does. But sometimes he's splitting the
• 24:32
  difference between slot receiver and the edge and you're going to
• 24:36
  depending on situationally. When Syphcus, I hope I'm saying
• 24:41
  that correctly, was at Watford Wofford, it was a true 3-4.
• 24:44
  So there were two inside linebackers.
• 24:47
  The Cardinals, when he was there, shifted to the three high
• 24:52
  safety look, which I'm sure we're going to talk about a lot,
• 24:55
  which meant one linebacker coming off the field.
• 24:57
  It was usually an inside backer. He does.
• 25:00
  They did show a little bit of nickel where the only time the
• 25:03
  nose would come off the field, they go to two, you know, like a
• 25:07
  three and a three and A5 technique or two head up
• 25:10
  defensive tackles and still having those two edge guys
• 25:13
  lining up, you know, standing up, but like defensive ends and
• 25:18
  then two backers. But for the most part, it looked
• 25:21
  like they were, you know, their base was going to at Arizona was
• 25:24
  going to be the three down to edge and one inside backer and
• 25:30
  someone we're familiar with because they're white who's at
• 25:33
  West Virginia just a couple of years ago.
• 25:37
  In terms of technique stuff, the whole idea behind the defence,
• 25:42
  it really is to make the second and third level defenders shine.
• 25:46
  And so the interior guys really are trying to eat up blocks.
• 25:52
  I think that the hardest position to play is if you're on
• 25:56
  the backside of a zone and you're the four technique the
• 26:00
  the head up on the backside of a play.
• 26:02
  You want to keep the blockers from getting to the second level
• 26:06
  while at the same time not getting washed inside and
• 26:10
  creating a cut back lane. And that's not easy to do.
• 26:13
  I think that was the weakness of Arizona's defense is that
• 26:16
  backside 4 would get washed inside and then the edge guys
• 26:19
  weren't really in position to make plays.
• 26:22
  Your edge guys, they have to be have positional flexibility.
• 26:26
  You want them to be really good pass rushers.
• 26:29
  Arizona didn't really have that. They went out and got Mac Wilson
• 26:34
  who had a history of being a serviceable, you know, more of a
• 26:38
  one-dimensional pass rush oriented linebacker.
• 26:42
  But the key with the edge guys, they can are usually going to
• 26:46
  force bring back techniques from the Bud Foster defense.
• 26:52
  They're going to force, which means taking on blocks with
• 26:55
  inside shoulder and keeping outside leverage.
• 26:57
  So the back has to turn back to the inside most of the time.
• 27:01
  And on the backside of plays, you'll have situations where
• 27:04
  sometimes they're going to crash inside and the safety is going
• 27:07
  to come up and become the contain guy.
• 27:10
  Sometimes they can slow play, sometimes they can be flat
• 27:13
  defenders. Either way, it makes it really
• 27:15
  hard on the quarterback because no matter where you run the
• 27:18
  ball, the offensive line doesn't really know where the edge what
• 27:21
  who's setting the edge on the defense.
• 27:23
  It's not always going to be those outside linebackers now,
• 27:27
  traditionally, I'm sure, But the next question y'all are going to
• 27:30
  ask me is, well, if they're going to run 3-4, are they going
• 27:33
  to have the defensive lineman that they've got?
• 27:36
  Are they going to be eating up double teams?
• 27:38
  And you know, big guys, what you think about when you think about
• 27:42
  3-4 And at least at Arizona, they didn't really do that.
• 27:45
  They would, sometimes they would bring 5 up front and those
• 27:49
  tackles are sort of pinching and condensing the field.
• 27:52
  Old Dominion did that a lot against the Hokies the last
• 27:55
  couple years where they would try to jam everything up and
• 27:59
  inside and then bring up the safeties to make the tackles.
• 28:02
  Other times they'll slant and if let's say they're slanting to
• 28:07
  the boundary, that boundary Jack linebacker will bounce off, come
• 28:12
  back up and go into the flat. And then it's the role of the
• 28:15
  four technique is to get to that edge and become either a spill
• 28:19
  or a force guy. So when I look at the Virginia
• 28:23
  Tech personnel nose is challenging.
• 28:25
  I'm assuming that Gilliam and Copeland, because they're sort
• 28:30
  of the biggest, biggest guys with the strongest base, are
• 28:34
  probably going to be in that nose roll.
• 28:37
  Are they good fits for it? I don't know.
• 28:39
  I'm thinking that's why they brought in the priest or kid
• 28:41
  from Hampton. That's huge.
• 28:44
  And if he can play, you know, if he can play on that level,
• 28:49
  perhaps he may be a long term option for that position.
• 28:53
  But I I really don't see fits elsewhere.
• 28:56
  And then you look at those 24 techniques.
• 28:59
  You know, Emmett Laws is an undersized guy.
• 29:01
  He's pretty quick. He looked good in the bowl game,
• 29:05
  but we know he's got quick twitch and can you move
• 29:09
  laterally. So he makes sense for that role.
• 29:12
  The Arias Nash from Mercer, who if you all want to see him look
• 29:17
  up YouTube Alabama versus Mercer.
• 29:20
  You can see him against some of the best of the country and he
• 29:23
  acquits himself pretty well, especially given how completely
• 29:27
  outmatched his teammates are. But he's also quick, undersized,
• 29:33
  you know, 35 technique guy who can, you know, penetrate and he
• 29:38
  was the best pass rusher from the defensive tackle spot in all
• 29:42
  of FCS. So he kind of fits that role.
• 29:46
  I wouldn't be surprised if Burgos play some inside as as
• 29:51
  odd of as that may sound, a guy playing, you know, started at
• 29:55
  defensive end for the better part of the last two years.
• 29:58
  But I could see him being either inside or out.
• 30:01
  He he could be, you know, more of a run oriented edge guy, but
• 30:06
  you could also play in that role.
• 30:08
  And Stevens is a big kid. He could be in that role.
• 30:11
  And then you've got the young guys.
• 30:12
  We don't really, you know, hand Chuck.
• 30:14
  We don't know anything about Johnson.
• 30:16
  What little I've seen of them. He probably would fit, although
• 30:20
  if he grows a lot more, maybe he could be the nose.
• 30:23
  But there's not, you know, I, I think from the four techniques,
• 30:27
  I think they've got some inexperience guys.
• 30:29
  You don't know how they're going to hold up over the course of
• 30:32
  season against top and talent. But they have the skill set.
• 30:35
  The clay is there. They can be successful nose.
• 30:40
  You know, I mean, Gilliam left Oklahoma so he didn't have to
• 30:43
  eat up lockers for the linebackers and safeties to be
• 30:46
  stars. And now that he's going to be
• 30:48
  asked to do that again, if he's in that position, Copeland, I
• 30:53
  mean, we don't really know in hell of a weight lifter.
• 30:55
  Do we really know what he is? I know that there was a lot of
• 30:58
  hype around him last spring, but what I saw of him in the spring
• 31:01
  game, I was kind of he wasn't. I didn't think he was
• 31:04
  particularly disruptive. And then, you know, there's a
• 31:07
  bounce and he gets the interception and everyone's.
• 31:10
  But in terms of every snap, he didn't blow my socks off.
• 31:14
  And so where did where do those other bodies come from?
• 31:18
  And then so you move out to the edge and that that's pictures a
• 31:22
  little more clear. Ben Bell is a hellacious pass
• 31:27
  rusher and he's perfectly suited to line up out wide where he
• 31:32
  doesn't have to have a lot of other responsibilities.
• 31:35
  He's not someone who's real accustomed to spilling the ball,
• 31:38
  so being in position to turn everything back to the inside
• 31:42
  makes sense. And you know, he for the role, I
• 31:47
  mean, he's, you know, Bryce Pop, Ricky Jackson.
• 31:50
  I'm I'm I'm showing my age here with some of these names.
• 31:54
  Kevin Green type of outside linebacker is really
• 31:58
  one-dimensional. Fred Dean, if you want to go way
• 32:01
  back. You know, those guys that
• 32:04
  they're not really Charles Haley, they're not really a,
• 32:10
  they're not really a defense or they're not really a linebacker,
• 32:13
  but they're kind of standing out like a defensive end and they're
• 32:18
  just coming every time. So he makes sense.
• 32:21
  Everyone has told me that they brought in, I'm going to
• 32:26
  Butcher's name. Is it Jackman or Jackman?
• 32:28
  James Jackman? That was a middle linebacker in
• 32:32
  Eastern Michigan, and he looked good.
• 32:36
  I mean, he couldn't cover a pass worth of squat, but he's a heck
• 32:39
  of a run defender. But everyone said he's been
• 32:42
  brought into play edge. So I assume that's where he's
• 32:44
  going to be, too, because he's again, the other, the field guy
• 32:48
  has to be a little more adept at dropping into coverage and
• 32:51
  playing in space. So I assume those are the two
• 32:55
  guys at the boundary, which again, brings me back to Burgos.
• 32:59
  You know, is Burgos going to be the third string guy or are they
• 33:03
  going to find another way to get him on the field?
• 33:05
  And I'm assuming he's probably going to be he'd probably be the
• 33:10
  four tech and I would assume on the field side in that way when
• 33:15
  they're calling pressures where the the field side linebackers
• 33:20
  backing out into the flat, he can move out and become the edge
• 33:23
  guy. And like I said, I wouldn't be
• 33:25
  surprised if Stevens I got some run at 4 technique or the edge
• 33:30
  spot, but you know, he doesn't look like he's a guy who's going
• 33:34
  to play in space as well. I think Jason Abbie could be the
• 33:38
  sleeper guy if they hadn't brought in, if they hadn't
• 33:41
  brought in two guys with good pass rushing credentials and
• 33:45
  Bell in particular, I could have seen Abby standing out there.
• 33:48
  Why? Because where he's a smaller
• 33:50
  guy, I think he's got some twitch.
• 33:52
  I I I watch him on tape and I never hear anybody talking about
• 33:56
  him. I go that guy can play a little
• 33:59
  bit and when he's played, he's been productive against pass
• 34:03
  rush and I, you know, run runs got work.
• 34:06
  But if you're lining up like as a nine tech way out wide, well,
• 34:10
  you don't have to worry about that as much.
• 34:11
  That's not in position to be blocked.
• 34:14
  So at the front, I'll pause. I've probably talked too long.
• 34:16
  I'll let you all ask questions and I can talk about the second
• 34:19
  level guys. Well, you're good there, though.
• 34:21
  That was that was good information and I appreciate you
• 34:22
  going into that. You know, you you brought up
• 34:26
  Stevens there, you brought up Abby as being kind of guys that
• 34:29
  may you, you could you might could see him in the edge.
• 34:33
  You might could see him at that 4 technique.
• 34:36
  Let's let's talk about the the guys with that with their hand
• 34:39
  in the dirt. Is this going to be kind of a
• 34:41
  more of a true to gap or is it going to be some sort of hybrid
• 34:45
  approach? It's it's one gap, but the idea
• 34:49
  is to create the jam through movement.
• 34:52
  OK, at least that's what Arizona did.
• 34:55
  So it's it's very similar to what Bud did.
• 34:57
  If you're, you're slanting to the boundary, the idea is to get
• 35:01
  to the gap and if you get a a hat on you, then you got to jam
• 35:06
  it up at that point if it it, but you've got to be twitchy
• 35:10
  enough that if you get through the gap, go make a play.
• 35:14
  Arizona didn't really do that. And this is where and you guys
• 35:18
  and I talked before we got on the air.
• 35:21
  Personnel wise, I think, you know, it might be long term that
• 35:26
  they do want to get to the point where they do 2 gaps.
• 35:30
  But at Arizona they didn't have that personnel.
• 35:32
  And that's how they made-up for is move, slow down the blocking
• 35:35
  scheme, get into position and try to eat guys up.
• 35:39
  Because it's definitely when you watch Arizona Cardinals film,
• 35:42
  you're not seeing anybody on the front line that's making a huge
• 35:47
  number of plays. It's it's really is more making
• 35:51
  sure they're spilling, spilling or forcing the ball above a
• 35:54
  Baker. And and but I might, I might go
• 35:57
  on record now say I think Ben Bell might be a better pass
• 36:00
  rusher than anybody who's on the Arizona Cardinals roster From
• 36:03
  from what I saw, they just did not have they didn't have a lot
• 36:08
  of, you know, real burst twitchy guys coming off the edge.
• 36:12
  That was probably the best bunch.
• 36:15
  I don't think anybody consider him a top 20 pass rusher in the
• 36:18
  NFL. So, you know, I think there's
• 36:22
  going to be some painful moments and I'm hopeful that I'm wrong.
• 36:29
  I'm really excited to see how they allocate those those kids
• 36:35
  during the spring and we'll see if they can hold up to it.
• 36:40
  But it's it's going to be a challenge this first time in 40
• 36:44
  years. They've had a different
• 36:45
  philosophy and I know Justin Hamilton's was a little
• 36:48
  different, but I mean, it's all what it's been 1 gap for me in
• 36:53
  front for as long as I've been a fan.
• 36:56
  So you know, I'm I'm really learning to all the geometry is
• 37:00
  probably going to change where I watch buds defense enough where
• 37:03
  you could sort of see, oh, that's where that's why the
• 37:07
  safeties look good when things are right and bad when it's
• 37:11
  wrong. It's everything's designed.
• 37:13
  They don't have to think they know exactly where the runner is
• 37:15
  going to have to go and, you know, make it easy.
• 37:18
  And I'm learning a new geometry now, so all.
• 37:21
  Right, Kelly, you, you moved up like you had a question.
• 37:25
  Oh no, I'm just paying attention, all right?
• 37:27
  I'm going to throw this back. I'm going to throw this back in
• 37:30
  here real quick. This is obviously a hypothetical
• 37:33
  here, but would would Kelly Lawson have made a good jacker
• 37:35
  spur in this system in European? Good athlete he probably would
• 37:42
  have played and again, I don't know Jack Spur, it's Jack is
• 37:45
  boundary. I know at East Carolina when
• 37:47
  they use Jack, Jack was the boundary linebacker and Spur,
• 37:51
  Spur was the field or some other term.
• 37:53
  I think he would have been field side.
• 37:55
  I always said he I thought he would have been a good star whip
• 38:00
  use that role, you know, but he he's he's gone.
• 38:06
  I mean, at this point I'm not I'm not going to I wish him best
• 38:10
  of luck. Sharando kid from from
• 38:13
  Winchester area, but he's not around anymore.
• 38:16
  So I've got figure out with what they've got who who fits.
• 38:21
  And it's an interesting question.
• 38:23
  Fieldside linebacker. That's one of my two biggest
• 38:27
  question marks. I do not know on the roster who
• 38:30
  fits that spot. I'm assuming Woodson's going to
• 38:33
  be the Mike playing right in the middle stat, you know, stacked
• 38:36
  up behind the nose for that field side linebacker.
• 38:39
  They're supposed to be a pass rush type.
• 38:41
  So can Jockman do that while the same time get out to the flat
• 38:45
  and sort of bumping a a slot receiver?
• 38:51
  I I don't know. And and, you know, I don't see,
• 38:55
  you know, the, you know, I don't see Bristol TN's finest in, in
• 39:01
  that Keller in that role. You know, Gabe's not going to be
• 39:05
  healthy. Clatter ball is going to be a
• 39:07
  mic right in the middle. Yeah.
• 39:09
  I have no earthly idea how they're going to play that spot
• 39:13
  in the in the NFL. That's where Wilson played.
• 39:15
  He was 63245. You know, I'm, I'm struggling to
• 39:21
  see where the fit is at that fieldside linebacker spot.
• 39:25
  Or for those of us, for people who know the old terminology,
• 39:29
  what would have been the star, You know, similar alignment on
• 39:33
  the field, but it's going to have to be a bigger, more run
• 39:37
  sound guy because they're going to be playing with a six man box
• 39:40
  most of the time. Well, Joplin's got the body pack
• 39:42
  you just mentioned he is that. Yeah, yeah, Joplin's in that
• 39:45
  role and he can get to the flat then.
• 39:47
  You know, I don't think he came to Virginia Tech to be a backup.
• 39:50
  So I in my article I wrote that I suspect he will start, but I
• 39:56
  don't know. Again, I don't know him and Mike
• 40:00
  in coverage. Was like sort of like watching a
• 40:03
  bigger version of Bromfeld in coverage.
• 40:05
  It was kind of painful to watch, but him as a run defender he was
• 40:09
  and he knocked your Dick in the dirt.
• 40:11
  He was productive. There we go.
• 40:14
  He he he could he could he could play and I I I said all and you
• 40:19
  all may have seen I was on a tally.
• 40:22
  I think I was on your right after the hire was announced on
• 40:26
  Twitter, your chat and when I was on with Pete over at 2, DI
• 40:32
  said I, I, I mean, other people were saying he's brought to be
• 40:36
  an edge guy. I blame it.
• 40:37
  Mike and I put Woodson at that field linebacker and see if it
• 40:41
  works. But I I don't, you know, I have
• 40:44
  the rumbles I've heard say that's not the plan.
• 40:46
  So. What about bass because it's on
• 40:49
  screen? You already addressed Keller
• 40:50
  Woodson. What about bass?
• 40:52
  I I know very little about bass. I want to see the, you know, the
• 40:56
  legal issue he's got to clean up and see how that impacts his.
• 41:01
  I know he's also coming off an injury and didn't play a lot.
• 41:05
  He, he, he would probably be the one that body type wise and
• 41:09
  skill set wise would make the most sense.
• 41:12
  But I, you know, I, I sort of want to see that he's being an
• 41:17
  active participant and is giving him being given some time before
• 41:22
  I get a good feeling, you know, same thing.
• 41:23
  I wouldn't say that clatter ball is going to play right away.
• 41:26
  And I've seen some people on on people on message board say, you
• 41:29
  know, oh, platter ball is going to step right in.
• 41:31
  Oh no, he's not. If you never expect a freshman
• 41:36
  to play as a true freshman, you will never be disabled.
• 41:39
  That's very good. Let's go to the back end because
• 41:43
  let's talk about with the corn. I want to start with the corners
• 41:47
  because I feel like that might be the least changed or.
• 41:52
  You're you're dead on. I don't think that, you know, I
• 41:56
  think that Pry inherently wants to play zone and one of the
• 42:00
  advantages of the free high safeties as you can disguise
• 42:04
  really well the middle of the field.
• 42:07
  And you know, I talked about this at length in my articles.
• 42:11
  I don't know if it was coaching or whatever, but the Hokies,
• 42:15
  last year's free safeties, you know, lining up 20 yards deep
• 42:20
  and then dropping another 15 yards where there's no receiver
• 42:23
  threatening their cushion and just creating a big doughnut
• 42:26
  hole in the middle of the field. I never understood why it kept
• 42:29
  happening. I I, I don't know if it was a
• 42:31
  coaching philosophy or it was just poor instincts from MO's
• 42:35
  Phillips and to a lesser extent Jones and Reddish.
• 42:39
  I you know, I thought they did a little bit better job and in
• 42:42
  that situation, but I think that the pry wants to run side.
• 42:46
  He did a lot of zone blitzing at Penn State and this gives them a
• 42:51
  little better disguise because they were predictable in their
• 42:54
  zone blitzing next year. Also, you know, I I know Lovettt
• 42:58
  looked really good in the bowl game, but, you know, asking him
• 43:04
  to be locked down, man, the old style, you know, boundary
• 43:08
  corners going to be on an island the whole game.
• 43:12
  You know, I I don't know if that's that's something that
• 43:15
  probably wants to continue doing.
• 43:17
  I think it's just been a necessity the last few years or
• 43:20
  how much they struggled to to cover in the middle of the
• 43:23
  fields. They had to rely on their
• 43:24
  corners. But but I'm assuming love, it's
• 43:27
  going to be the starter and then it's up between Brown Murray
• 43:33
  from the transfer from East Carolina and Thomas Williams.
• 43:38
  I'll tell you my sleeper guy, I love Josh Clark's tape from the
• 43:42
  spring game last year. I thought that kids going to
• 43:45
  find a way to get on the field and unfortunately he didn't tell
• 43:50
  the bowl, but he wasn't needed to.
• 43:52
  I wouldn't be the least bit shocked if halfway through
• 43:56
  spring ball we're hearing that he is taking the position and
• 43:59
  owning it. And then Brown, Murray or
• 44:02
  Williams are contending to be the nickel that will come in and
• 44:05
  replace the field side edge guy as a true nickel in those
• 44:12
  situations or maybe as a third safety in and those situations
• 44:16
  try to match on a receiver. So so I I don't think you're
• 44:21
  going to see, I think the guys who you expect to play are
• 44:24
  probably going to play at corner.
• 44:26
  And Clark is kind of the the guy that I'm looking at that
• 44:30
  someone's going to take a big step forward and and be a legit
• 44:35
  a legit second option behind Lovett.
• 44:38
  That's the guy I'm looking to to really grab Brown.
• 44:41
  Murray's film was OK, but it didn't, yeah, it it didn't blow
• 44:46
  me away. He looks like he's going to be a
• 44:48
  solid, serviceable guy, so. Yeah.
• 44:53
  Or it's got more upside to get past him.
• 44:55
  Yeah, let me ask you a question. Just this doesn't really have to
• 44:58
  do with any kind of scheme. It's more to do with skill
• 45:02
  because sometimes it just matters about how much talent
• 45:06
  you have to put on the field. When you look at what the
• 45:08
  coaches have brought in, throwing skill, I mean throwing
• 45:12
  scheme out of the way, do you feel like on defense that we
• 45:16
  have, I don't want to say we're more talented.
• 45:19
  Do you feel like we have more pieces to work with this year
• 45:22
  than we did last year, or do you feel like last year's team had
• 45:26
  more defensive talent as a whole?
• 45:31
  So that I'm going to cheat my way out of this answer.
• 45:35
  I do not think that they have a two players the caliber of the
• 45:40
  Neus Peebles or Antoine Power Island upfront and especially
• 45:46
  Peebles. I've been very vocal on Twitter,
• 45:50
  best defensive lineman potentially that they've had
• 45:54
  since settle and maybe going back to defensive tackle going
• 46:00
  back to Bruce Smith. He was unbelievable this year
• 46:03
  and I don't know that because it didn't always manifest itself as
• 46:07
  he was the one getting sacks. I don't think people realized
• 46:11
  how good he was. He was.
• 46:13
  They went when teams double teamed him and created space for
• 46:17
  Power Island out some of his best games.
• 46:20
  And when he didn't get doubled, he was absolutely decimating
• 46:24
  folks on the inside. I think that those are are tough
• 46:28
  replacements. So I'll go to the second part.
• 46:32
  They had egregious, horrific holes, especially in the middle
• 46:39
  of the field and safety and Mike linebacker and and even, you
• 46:45
  know, I like Caleb Woodson, but he had moments where he really
• 46:48
  struggled and the other guys that were coming in to to give
• 46:51
  him rest at times really struggled.
• 46:54
  Those holes were so bad that they offset a lot of the good
• 46:57
  that the defensive line was doing.
• 47:01
  So bringing in, you know, hopefully Woodson, a year older,
• 47:06
  addresses that issue somewhat. And also being less reliant on
• 47:12
  the linebackers to make plays because one thing about this
• 47:15
  defense, the Mike, you know, can make plays.
• 47:19
  White made a lot of tackles. He just didn't look particularly
• 47:22
  overwhelming on film for Arizona, but you're not as
• 47:27
  relying on them to be a a someone who can eat up gaps and
• 47:31
  still make plays like Bud's defense required him to do.
• 47:35
  So this the question you they brought in four safeties and you
• 47:40
  still got Quentin red issues very highly touted and I think
• 47:44
  has a ton of upside. So looking at the three safety
• 47:47
  alignment, generally you're going to see those safeties line
• 47:51
  up about 10 yards deep. You don't know who's the one.
• 47:56
  One or two will come in and run support late, but they they
• 48:00
  won't show it early if they're doing it right.
• 48:03
  So the offense doesn't really know where that that Allen
• 48:07
  player is coming from. Most of the time it's going to
• 48:09
  be the middle safety. And so when you're looking at
• 48:13
  skill sets, you want your two outside safeties to have some
• 48:17
  flexibility of guys playing on the hash, but they have to be
• 48:20
  able to play deep half match to deep half turn and run with deep
• 48:26
  receivers because they're going to be playing zone with those
• 48:28
  corners. And so they brought in you look
• 48:32
  at, I think Reddish is a fit for the deep half.
• 48:34
  I don't think he's playing the middle safety Superman type of
• 48:38
  role. So I think he's probably won
• 48:42
  Coville. My my friends who are around
• 48:46
  Clemson football said one of the reasons that he left was he
• 48:49
  didn't want to play around the line of scrimmage.
• 48:51
  When he did get a little bit of playing time this past year, he
• 48:54
  was used kind of like a nickel or like a star in our defensive
• 48:59
  lexicon. And my understanding is he
• 49:01
  wasn't real happy about it, though he looked.
• 49:03
  He played a lot in that role against Appalachian State.
• 49:06
  I thought he looked pretty good in it.
• 49:07
  But if that's not what he wants to do, then he's probably a
• 49:11
  candidate for the deep half. Tyson Flowers.
• 49:15
  Sorry to Tyson and his family if they're watching.
• 49:17
  I think he's garbage. I wish they hadn't brought him
• 49:21
  in. I watched a lot of Rice film and
• 49:24
  that secondary was as bad. You think our secondary look
• 49:27
  bad? They look like they didn't have
• 49:30
  a clue what they were doing. So I'm I wouldn't expect a whole
• 49:34
  lot out of flowers. The guys I'm looking at for that
• 49:37
  Superman role are Christian Ellis from New Mexico and Isaiah
• 49:45
  Cash. They both have their strengths
• 49:47
  and weaknesses. Cash is as good a form tackler
• 49:53
  as I have seen on film and doing this for 14 years.
• 49:58
  Every time he makes a tackle, he's around the ball.
• 50:01
  Guy goes down, arms wrapped. Even if he's diving at their
• 50:05
  legs, you're seeing the arms come up, up above his head,
• 50:09
  round the hips. It is beautiful.
• 50:13
  But does he have the size 5-10, maybe 6 foot two O 5?
• 50:20
  And he doesn't have blistering speed.
• 50:22
  And you watch Bubba Baker, Buddha Baker, who was used in
• 50:26
  that role in Arizona. He was a fantastic tackler,
• 50:30
  great instincts, all the good things that I like, but looked
• 50:34
  like a rocket ship coming up the line of scrimmage.
• 50:37
  When you all see the film review, I'm going to call it out
• 50:38
  like he's beating it. He's running twice the distance
• 50:42
  as the Mike linebacker. Both are unblocked and he's
• 50:45
  beating Mike linebacker to the ball.
• 50:48
  So Cash, is he that level of athlete?
• 50:51
  No, but he's going to be a reliable tackler, which is
• 50:55
  welcome in middle field. What about?
• 50:57
  Ellis is more of a volume guy. He he's a hitter, not as
• 51:03
  necessarily as good a tackler. I thought he was going to play
• 51:06
  the star when I didn't realize that Tech was going to be
• 51:10
  changing defensive schemes. I thought they were bringing in
• 51:12
  Ellis to play the star. He's got a little bit more long
• 51:16
  speed, little bit bigger body. So so I think that those are two
• 51:21
  guys and then who knows, you know, maybe, maybe Reddish would
• 51:25
  thrive in that role. I don't know.
• 51:26
  But with his with his range and with the very limited use of him
• 51:32
  in a tackling role last year since they had him 30 yards from
• 51:35
  the honest image half the time. I, you know, I don't know.
• 51:40
  But long term, the kid from the kid from Virginia incoming
• 51:47
  freshman Robinson and I'm brain cramping on his first name.
• 51:53
  Is it Sheldon Robinson? Sheldon Robinson.
• 51:55
  Sheldon Robinson. Yeah, Sheldon Robinson from.
• 51:57
  Woodbury no. Sherrod Henderson and Sheldon
• 51:59
  Robinson. I get their names confused but
• 52:01
  Sherrod is a defensive man. Sheldon Robinson watching his
• 52:05
  film he had he plays around the line of scrimmage.
• 52:09
  He has the ability to turn and run with distance and range.
• 52:14
  I think long term this defense was made for him to be a star.
• 52:20
  It may not happen year 1 and that may not buy time for pry to
• 52:25
  get to when he's going to physically mature and who knows.
• 52:29
  I mean, again, my freshman rule, but Brandon face on was ready to
• 52:34
  play right away. So you know, maybe maybe he's
• 52:37
  that guy. But I really, really liked his
• 52:39
  film. He had range, he hits, he
• 52:42
  tackles, he plays the ball in the air.
• 52:46
  You know, I, I don't know about the level of competition he was
• 52:48
  playing, but he ripped the party and for what is expected in that
• 52:53
  role, well, I, I should probably get into that.
• 52:57
  So the entire defence is predicated.
• 53:00
  Those edge guys set the edge one way or the other and that middle
• 53:04
  safety, not most of the time is going to be the one up around
• 53:07
  the line of scrimmage. And the idea is all those
• 53:10
  interior guys are keeping him clean, to a lesser extent
• 53:14
  keeping the mic clean, but especially keeping him clean.
• 53:17
  And you've got to have a guy who we're the biggest difference in
• 53:21
  Bud's defense, safeties were playing half the field, your
• 53:24
  alley defenders only playing the alley to one side and you've got
• 53:27
  someone else responsible on the other side.
• 53:29
  And this defense in base and most of the unless they're
• 53:33
  bringing a specific pressure that alley defenders got to
• 53:37
  cover both sides of the field. So they have to read the play
• 53:40
  quickly. They've got to react.
• 53:42
  They got to be up in the up in the alley and they got to put
• 53:45
  people down because you know, generally the other safeties are
• 53:48
  going to be dropping back into coverage.
• 53:51
  So where I'm struggling right now and Robinson's not ready or,
• 53:59
  or assuming he's not ready, who's the fit?
• 54:03
  Is that what? Is that what I said I was going
• 54:05
  to ask you later? Is that what gives you pause
• 54:06
  right now based on everything? That's what gives me the biggest
• 54:10
  pauses. This defense is predicated on
• 54:12
  that middle safety being an absolute superstar.
• 54:17
  Ohio State did it with four down lineman in the three high
• 54:20
  safeties win the national championship.
• 54:22
  And we've heard rumors that their defensive coordinator was
• 54:26
  the guy I probably wanted and that they were working on trying
• 54:29
  to bring him in before all of a sudden he elevated his worth
• 54:33
  with the national championship run.
• 54:35
  Who do you have it? Middle safety Caleb Downs.
• 54:39
  Caleb Downs is a badass. You know who's the badass?
• 54:44
  Like, who in Hokey's history would fit that role?
• 54:49
  You're telling me? Maybe, maybe.
• 54:51
  Maybe. Maybe.
• 54:52
  Jarrett. Kyle.
• 54:52
  Jarrett. Hi, Sean.
• 54:55
  I'm sorry, Not Kyle. Kyle Fuller.
• 55:00
  Wow. And, and right now, right now,
• 55:03
  any Hokies fans are watching or ready to throw rocks at me for
• 55:06
  that snafu. Not on this program.
• 55:10
  They screwed up all the time on this.
• 55:12
  Program maybe Jimmy Williams, you know, but but there haven't
• 55:17
  been a lot of guy you know Chancellor if he had been used
• 55:20
  that way, you know, possibly people forget Cam Chancellor
• 55:24
  really really struggled in Blacksburg.
• 55:27
  He was a much better pro than he was a college player, but.
• 55:30
  He never found his fit until he he never found his fit until he
• 55:33
  got to the boon where they put him at strong because we tried
• 55:36
  him What corner free. Free.
• 55:39
  And then finally, Pete. Pete decides, wait a second,
• 55:42
  he's 64, he's 2:30 and he can run a 445.
• 55:45
  Put him at strong and let him annihilate and running running
• 55:49
  backs and tight ends. And I.
• 55:52
  So maybe he would have. Been the game about him all the
• 55:54
  time and then he became a big time pro and oh, I love Cam
• 55:58
  Chancellor, he was great. I heard the grumbling.
• 56:02
  I know I got receipts on some of y'all out there, but yeah, who
• 56:07
  who is that guy? I would encourage every single
• 56:11
  Virginia Tech fan. You want to see what the middle
• 56:14
  safety is supposed to look like? Go find Buddha Buddha Baker
• 56:18
  highlights from last five or six games last year for the Arizona
• 56:23
  Cardinals and watch that. And then think to yourself, man,
• 56:26
  when was the last time a hokey defensive back looked like that?
• 56:30
  I don't know. We got we got a Miami fan
• 56:32
  throwing a good name out there too for for this.
• 56:35
  Oh, macho. Yeah.
• 56:37
  Oh, he was a corner. God bless him.
• 56:39
  He was a corner, but I think. Just a good corner.
• 56:42
  The the the way he played though, I think he could have
• 56:45
  maybe had a fit here. But Brandon Flowers, Brandon
• 56:49
  Flowers hit the way Voodoo Baker does.
• 56:52
  I don't know if he ever could have run, run the way Buddha
• 56:57
  Baker. Just my God, like I watching
• 56:59
  that was like watching Aaron Donald in college and going
• 57:02
  people are sleeping and this is the best defensive lineman I've
• 57:05
  seen doing this. And then he got to the NFL and
• 57:09
  all of a sudden he was a huge star.
• 57:10
  And I'm like, see, I wasn't just making up.
• 57:13
  Just because we were beating Pitt back then doesn't mean he
• 57:16
  wasn't killing guys on the inside.
• 57:18
  So let me, let me let me ask this question.
• 57:20
  Why ain't even a question. I'm going to make a statement.
• 57:23
  My hokey fandom and my sanity relies on Virginia Tech having
• 57:28
  Buddha Baker to play on defense next year.
• 57:32
  Yeah, I'm a I'm a little antsy. I'm not watching a fucking game.
• 57:38
  What's the use? What?
• 57:40
  What did we do with? Like I said, maybe may.
• 57:45
  So I'll, I'll, I'll put on my positivity hat, not not my
• 57:50
  strong suit, but like I said, the cash kids, I, I, if I had to
• 57:56
  pick my favorite, I think cash is going to end up being the
• 57:59
  guy. I just he, he's such a good
• 58:01
  tackler and he's reliable and maybe he doesn't have the
• 58:04
  explosiveness, but I mean, they're going to be a lot of
• 58:06
  growing pains. This is going to be new for
• 58:09
  everybody who's returning. It's it's going to be a
• 58:11
  different a ball and wax. I think some of the transfer
• 58:14
  guys might end up being more comfortable in the scheme than
• 58:18
  than the returns. Nothing like carpet.
• 58:21
  At one thing, Yeah. Well, one thing when Fritch said
• 58:24
  is, you know, this may not buy prior time.
• 58:27
  I'm going to go ahead and let everybody know is watching this,
• 58:30
  that or that, may watch it tomorrow or the next day.
• 58:35
  Crockett lose every game. He ain't going nowhere.
• 58:37
  They're not going to fire him. He just bought himself probably
• 58:40
  three more years by not having an offensive line, an offensive
• 58:46
  coordinator or defensive coordinator, so.
• 58:49
  The worst offensive line I have ever seen.
• 58:52
  Get it out of your head if you're the heck of going.
• 58:54
  Somewhere the last three. Weeks don't even get me started
• 58:58
  on don't even get me started on offense and offensive
• 59:01
  coordinated and offensive line we.
• 59:02
  If y'all want to spend an hour listening to me RIP the
• 59:05
  offensive line from last year, I'm happy to do.
• 59:07
  It was bad. I watched Squad of Nick Marshall
• 59:11
  and it was bad. And our offensive coordinator
• 59:15
  went to be an offensive line coach.
• 59:17
  It's crazy. Crazy.
• 59:20
  All right, well, let's get to it.
• 59:22
  Let's get to it because I mean, what I've liked that's happened
• 59:26
  the last about 40 minutes. Here is Frank, we were going,
• 59:29
  you did it perfectly, man. You brought players, you brought
• 59:32
  ideas. But let's get up some of these
• 59:35
  screenshots that you have and let's explain that because,
• 59:39
  because right now you've got my head thinking of all right,
• 59:43
  here's 0, here's 4 techs, here's a guy's on the edge, there's
• 59:46
  your mic. I mean, I, I'm picturing that
• 59:49
  obviously in a month actually. Is it a month from today?
• 59:53
  What from today? Is it the 14th or the 12th I
• 59:58
  can? It is the 12th, so exactly a
• 1:00:00
  month for the day. A month, yeah.
• 1:00:01
  So we'll be seeing it here. We.
• 1:00:04
  Go. OK, well, so this is starting
• 1:00:06
  out. So as you all know, Cephkis was
• 1:00:08
  the defensive coordinator at at Wofford.
• 1:00:12
  This is a look at when he didn't use an odd front.
• 1:00:16
  This is their nickel when they're running at Wofford.
• 1:00:19
  And this is one of those situations where, again, it's
• 1:00:21
  going to look more like the traditional Virginia Tech
• 1:00:23
  defense with the difference being that both of the edge
• 1:00:25
  guys, those are the outside linebackers that are standing
• 1:00:28
  up. This is going to be, you know,
• 1:00:30
  more primary pass situations. I don't know how much they're
• 1:00:33
  going to do this. Based on his time in the NFL,
• 1:00:37
  Arizona would run 2 down lineman head up on the guards rather
• 1:00:42
  than here you've got, you know, A5 Tech to the field and more of
• 1:00:48
  a nose to the boundary. But in this set, you know,
• 1:00:52
  you're expecting your your edge guys to rush and you've got your
• 1:00:56
  two linebackers and their trips formations.
• 1:01:02
  They're having to roll over the safeties to the outside with one
• 1:01:06
  deep. But this wasn't something I saw
• 1:01:09
  a whole lot of the film in the film I included to show that
• 1:01:12
  there's flexibility. It's not going to look like the
• 1:01:15
  same. It's not going to look like the
• 1:01:18
  one of the things that I there's not much I didn't like about
• 1:01:22
  bugs defense scheme wise. But with with the defense
• 1:01:27
  coordinator the last couple years, it got pretty predictable
• 1:01:29
  where pressures were going to come from.
• 1:01:31
  And they were going to, they were going to bring the star and
• 1:01:34
  they were going to slant everybody to the boundary and
• 1:01:37
  they were doing that way, way too much.
• 1:01:40
  And they weren't bringing the mic at all, even though the mic
• 1:01:42
  linebackers really weren't very good cover guys that would never
• 1:01:45
  blitz them. So they became a little bit
• 1:01:47
  predictable. So this is just showing that
• 1:01:49
  there's a little bit of flexibility.
• 1:01:52
  Arizona would run sort of junk looking defenses where you have
• 1:01:56
  a bunch of guys standing around a line of scrimmage and they're
• 1:01:58
  all moving around. It wasn't so static like we've
• 1:02:02
  become accustomed to the next few years.
• 1:02:05
  So if you want to go to the the next Wofford one, I'll show the
• 1:02:08
  the base defense base 3-4 that he was running at Wofford.
• 1:02:14
  Yeah, because when I see this, I'm thinking like almost like
• 1:02:17
  looking at Jay Bateman when he was at UNC, like that's kind of
• 1:02:21
  my initial look at this. Yeah, and and again, this is a
• 1:02:24
  this is a change up both of the the key thing here is both of
• 1:02:27
  the edge guys are those outside linebackers.
• 1:02:30
  So even though they look like, oh, these are bigger guys,
• 1:02:33
  they're going to pass rush all the time, especially the guy to
• 1:02:36
  the field. That's a guy who has the ability
• 1:02:38
  to drop. And so so you know, they they
• 1:02:43
  still have to be confident. Your field linebacker still has
• 1:02:45
  to be confident to rush, which I don't know that Woodson, you
• 1:02:49
  know, otherwise I would say Woodson would fit in that role,
• 1:02:52
  but I've never really seen him as much.
• 1:02:54
  He certainly wasn't used much as a blitzing guy.
• 1:02:57
  So you know, that's where I think I think you can see in
• 1:03:01
  this look, you'd have Ben Bell as the guy to the boundary and
• 1:03:05
  and Jonkman probably to the field or Burgos in in this look.
• 1:03:13
  All right, so this is Wofford's base formation.
• 1:03:16
  Again, you're seeing a nose tackle.
• 1:03:19
  He's slightly off. He's not straight head up.
• 1:03:22
  But you've got both of the defensive ends are playing what
• 1:03:26
  I would call 5 techniques here. I've read and they keep calling
• 1:03:30
  it a four I even though they're a little more outside shoulder
• 1:03:33
  on the guards. You see your linebacker if if
• 1:03:37
  you all watched a lot of the East Carolina games from early
• 1:03:41
  in Fuentes era and end of coach Beamer's era, they always had
• 1:03:45
  the boundary linebacker sort of walked up to line scrimmage and
• 1:03:49
  instead of in the Lawrence Taylor pass rush pose, it kind
• 1:03:52
  of be squatting. I used to call it the Popeye
• 1:03:55
  linebacker is what you'd look like if you had the Popeye pads
• 1:03:58
  on practice and you're trying to prevent yourself from getting
• 1:04:00
  killed. You've got your field
• 1:04:03
  linebacker. He's a little more off the line
• 1:04:05
  of scrimmage and playing about halfway between the right
• 1:04:09
  offensive tackle and the slot receiver.
• 1:04:12
  And again, this is their run in 3-4.
• 1:04:14
  So you've got the two linebackers, but you can see the
• 1:04:17
  safety boundary. Safety is walked up.
• 1:04:20
  So again, there's a little bit of positional flexibility.
• 1:04:23
  He hasn't started using the the three safety look.
• 1:04:27
  So generally what you're going to see from this with the way
• 1:04:31
  the running backs align, most likely run play is going to be
• 1:04:34
  inside zone to the right hand side.
• 1:04:37
  What you would expect here, the defensive end or defensive
• 1:04:42
  tackle, whatever you want to call it, the the four technique
• 1:04:44
  to the field is probably going to slant right and try to get
• 1:04:49
  outside of the shoulder pad right onto the right shoulder of
• 1:04:53
  the right offensive tackle. Can we try do some real quick
• 1:04:58
  for those looking and I'm I'm lucky Siegler played offensive
• 1:05:03
  line, Tally played D line and tackle.
• 1:05:04
  I've been adjusted. We have our friend Robbie Field
• 1:05:08
  side would be the head of the Bulldog the.
• 1:05:11
  Down. Side is the feet of the bulldog.
• 1:05:13
  If everybody was wondering if you didn't know what as he's
• 1:05:16
  saying this, I want to clear that up because that is
• 1:05:19
  something that I've been taught over the last few years.
• 1:05:21
  And somebody be like, who the fuck is he talking about right
• 1:05:24
  now? Now there we go.
• 1:05:26
  Wide side of the field and short side of the field is I'll use
• 1:05:29
  that some. But so, so that defensive end
• 1:05:33
  or, or defensive tackle, I don't know what the terminology will
• 1:05:37
  end up being. When it was Bruce Smith, they
• 1:05:38
  called it a defensive end in 3-4.
• 1:05:41
  But to me that's more aligned like a defensive tackle.
• 1:05:44
  So he's they're probably going to slant to the left or to the
• 1:05:48
  top of the screen or to the field side, whatever you are
• 1:05:51
  more comfortable with. That field linebacker most
• 1:05:54
  likely is going to sort of shift out to the flat, become a flat
• 1:05:58
  defender. The right inside linebacker is
• 1:06:03
  probably going to fill between the boundary free technique, the
• 1:06:07
  defensive tackle to the bottom of the screen and that outside
• 1:06:10
  linebacker who's in the Popeye position or kind of looking like
• 1:06:14
  he's shrugging his shoulders. And that outside guy is going to
• 1:06:19
  become your option defender. So where the quarterback is
• 1:06:23
  going to have trouble, he doesn't know if that backside
• 1:06:26
  defender is going to crash inside on the zone and that
• 1:06:30
  safety who's creeping up could replace him as the option
• 1:06:33
  defender. Could the outside linebacker
• 1:06:37
  slow play and just sort of be stationary and slow read the
• 1:06:41
  quarterback, or could that outside linebacker just becoming
• 1:06:45
  like a bat out of hell and try to hit the mesh point, focusing
• 1:06:48
  more on quarterback safety? So there's some variability
• 1:06:51
  there that makes the quarterback's job more
• 1:06:56
  difficult. One of the reasons that this
• 1:06:57
  defense is becoming more popular in college football is zone
• 1:07:01
  read, and it makes it a little more challenging from a zone
• 1:07:04
  read perspective. Figure out, all right, who's
• 1:07:07
  going to be there waiting for me as the quarterback on the
• 1:07:09
  backside. You can do a little bit of a,
• 1:07:14
  you know, sort of a gap hand off where that outside linebacker is
• 1:07:18
  going to crash inside. And either, you know, if the
• 1:07:21
  safety is not walked up, maybe even the boundary inside
• 1:07:24
  linebacker is coming on pressure sort of moving to the right and
• 1:07:28
  then up the hash and replaces them.
• 1:07:31
  So that variability is difficult for for defense.
• 1:07:35
  I know that there was another article that I saw and I
• 1:07:37
  apologize, I'm not giving appropriate credit, but said
• 1:07:40
  that there was a lot of Dave Arnotta, who's y'all Correct me
• 1:07:44
  if I'm wrong. He's at Wisconsin now.
• 1:07:46
  He's he. He was.
• 1:07:48
  He was at Wisconsin when Cephus was there at the GA.
• 1:07:52
  Yeah, so, but but him running this 3/4, that was a lot of his
• 1:07:58
  impetus was really focusing on making life miserable for
• 1:08:01
  quarterbacks, trying to run zone read and and make sure that
• 1:08:05
  they're not being static with what those linebackers doing.
• 1:08:08
  They're not just coming off the edge all the time, but they can.
• 1:08:12
  They're not slow playing all the time, but they can and trying to
• 1:08:17
  mix mix things up a little bit. Can I ask a question just
• 1:08:22
  looking at this because I see we've got 11 in the picture
• 1:08:25
  here. So there's not obviously a high,
• 1:08:28
  a high free safety. My assumption is the one on the
• 1:08:31
  boundary side above the Bulldogs head is the free safety.
• 1:08:35
  But what kind of look could seek his come out of this because you
• 1:08:39
  said he likes the skies and coverages.
• 1:08:40
  Because I'm looking at this, everybody is within 10 yards of
• 1:08:46
  the line of scrimmage. There is no one way back.
• 1:08:49
  What, what sort of looks could he give when it comes to this
• 1:08:53
  coverage wise? Yeah.
• 1:08:54
  So so the safety to the boundary could bail and you play true
• 1:08:59
  cover for, you know, a lot of the the handoff stuff that Bud
• 1:09:04
  was doing where you got inside leverage, outside leverage and
• 1:09:07
  wherever the receivers go that comes the inside gets picked up.
• 1:09:11
  I've read a lot where they want to match similar to what you
• 1:09:14
  know, some of the articles I wrote about pry where they'll
• 1:09:17
  run cover three over the top and all those linebackers are sort
• 1:09:23
  of turning to the outside and identifying first threat, second
• 1:09:26
  threat as it comes in the middle of the field and matching to
• 1:09:28
  them. And once I get to you got to
• 1:09:30
  match up. I don't think that they
• 1:09:33
  disguised as much out of the space 3-4 look, when we get to
• 1:09:37
  the the Arizona film are you're going to see a lot more
• 1:09:41
  deception and and and and in different things where it looks
• 1:09:45
  a lot like it's going to be cover 3 and it turns into cover
• 1:09:47
  2. I know that was that's a
• 1:09:50
  favorite that they were doing last year.
• 1:09:52
  It really gave Caleb Williams a hard time for the Bears.
• 1:09:55
  Course, he's a rookie quarterback.
• 1:09:56
  So you know, you expect some of those struggles.
• 1:09:59
  But here I'm I'm expecting, you know, without remembering the
• 1:10:03
  play that I clipped this from. I I'm expecting probably cover 3
• 1:10:08
  in the back end, seeing that the boundary linebackers probably
• 1:10:13
  playing to the flat. I'm sorry, the field linebacker
• 1:10:15
  playing to the flat safety walking up on the boundary side
• 1:10:21
  could either go to the flat or he could bail or he could
• 1:10:26
  replace the edge guy. If the edge guy rushes, you
• 1:10:30
  know, crashes hard to the inside, you know, there's a lot
• 1:10:33
  of different variability here. Yeah.
• 1:10:36
  So you're giving in this case you got a lot of giving the
• 1:10:39
  quarterback a lot to think about both from your coverage
• 1:10:42
  standpoint and also if you if you've got the the read option
• 1:10:45
  call there as. Well, and those inside guys,
• 1:10:47
  they're all about sacrificing themselves.
• 1:10:50
  You're not going to see your defensive tackles or your nose
• 1:10:53
  making a huge number of plays. Their idea is those three guys
• 1:10:57
  ideally, and maybe one of the two linebackers are going to
• 1:11:01
  account for all of those offensive line.
• 1:11:03
  You don't want to see clean bodies getting down the field,
• 1:11:06
  getting anywhere near the safeties.
• 1:11:08
  If you watch yeah, I think there are two games where you get
• 1:11:11
  some, some good Wofford film from 2019 when see if see if
• 1:11:16
  this was there. And even though they're only
• 1:11:18
  running two safeties, it's the safeties making the vast
• 1:11:21
  majority of the tackles. And you all see that.
• 1:11:23
  I, I highlight some of that in the film review where you can
• 1:11:27
  see really distinct alleys forming sort of like what Bud's
• 1:11:31
  defense did and their two safeties filling, you know,
• 1:11:35
  filling that alley. Sometimes both of them,
• 1:11:38
  sometimes one. But they, they seem to have,
• 1:11:41
  they understand the concept where if it's executed up front,
• 1:11:45
  they're going to find themselves with a ball carrier one or two
• 1:11:48
  yards at most from a line of scrimmage in a very clearly
• 1:11:51
  defined alley. Where I would, where I would
• 1:11:53
  think the alley would be here, assuming that they they do do
• 1:11:58
  the they do do the slant to the field is I would expect that the
• 1:12:04
  the left defensive tackle that that for Tech, he's going to be
• 1:12:09
  looking, even though he's trying to get outside, that's hard to
• 1:12:11
  do. So his objective is to try to
• 1:12:14
  get to the outside to cut that. I believe that's a right tackle
• 1:12:18
  off from getting to the second level.
• 1:12:20
  And so he's de facto spilling the ball to the to the field
• 1:12:24
  safety. He would once he keeps running,
• 1:12:26
  he would get out of his back pedal and come up and and make
• 1:12:29
  the play or the field guy, he's spelling him out to the field
• 1:12:33
  guy, field linebacker going to the flat.
• 1:12:40
  This would be a lot easier if I had one of those telestrators,
• 1:12:43
  but. Yeah, I need, I need to, I need
• 1:12:45
  to invest in in something where I can, I can do some circling
• 1:12:48
  here, pull up, pull a Little John magic.
• 1:12:51
  If you if you ever do film reviews for a for a blog, folks
• 1:12:54
  out there reading, make sure you got a guy who knows how to how
• 1:12:58
  to cut, tape and and code in order to just hand you the clips
• 1:13:03
  that you picked out for. Thanks Joe, if you're watching
• 1:13:05
  because I don't know how to do. It guys you.
• 1:13:10
  Want to go into the next one? We can start diving into the the
• 1:13:13
  Cardinals looks. Yeah, let's let's let's put one
• 1:13:16
  on here for for my Colts. So.
• 1:13:20
  All right, So this is the Cardinals when they switch to
• 1:13:23
  the switch to the Penny look towards the end of the season,
• 1:13:26
  this is a little bit of inverted.
• 1:13:29
  You've got again your three down lineman, nose guard guard
• 1:13:32
  covered up, you know, again, in passing situations.
• 1:13:36
  Colts are still spread out so you can see that boundary
• 1:13:39
  defensive tackle to the bottom of the screen is widened out a
• 1:13:43
  little bit. They you know, there's
• 1:13:45
  variation. They're not real static in the
• 1:13:47
  way they line up. But generally, you're going to
• 1:13:49
  see those three guys with their hand on the ground and then
• 1:13:52
  you've got your two linebackers lined up.
• 1:13:55
  And here they're both using very aggressive.
• 1:13:57
  They're indicating pass rush. Doesn't mean they're coming.
• 1:14:00
  They don't give it away. But you can see the edge guy,
• 1:14:04
  the one to the field. He's splitting the difference
• 1:14:07
  between the offensive tackle. And if you read my film reviews,
• 1:14:10
  you're going to hear that a lot, splitting the difference between
• 1:14:12
  the offensive tackle to the field and the slot receiver.
• 1:14:16
  You have your one middle linebacker sort of stacked
• 1:14:18
  behind the nose. That's Kazir White.
• 1:14:22
  And the idea again, those 3 interior guys jam everything up.
• 1:14:27
  Your two edge guys are setting the edge.
• 1:14:29
  From this look, they tend to come a little more often versus,
• 1:14:34
  you know, backing out. But the idea is to create an
• 1:14:39
  alley to one side or the other. And then where they're inverted
• 1:14:43
  here, there's the possibility of the two hash safeties, the one
• 1:14:47
  who's just above the 40 yard line marker and then the one on
• 1:14:51
  the hash mark to the opposite side.
• 1:14:53
  Either one of those could theoretically be the the 6th or
• 1:14:56
  7th man into the, I'm sorry, the 7th man into the box.
• 1:15:01
  But most of the time you're going to see Baker up.
• 1:15:03
  Even with him, that's Baker in the middle, a little deeper.
• 1:15:07
  Most of the time he's up, he would be right around the 41
• 1:15:11
  yard line and sort of inverted, looking like a wishbone.
• 1:15:14
  The other way here he's elevated a little deeper.
• 1:15:17
  So they may be sending one of the other two safeties into the
• 1:15:20
  box, but a lot of time you're going to see Baker's the one
• 1:15:23
  going even if they do the invert.
• 1:15:24
  But they're trying to show a little different here.
• 1:15:27
  If you want to go to the next one, you get a even better look
• 1:15:30
  at you know what they running more often towards the end of
• 1:15:33
  the year. So here same same sort of
• 1:15:36
  alignment. In this case, the wide receiver
• 1:15:38
  is tight. So you can see that the the
• 1:15:40
  field side linebacker is now to the bottom of your screen is
• 1:15:44
  flexed out a little bit and he's off the line of scrimmage, but
• 1:15:46
  the boundary guy still up in in a pass rush position.
• 1:15:51
  You can see from the stances of the defensive line, they're not
• 1:15:55
  being real squatty and trying to just jam up their gaps.
• 1:15:59
  Their feet are a little further back.
• 1:16:01
  They've got more forward lane, which means they're trying to
• 1:16:04
  shoot up and get into the gap and cause disruption, not just
• 1:16:10
  not just trying to, you know, squat and take on the double
• 1:16:13
  team again. You have middle linebacker
• 1:16:16
  stacking up behind the nose. There's a little bit of depth
• 1:16:19
  there. The idea is for him to also stay
• 1:16:22
  clean. He's not he's not assigned
• 1:16:24
  fitting a gap. Like, for example, Jalen Keller
• 1:16:28
  really struggled with that. And before him, Alan Tisdale was
• 1:16:31
  God awful at it the previous year.
• 1:16:35
  But the idea, let's say you're running the inside zone to the
• 1:16:40
  to the boundary. Your boundary linebacker is
• 1:16:44
  going to set the edge. He's probably going to rush up
• 1:16:46
  field keeping his right arm free, taking on the blocker and
• 1:16:51
  you're going to see the inside. They can either consolidate or
• 1:16:54
  they'll probably slant to the right hand side with to the
• 1:16:59
  field side with the backer. Bubba Baker on this run is going
• 1:17:04
  to come up between that boundary edge and the three, I'm sorry,
• 1:17:08
  the four technique to the boundary side and fill that out.
• 1:17:12
  And it's the job of that defensive tackle and the edge to
• 1:17:16
  take the two blockers who are over there and make sure they do
• 1:17:19
  not get in. Bubba, I keep saying Bubba
• 1:17:22
  Buddha Baker's way. And when you all watch my film
• 1:17:26
  review, you're going to see Baker up at the line of
• 1:17:29
  scrimmage. Look at where the Mike is versus
• 1:17:31
  him. He beats the Mike who's
• 1:17:33
  unblocked on this play to make the tackle like he's shot out of
• 1:17:38
  it. And the cool thing about it is I
• 1:17:41
  don't know if it's a preset call where he knows where he's going
• 1:17:44
  to be around line of scrimmage and he's going no matter, you
• 1:17:47
  know, if they're key and run or pass or he's just that
• 1:17:51
  instinctive and that quick. But they have really set this up
• 1:17:57
  to to make his skill set shine. So Arizona with, you know, they
• 1:18:03
  put up some pretty decent numbers defensively.
• 1:18:06
  This was very bend, don't break, but it made Baker look like a
• 1:18:11
  superstar. And when you see their big
• 1:18:13
  plays, he's the one around the line of scrimmage.
• 1:18:15
  He's ideally positioned to, you know, a lot of college teams
• 1:18:19
  like flaring the running back out into the two flats.
• 1:18:24
  Yeah, I'm going to cost people to pass out tonight as many
• 1:18:27
  times as I screw that up. He's he's an ideal position to
• 1:18:32
  cover the back going either way into the flat.
• 1:18:35
  He can match to circle routes. He's, you know, 5-10 hundred and
• 1:18:38
  95 lbs. So yeah, he and he's quick.
• 1:18:42
  He's got the ability to lock on in coverage.
• 1:18:45
  He can match. So if you're looking at this
• 1:18:46
  play and you're looking at the slot receiver to the boundary,
• 1:18:50
  maybe you're showing the backer kind of lining up in a, in a
• 1:18:54
  passive position, but you want to blitz that backer.
• 1:18:58
  He blitzes, then Buddha Baker's going to step inside just like
• 1:19:02
  he's doing run sport. He's going to step right around
• 1:19:05
  the 25 yard line and then he's going to turn to that slot
• 1:19:08
  receiver and match. If that slot receiver comes
• 1:19:10
  inside, he's got it. If the slot receiver goes
• 1:19:13
  outside, he's going to get picked up by the the boundary
• 1:19:16
  hash safety. So you have a lot of
• 1:19:18
  flexibility. One of the things that they'll
• 1:19:20
  do a lot in coverage, they'll run a lot of cover, too.
• 1:19:23
  And you would think, well, in the Cover 2, it's, you know, no,
• 1:19:26
  4 threes, the middle linebacker in the Tampa twos bailing out
• 1:19:30
  and covering the post. You would think, well, the way
• 1:19:33
  they're lined up here would be Baker doing it.
• 1:19:35
  No, sometimes they'll they'll actually take Baker and make him
• 1:19:39
  the match defender on slants and stuff coming inside.
• 1:19:43
  And poor Kazir White's got to turn around and run to the yeah,
• 1:19:47
  I think they call it the pole defender.
• 1:19:50
  I've seen videos on Cover 2 using the term pole defender for
• 1:19:54
  that Mike linebacker. So they'll basically switch
• 1:19:57
  position. You'll see that Mike turning and
• 1:19:59
  bailing and Buddha Baker coming into the flat.
• 1:20:02
  He becomes, he's either the linebacker if they're running or
• 1:20:05
  he's matching to those guys break into the inside and pass
• 1:20:08
  game. So it gives a lot of
• 1:20:10
  variability. From this look, they could run
• 1:20:13
  cover three over the top and the two corners basically sit down
• 1:20:18
  as you know, umbrella flat defenders.
• 1:20:21
  You've got where they're both in press position, you can run, you
• 1:20:26
  know, cover 3, but where they're bailing and Baker can come up
• 1:20:31
  and be run support and that linebacker is going to run to
• 1:20:33
  the flat. I believe that's Mac Wilson to
• 1:20:36
  the boundary. It gives you a lot of different
• 1:20:39
  options and one of the things that they emphasize, don't be
• 1:20:43
  predictable, you know, bring pressures from different angles
• 1:20:48
  bring, you know, you're all running the same coverages, but
• 1:20:51
  where the cover guys are coming from, you can mix up.
• 1:20:55
  And you know, again, in terms of the run defense, the whole idea
• 1:20:59
  and we, we saw Old Dominion did it last year and some other
• 1:21:04
  team, Duke used to do it when they would run the three safety
• 1:21:07
  look a few years ago before the guy who's coaching at Texas A&M
• 1:21:12
  now, I, I love and I'm brain cramping on his name.
• 1:21:15
  Elko, Mike. Elko.
• 1:21:17
  Thank you. Mike Elko, masterful defensive
• 1:21:20
  coordinator, Got what I would have if I could have picked a
• 1:21:23
  replacement for Bud, that would have been the guy I I would have
• 1:21:26
  picked. But before he got there, Duke
• 1:21:28
  ran a lot of three highs and it was the same thing.
• 1:21:30
  They didn't have a lot of talent up front to jam everybody up and
• 1:21:34
  one or two of those safeties was coming into the box right at the
• 1:21:37
  snap. But they would line up a pie,
• 1:21:39
  never knew which one it was going to be.
• 1:21:41
  They would play a lot of, you know, cover zero with a single
• 1:21:43
  high and they would have those two extra guys in the box.
• 1:21:47
  And I mean, especially when your offensive line has Vt on the
• 1:21:51
  helmet, generally they're not going to be very good.
• 1:21:54
  So, or at least over a long enough history, all due respect
• 1:21:59
  to the 2020 offensive line, which was awesome, but when
• 1:22:02
  they're not very good, the chances of them finding a safety
• 1:22:05
  that's much, much quicker at the second level is is pretty
• 1:22:09
  limited. So that's, you know, those Duke
• 1:22:12
  teams were very competitive on defense for a long time using
• 1:22:15
  that approach. So I think prize took on this
• 1:22:18
  defense. I think he was interested in the
• 1:22:20
  three high look, the flexibility it gave.
• 1:22:24
  I think he also realizes that from a talent perspective, it's
• 1:22:28
  going to be really hard to get the horses up front to have a,
• 1:22:32
  you know, to dominate the last scrimmage.
• 1:22:34
  He's not going to be able to get the same level of talent that he
• 1:22:37
  was getting, you know, at Penn State.
• 1:22:40
  And even there his defensive lineman, you know, he, he found
• 1:22:44
  some some gems that were probably not the most highly
• 1:22:48
  recruited guys. Jesse Lucada was a their Mike
• 1:22:52
  linebacker and they would play him at defensive end.
• 1:22:55
  So I, I think that he's read the white writing on the wall.
• 1:23:00
  This is a scheme that will allow it.
• 1:23:02
  One, it shouldn't give up a lot of big plays because they have
• 1:23:05
  the three guys deep 2. You know, you can sort of use
• 1:23:11
  your defensive line as pawns and chess game and eat up blockers
• 1:23:15
  and try to keep second level guys free.
• 1:23:17
  And it's it's a little more intuitive for the second level
• 1:23:21
  defenders than the old Virginia Tech defense has been where you,
• 1:23:26
  you know, you basically have to go where that alley is going to
• 1:23:29
  be. And a lot of those big runs
• 1:23:31
  where somebody screwed up up front and let the running back
• 1:23:34
  go somewhere where they weren't supposed to go and that you see
• 1:23:38
  the safety was out of position. Well, that's because, you know,
• 1:23:41
  someone up front blew the blew the force or spell call.
• 1:23:45
  So I think half of what I've written the last two years was
• 1:23:48
  let's look at the force and split on this big run and you
• 1:23:52
  know, it's pretty good to get. Well, both the safety and the
• 1:23:54
  edge guy are outside. Somebody screwed that up and it
• 1:23:58
  was probably the defensive end. So let me ask this Prince could
• 1:24:01
  you mentioned it there and I was going to ask it in a few minutes
• 1:24:04
  here, but I'm going to circle back.
• 1:24:06
  Why is a scheme like this going to be easier to recruit?
• 1:24:10
  I mean, because I mean, I feel like a lot of people are going
• 1:24:12
  to say, well, don't you need a big nose?
• 1:24:15
  That's not necessarily the case with some of these UA schemes,
• 1:24:18
  right? You don't have to have a three
• 1:24:20
  20 LB nose. It's nice if you do, but you
• 1:24:23
  don't have to. I mean, it's, it's always, it's
• 1:24:27
  always better to have 320 who can move than 285 that can move.
• 1:24:31
  True, but you have to be able to move.
• 1:24:34
  So, you know, a lot of, I don't know, easier to recruit.
• 1:24:40
  I think it's going to be different to recruit because you
• 1:24:43
  know, some of the guys they've been getting a defensive end I
• 1:24:46
  think can play in this 3-4. But like Antoine Power Island,
• 1:24:50
  he was used kind of in this role last year as you know, more of a
• 1:24:54
  stand up off the edge. They would line him up in the
• 1:24:57
  middle and move him around. But he really struggled at
• 1:25:00
  Florida when they added in the piece where sometimes you're
• 1:25:02
  going and sometimes running the flat.
• 1:25:05
  I, I kind of wanted them to keep the defence my I've still got
• 1:25:10
  question marks about the fit. I still have question marks
• 1:25:14
  about how the personnel is going to work.
• 1:25:17
  And we were talking about it for the break.
• 1:25:20
  They haven't turned over the staff.
• 1:25:22
  You know, I love JC Price. JC Price has been a even front
• 1:25:26
  defensive line coach for as long as it's been in the game.
• 1:25:28
  He played under Foster. You know, where does he fit in
• 1:25:32
  terms of coaching defensive tackles to do something that's a
• 1:25:35
  little different? They still need to move, they
• 1:25:37
  still need to gap fit, but you know, they're not going to make
• 1:25:42
  the number of plays I could that negatively impact defensive
• 1:25:46
  tackle recruiting. As I mentioned, Kevin Gilliam
• 1:25:49
  was a fish out of water at Oklahoma where the defensive
• 1:25:52
  tackles were asked to eat up blocks.
• 1:25:56
  So you know, how how is that going to work?
• 1:25:59
  Do they have the Superman recruit at safety who he may not
• 1:26:03
  be a five star guy because you're not really asking him to
• 1:26:06
  play a lot of, you know, sort of traditional deep safety
• 1:26:10
  coverage, but you got to find a guy who, you know, is just an
• 1:26:14
  absolute bad ass up in the box. And Trey Palamalu wasn't a deep
• 1:26:19
  half guy, but he was great around the line of scrimmage.
• 1:26:22
  And that's what you, you know, you need that middle safety to
• 1:26:25
  be. I I and you know, we talked
• 1:26:28
  about the linebackers. Who's the field linebacker?
• 1:26:30
  I have no earthly idea who's the mic.
• 1:26:33
  I'm assuming it's going to be Woodson.
• 1:26:35
  I would put John in there. Yeah.
• 1:26:37
  Yeah. Well, I'll probably be wrong.
• 1:26:39
  I've been wrong, you know, enough times before.
• 1:26:42
  But I have a lot of question marks.
• 1:26:46
  It's a big swing. It's a big swing that's high
• 1:26:49
  risk. If it works out, they've not
• 1:26:52
  giving up as many big plays. And I think that the viewpoint
• 1:26:55
  is that gives them a better chance to compete, especially
• 1:26:58
  with the better offense. You know, the downside is you
• 1:27:02
  have a bunch of square pegs and round holes and it takes you two
• 1:27:05
  to three years to flip the roster and tally.
• 1:27:08
  I think you said it right off the bat.
• 1:27:09
  I don't think he has two or three years to turn things
• 1:27:12
  around. So it's a, it's a, it's a big
• 1:27:15
  swing, especially when the new defensive coordinator is not
• 1:27:18
  bringing in all his own guys that he's comfortable with
• 1:27:22
  running this game. Yeah.
• 1:27:24
  And I mean, you said it earlier when you talk about your fit and
• 1:27:27
  things like that, I mean, obviously, I think you, you, you
• 1:27:31
  wish that Don Terry pose could grow on trees, but they don't.
• 1:27:35
  A guy that can move like that, that's in the, you know, 3/23/30
• 1:27:39
  range in college, you, you don't really see that, you know, that
• 1:27:44
  type of player every day. At the same time, you know,
• 1:27:49
  based on your description there, you, you don't necessarily need
• 1:27:52
  those, those, those big noses that you're used to from a, a
• 1:27:55
  more traditional, you know, 2 gap 3/4.
• 1:27:59
  You know, that, that it was so popular in NFL for so long.
• 1:28:04
  Let me flip it back over to, to here real quick and just ask a
• 1:28:06
  quick question here. So you know, you were talking
• 1:28:10
  about the the field edge here kind of splitting the
• 1:28:14
  difference. If you're going against a, let's
• 1:28:19
  say AODU that loves splitting those wide receivers out outside
• 1:28:25
  the numbers, does that put you at any sort of disadvantage with
• 1:28:29
  that type of alignment? I think with those teams that
• 1:28:33
  are really heavy, you know, for widespread, they're going to run
• 1:28:36
  trips, especially trips to the boundary, which, you know,
• 1:28:40
  causes its own headaches. I would expect the nose to come
• 1:28:43
  off the field and you're going to see the 22 defensive tackles
• 1:28:47
  and the two edges lined up more. You know, they'll they'll still
• 1:28:50
  be standing up, but they'll look like more traditional defensive
• 1:28:53
  ends and they'll do that a lot. And you'll see a lot of that's
• 1:28:56
  when you'll see the junk defenses where right here you
• 1:28:59
  got Baker 12 yards off the ball. If you watch enough tape, I
• 1:29:04
  mean, this is a very limited sample size.
• 1:29:06
  They will bring him up around the line of scrimmage as a
• 1:29:09
  blitzer. Like they'll move him all
• 1:29:12
  around. So you know, there's going to be
• 1:29:14
  a little more variability, but that's that's what I would
• 1:29:18
  expect is it from a base? Look, if you're playing teams
• 1:29:20
  that are really emphasizing sort of like the Tennessee style
• 1:29:24
  spread, you know, I think that they'll go to the true nickel
• 1:29:28
  look where they'll take the nose off the field and they'll, you
• 1:29:31
  know, they'll play similar to what you saw with Ohio State
• 1:29:34
  this year with the two stand up ends, 2 defensive tackles, sort
• 1:29:38
  of head up or, or just offset on the guards.
• 1:29:40
  And then you'll have the mic, you know, right over center.
• 1:29:44
  And but they'll, they'll still have the three high safeties.
• 1:29:48
  I, I think the three high safeties is going to be the base
• 1:29:50
  defense. That's the only connection I can
• 1:29:52
  find between Syphcus and the, you know, the Ohio State defense
• 1:29:57
  coordinator that they were pursuing originally.
• 1:30:00
  So, so I think pride definitely sees the three high safety look
• 1:30:05
  as what he wanted to go to, whether you know, whether it was
• 1:30:09
  going to be Syphcus or somebody else.
• 1:30:11
  I think that was his primary target from day one when he
• 1:30:14
  started self scouting and looking at looking at the
• 1:30:18
  defense. The interesting thing is, you
• 1:30:20
  know, with Moses Phillips athleticism, he might have been
• 1:30:22
  a hell of a fit for it. So him departing, you know, I I
• 1:30:27
  don't know for sure he had the skill set, but he played sort of
• 1:30:30
  he sort of played slow, but he may have missed out on on on an
• 1:30:35
  opportunity to play in a system that really highlighted him more
• 1:30:38
  than what they were doing last year did all right.
• 1:30:44
  Kelly, anything right now? I'm good man, just paying
• 1:30:48
  attention and trying to see if I can take this test at the end of
• 1:30:53
  this class well. I said I I'm I'm this is I'm
• 1:31:00
  guess this is an educated guess. We may he may come out and
• 1:31:03
  they're running the same damn defense they ran last year.
• 1:31:07
  You know, I and and see if this because he's this young
• 1:31:10
  Wunderkin who has all this NFL experience could adapt.
• 1:31:13
  I but but based on what he was involved in, I could not find
• 1:31:17
  any tape where he's running, you know, base four man front with
• 1:31:23
  any consistency. It was just just the nickel no
• 1:31:26
  matter when he was at Wofford when Arizona wasn't doing it.
• 1:31:29
  But I'm picturing this that the only connection I can make
• 1:31:32
  between Jim Knowles and see if kisses they were both 3 high
• 1:31:36
  guys. So, you know, I'm 100% expecting
• 1:31:40
  something that looks like what you've got on the screen right
• 1:31:42
  now as the base defense. Sure, French.
• 1:31:45
  Let me ask this what what are the nuances between what Knowles
• 1:31:48
  was running at Ohio State and what Cephus was was?
• 1:31:53
  Running. So the biggest difference is
• 1:31:54
  Knowles was running even front, Yeah, those even front one
• 1:31:59
  backer or two backers. They went a lot of one backer
• 1:32:01
  versus versus Tennessee and they'd show the light box and
• 1:32:07
  they would have a nickel, they'd have a true nickel when they'd
• 1:32:10
  still have the two edge guys. So they were, you know,
• 1:32:13
  basically they were replacing out their nose with a nickel
• 1:32:17
  defender and going with I'm trying to remember the term.
• 1:32:20
  So it was essentially A7 defensive back a look.
• 1:32:24
  But you know, again, they were bringing safeties up pretty
• 1:32:27
  heavily and then most of the rest of the time they're
• 1:32:29
  running, you know, 4-2 with three high safeties.
• 1:32:33
  So you know that that was the biggest difference.
• 1:32:36
  He, you know, maybe fit what Virginia Tech was doing last
• 1:32:40
  year and they were just taking a little bit of a different, you
• 1:32:42
  know, angle with it. Again, they had Caleb Downs.
• 1:32:45
  Caleb Downs make a lot of guys look pretty damn good from a
• 1:32:49
  coaching perspective. So, you know, I, I had my
• 1:32:56
  thought. I was 100% convinced.
• 1:32:58
  If you want to talk about something I've been, I was dead
• 1:33:01
  wrong about. I was 100% convinced either
• 1:33:04
  Pride was going to take over defensive play calling duties or
• 1:33:10
  he was going to bring in somebody that he had some kind
• 1:33:13
  of past experience, but that was going to run the same system.
• 1:33:16
  This was I was gobsmacked when when I heard the hire and two, I
• 1:33:22
  saw, you know, what the coaching background was, I was absolutely
• 1:33:27
  shocked. So not that again, that's not a
• 1:33:31
  knock on Cephas. It's just such a big usually
• 1:33:34
  when you change schemes this to this level of an extreme, that
• 1:33:39
  means you're expecting you have two to three years to flip the
• 1:33:43
  rooms and get the person out to fit it.
• 1:33:45
  So. And that kind of aligns with
• 1:33:47
  where his contract is and where the buyout is and things like
• 1:33:49
  that. We, we figure at this point,
• 1:33:51
  he's at least got two years with, with these changes that
• 1:33:54
  he's made to, to see where it goes.
• 1:33:57
  Right. And let me ask you this before
• 1:34:00
  we kind of wrap up here. Were you kind of riding the wave
• 1:34:04
  during kind of all the the whispers of who the hire might
• 1:34:09
  be with? It's like it's Knowles.
• 1:34:10
  And then, you know, he he gets on the run and, you know,
• 1:34:14
  because it was such a protracted search for a defensive
• 1:34:18
  coordinator much longer than I think a lot of us wanted it to
• 1:34:21
  be, right. Were you kind of riding that
• 1:34:24
  wave and kind of seeing the names that were getting floated
• 1:34:26
  out there? You had Knowles out there.
• 1:34:28
  At some point. You had Jay Bateman get thrown
• 1:34:30
  out there. And then eventually, you know,
• 1:34:31
  we end up on Seekers. When I when I was going through
• 1:34:35
  it, like like I said, I thought they were going to run the same
• 1:34:37
  scheme. So when Anthony Poindexter's
• 1:34:40
  name was out there and they had coached together and coached
• 1:34:43
  that scheme, I thought, you know, maybe, you know, that's
• 1:34:46
  good probably for Virginia recruiting.
• 1:34:49
  You know, it's familiar UVIUVA guy understood, but you know, he
• 1:34:55
  was a hell of a player and it's obviously, you know, pretty good
• 1:34:59
  coach. I thought maybe that he would
• 1:35:00
  fit. I know Bob Shoop's name was one
• 1:35:03
  that I was watching Tennessee tape on and they did a lot of
• 1:35:07
  the same. You know, they didn't do the
• 1:35:09
  alley defense quite the same way.
• 1:35:11
  But in terms of how they use their defensive line and they
• 1:35:14
  try to, you know, they were very clearly doing pre call force and
• 1:35:19
  spill. It wasn't a instinctive reactive
• 1:35:22
  thing. So I thought that you know, he
• 1:35:24
  would be a possibility. And then when they start
• 1:35:26
  floating the, and I apologize, I'm forgetting his name, but the
• 1:35:29
  Tennessee defensive coordinator from last two seasons, you know,
• 1:35:34
  they he was doing, you know, a lot of similar stuff where
• 1:35:38
  Tennessee had been really bad when Hypo first got there on how
• 1:35:44
  they were setting the edge. They they really struggled in
• 1:35:46
  that area. I think it probably held them
• 1:35:49
  back from competing for some titles even though they had some
• 1:35:53
  big time talent at defensive end.
• 1:35:55
  But last year it really seemed to come together under his
• 1:35:58
  leadership where they were, you know, doing a lot of the setting
• 1:36:01
  the edge stuff and the safety seemed to have a good idea of
• 1:36:04
  where to come up and do run support.
• 1:36:06
  So those were the guys I was really looking at.
• 1:36:08
  I was actually collecting film clips to get ready to write, you
• 1:36:13
  know, reviews on them, especially Shoop and and the
• 1:36:16
  other guy that had been at or that was at Tennessee and the
• 1:36:19
  name's escaping me Poindexter, because you know, I it's not
• 1:36:25
  exactly easy to find a light UConn film, but when he was a
• 1:36:29
  defensive coordinator at UConn, but I could just go, here's
• 1:36:32
  Brent prize prize defense at Penn State.
• 1:36:35
  Here's what they were doing. And Brent prize the head coach
• 1:36:38
  and he got the job entirely based on, you know, his great
• 1:36:43
  defenses at Penn State and you know it, it sort of made sense.
• 1:36:48
  So when he didn't become an option, they took this big right
• 1:36:52
  hand and he, from the sounds of it, sounds like that those were
• 1:36:54
  never the guys being considered. But you know, those were those
• 1:36:58
  were the ones that sort of made sense to me.
• 1:37:01
  I know that there were some other names floated where I just
• 1:37:03
  went that doesn't fit at all at all.
• 1:37:08
  But you know, I'll tell you the way my spring is gone.
• 1:37:12
  That feels like it's two months ago at this point.
• 1:37:14
  It's been what, maybe 3 weeks, 4 weeks since a lot of this
• 1:37:18
  clarity started to come up. So I got, it's hard to even
• 1:37:21
  keep, keep track of it. But yeah, those were the guys I
• 1:37:25
  was looking at. I'm, I'm still surprised, but at
• 1:37:29
  the same time, you know, the old defense, I think I, I, I had no
• 1:37:34
  issues with what Virginia Tech was doing scheme wise
• 1:37:38
  defensively. I had no idea what they were
• 1:37:40
  teaching their linebackers and safeties to do within the
• 1:37:43
  context of that scheme. I would just watch it and go, I
• 1:37:48
  know what they're supposed to be doing and that isn't it.
• 1:37:51
  And you get they're still out there.
• 1:37:53
  Nobody's getting benched, nobody's getting yanked onto the
• 1:37:56
  sideline, getting here full, you know, all teams are doing OK.
• 1:38:02
  Any, any indication that the corners aren't impressed, man,
• 1:38:06
  we're running posts and there's no, there's no safety in the
• 1:38:09
  middle of the field over and over and over again.
• 1:38:12
  Never an adjustment. So, you know, he didn't have
• 1:38:17
  that. He didn't have the assistance
• 1:38:18
  that we're doing a good job. That's my opinion.
• 1:38:20
  I don't think the players were stupid or or slow or anything.
• 1:38:25
  So I I thought that that was a coaching issue and in terms of
• 1:38:28
  talent and he had Michael Parsons had Brendan Smith at the
• 1:38:33
  at the strong side, you know, Will linebacker and he never,
• 1:38:38
  you know, Woodson was as high end as he got Turner's
• 1:38:42
  recruiting tenure. And that defense just doesn't
• 1:38:44
  work in life. Even Bud's defenses, when Bud
• 1:38:46
  had a badass, you know, we called it backer back then
• 1:38:50
  boundary side, inside linebacker, you had a badass.
• 1:38:53
  The defenses were unstoppable. When you had someone who was
• 1:38:56
  mediocre, they were OK. And when you had someone who was
• 1:38:59
  really bad, they were still OK. But then you had to watch that.
• 1:39:02
  Really, you had to watch Lyndale Gibson and Jake Johnson miss 10
• 1:39:05
  tackles again. So that position was really
• 1:39:09
  important. And they never got that guy.
• 1:39:11
  Yeah. If you go back and read when
• 1:39:13
  they hired Pry, I said, my God, can they bring Abdul Carter and,
• 1:39:18
  you know, with him because his linebacker film was great and he
• 1:39:21
  was really good as a linebacker. I had no idea he'd become the
• 1:39:24
  best pass rusher in the country. But God, would I would have
• 1:39:28
  given for pride of Abdul Carter, Abdul Carter to be that will
• 1:39:33
  linebacker. And maybe we'd be having a
• 1:39:35
  different conversation right now.
• 1:39:37
  You might be, I want to ask you this real quick and I think
• 1:39:40
  we'll we'll see if either body here has any more questions.
• 1:39:43
  But with this type of defense, now what's going to be the
• 1:39:50
  offense is where if we're playing this offense, we should
• 1:39:53
  just eat them alive under 20 points.
• 1:39:57
  But if we're playing this type of offense, buckle the fuck up
• 1:40:01
  because if we miss one or two play, we're fucked.
• 1:40:04
  Well, I and a lot of that's going to depend on how personnel
• 1:40:08
  ends up fitting in. Yeah, for sure, I'm.
• 1:40:10
  Saying so let's say it's an above average, everybody is
• 1:40:13
  above average and you're shocked like we we got the Isaiah cash
• 1:40:18
  turns out to be a tackle machine can get sideline to sideline
• 1:40:21
  everything, everything is working above average.
• 1:40:26
  Yeah, if you can, if you've got a team that runs a more
• 1:40:30
  traditional run game, not as much of A zone run game, and
• 1:40:34
  your offensive lineman can, you know, take care of that edge guy
• 1:40:38
  and and get level defenders to the second level.
• 1:40:42
  And that means blocking those front three one-on-one.
• 1:40:46
  If you got offenses that have offensive lines that can block
• 1:40:49
  that front three on one-on-one, you know there's going to be a
• 1:40:53
  little bit of trouble because again, I don't know that there's
• 1:40:56
  the Superman at the safety spot that's, you know, going to be so
• 1:41:00
  dynamic that doesn't matter. He's just going to beat
• 1:41:03
  blockers. They're trying to get to him and
• 1:41:05
  he's too quick and too elusive and too instinctive.
• 1:41:08
  He'll get there before they arrive.
• 1:41:11
  You know, looking at it, it's well suited to zone, read, run,
• 1:41:15
  spread stuff. I think it's ideally suited to
• 1:41:19
  stop that kind of defense slow developing stuff.
• 1:41:23
  If you watch and I think there is a YouTube video that says Ben
• 1:41:27
  Bell highlights, strongly recommend folks watch it.
• 1:41:31
  He is if you all remember the last two Marshall games, how
• 1:41:34
  Marshall's edge guys were coming up the field and that disrupted
• 1:41:38
  all of Tyler Bowen's sort of slow developing, you know, run
• 1:41:42
  wide. You know, this defense prevents
• 1:41:45
  teams from running wide if it if it's doing things right, teams
• 1:41:50
  that are oriented towards running more sweep oriented
• 1:41:54
  stuff outside zone, this defense is going to give them our time.
• 1:41:58
  If they can run up inside and and dominate that interior 3,
• 1:42:02
  there's going to be a lot of trouble.
• 1:42:04
  So that's what I'd look for from a you know, that's what I'm
• 1:42:08
  looking for. And Mr. Compton, who just
• 1:42:10
  commented, yes, same thing. You know, if you're running the
• 1:42:13
  traditional pit offense and teams good at it, you know that
• 1:42:16
  that pin and pull power stuff and you get, you know, create
• 1:42:20
  that gap. The weak spot in defense is
• 1:42:23
  always going to be between the four tack and the the edge guy.
• 1:42:26
  If you can hit that seam, especially with one linebacker,
• 1:42:30
  it doesn't take much for you to disrupt that linebacker, disrupt
• 1:42:33
  that safety and that backs off for a long way.
• 1:42:36
  The idea is to give that that mic and that free that middle
• 1:42:41
  safety a free run and you hope that they can be the playmakers
• 1:42:44
  you need at that position. And you and you sure as hell
• 1:42:47
  hope that those edge guys, if they're going to line up that
• 1:42:49
  wide and they're, you know, they're a little susceptible to,
• 1:42:53
  you know, speed, draw off tackle power where you're kicking out
• 1:42:58
  the end and they're playing outside in anyway.
• 1:43:02
  You know, which what you're hoping they'll make up for
• 1:43:04
  because they're lining up why they're going to have an
• 1:43:06
  advantage on offensive tackles with pass rush.
• 1:43:09
  And again, if you haven't seen Ben Bell play, watch it and
• 1:43:13
  you'll sit there and go. Yes, yes, quarterback pain.
• 1:43:19
  I like it. It's all coming to plan.
• 1:43:22
  Right. It's all coming to plan.
• 1:43:23
  Well, listen French, the last hour half here has been an
• 1:43:27
  educational piece on what we're likely to see next year.
• 1:43:33
  Obviously we're spring ball starts next week.
• 1:43:37
  We we know people are going to get in there and then we're
• 1:43:38
  going to have the spring game. How much are we going to see?
• 1:43:40
  We don't know. But I think here based on what
• 1:43:44
  Sam Cephas has done, you have definitely given us at least at
• 1:43:49
  least the 200 level, 200 level because I got a feeling as you
• 1:43:54
  start seeing real games, 300 and 400 level stuff will be coming
• 1:43:59
  out soon. So tally, Brian, anything before
• 1:44:03
  we wrap it up tonight? I'm all.
• 1:44:06
  Set brother, I'm good to. Go.
• 1:44:07
  If I could do a quick, just a quick advertisement for folks
• 1:44:13
  who may not know thekeyplay.com. You know, great community there,
• 1:44:18
  a lot of good folks who, you know, have a, a pretty measured
• 1:44:22
  attitude about, you know, the state of the team.
• 1:44:25
  You know, we're not happy when it's not happy, but folks aren't
• 1:44:27
  ripping each other's throats out.
• 1:44:29
  And I'll do my film reviews, you know, do a couple.
• 1:44:32
  We try to take breaks in the offseason a little bit.
• 1:44:34
  We do some stuff for the spring game.
• 1:44:36
  And now with the new schemes, we'll highlight the new scheme,
• 1:44:38
  probably do a couple articles of summer.
• 1:44:40
  But every Monday we have a film review of the previous games.
• 1:44:45
  Usually we'll do 10 to 15 plays. For anyone who hasn't seen it
• 1:44:49
  before, we can try to go into deep dive and explain, you know,
• 1:44:53
  where the blocking assignment may be missed or is it a
• 1:44:56
  defensive call that just was the perfect call against the perfect
• 1:45:00
  play call tried to, you know, assign assign the appropriate
• 1:45:05
  blame or and identify opportunities for improvement.
• 1:45:08
  And also I take great pleasure in calling out when guys do good
• 1:45:12
  things. I said you could say I was the
• 1:45:14
  the king of the Neus Peebles fan club last season and same with
• 1:45:19
  Bashaw Tooten. Bashaw Tooten behind our 2020
• 1:45:23
  offensive line all I don't think and I really think, even though
• 1:45:29
  the fan base loved him, I don't think people understand how
• 1:45:33
  really good he was because he had nothing in front of him That
• 1:45:38
  was it is just it was just bad. In fact, I never have to write
• 1:45:43
  the word more other than talking about the offensive line coach.
• 1:45:46
  Now Moore brothers Clements. Oh, they were, they were so bad
• 1:45:56
  when I say that I I can smell my own because I was terrible too.
• 1:45:59
  So. That's right.
• 1:46:00
  That's right. I recognize that.
• 1:46:02
  Guy, I I've sat in film rooms before and have been the focal
• 1:46:07
  point of a bad place. So I I've been there.
• 1:46:10
  It's not a fun place to be. At the same time you got to, you
• 1:46:14
  got to call it like you see it. I haven't had that frustrating a
• 1:46:18
  couple of years going back to when Curt Newsome was the
• 1:46:21
  offensive line coach and you had guys stepping with the wrong
• 1:46:24
  foot or being, you know, felt felt like a full second behind
• 1:46:29
  the snap count. It's just little dumb things
• 1:46:32
  like that. Just you're taking the wrong
• 1:46:34
  angle or your feet aren't moving at contact and you just go
• 1:46:37
  That's, you know, that's 8th grade stuff.
• 1:46:40
  That's not stuff that should be happening.
• 1:46:42
  Power 5 football and you're watching it go on.
• 1:46:45
  They're either just got no talent OR they're tuning out or
• 1:46:49
  coach, you know, is teaching them via Zoom.
• 1:46:52
  I know that that was proven a false rumor.
• 1:46:57
  Well, I, you know, don't want to throw stones, but your God be
• 1:47:01
  better than that. Yeah, there you go.
• 1:47:03
  All right. Well, y'all, with that being
• 1:47:06
  said, dear God be better than that.
• 1:47:08
  Let's hope next year's butter. We're going to wrap up this
• 1:47:10
  episode of the Boundary Corner Podcast brought to you by Counts
• 1:47:13
  Family Pharmacy in Blacksburg, along with our guest French from
• 1:47:17
  the Key play here, I'm Curtis Wilson.
• 1:47:19
  I'm Brian Siegler. Jonathan Talley.
• 1:47:22
  We are part of the College Title Network.
• 1:47:23
  Check out boundarycornerbt.com to listen to all of our
• 1:47:26
  episodes. While you're there, don't forget
• 1:47:28
  to follow us Twitter, Facebook, Instagram favorite podcast
• 1:47:32
  source Again, if you're looking at this one, definitely watch it
• 1:47:35
  on YouTube to see some of the the photos we had here.
• 1:47:39
  As always, we let our buddy down in Roanoke, Jason Long play us
• 1:47:42
  in play us out. Check him out Jason Long
• 1:47:45
  music.com where you can link to all of his music, Apple,
• 1:47:48
  Spotify, his YouTube channels and his Facebook pages.
• 1:47:51
  We appreciate y'all for listening.
• 1:47:53
  Appreciate all the questions and as always, let's go.
• 1:47:57
  Thank you. The.