DON’T Blitz? Huh?
The Biscuit
I like the Rakes of Mallow thought process here. While I love the idea of blitzing the ever-living crap out of a QB to mess with their heads and disrupt their play, there’s not much of a point if there is no downfield threat and the QB’s already suck without pressure. But if you do blitz, you open up a ton of opportunity for short passes to turn into huge gains (see: SDSU) once in a while.
I might disagree with Rakes a little though. I think there’s room for blitzing in this game - I think it’s good to put the QB’s on their heels, make them a little nervous/afraid early in the game. So I like an opportunistic blitz here and there. But probably something a bit more controlled than ’send the world’ would make sense. Keep the coverage in there, make UM beat us straight up. Pressure, but be opportunistic about it, rather than straight ahead all the time non-stop.
Hopefully Corwin will see this and change things up slightly this week. I think it’ll be effective. I know Tenuta will not see this at all and will want to blitz every down regardless of situation. (And I still love him for it.)
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6 Comments
ND’s going to blitz 70% of the time this weekend. But that’s just part of the system. The 4th or 5th rusher has to come from somewhere. I’ll bet we see a ton more zone blitzing this time - and by that, I mean we’ll see any at all.
I get that it’s the system. But with 4 guys down on the line most of the time, it’s the 5th and 6th guys that are true blitz backs. I’d like to see it kept to 4 and 5 rather than 5 and 6 attacking the QB personally. With a few stunts and such thrown in there to get pressure with just 4-5 guys, rather than 20.
I’d have to go back and look, but I don’t think the SDSU game featured a lot of 6 man rushing. We brought 5 quite consistently, as I recall, but just sat back and made the tackle on short gains with the other 6.
The way the game played out ND D vs. SDSU O was very much by design, I think. And incredibly effective. They completed just 49% of their passes (with 2 completions being shovel passes). They only got about 4.5 yards/completion too. Against almost any college team, not just SDSU, you’d take those stats. Particularly if they pass 50+ times.
I agree with Rakes to an extent too. While I dont EVER want us to go back to the Kent Baer style of D, I think Tenuta is playing too much to the other end of the extreme. You get teams like Ga Tech, Philadelphia Eagles, etc who you KNOW are going to blitz 90% of the time, and you can game plan and combat that just as easily as if you know the team WONT ever bring pressure. YOu just allow them to come, throw dink and dunk throws and move 4-5 yards a play. Thats exactly how SDSU was able to frustrate us. Better teams will make us pay for that.
I like the idea of being agressive, but I think a 75% blitz rate is too excessive. 55 is closer, but I’d only like to see a blitz 45% of the time. That way, you can lull your opponent to sleep not expecting it, and the 45% of the time you DO attack, you actually get home at a higher ratio. Id rather see 5 sacks coming out of 15 blitzes than 0 sacks out of 40.
I’m fine with 75% blitzing in general. Bring the heat! But, when it’s necessary. Against the Spread n Suck, it just isn’t necessary. These QBs are a mess without blitzing all the time. So blitz some and make them count, but make sure those 2-yard passes dont turn into 40.
I think the scheme will be very similar to the one used last weekend. A lot of 5 man rushes that force the qb to get rid of the ball quickly. Once Tenuta and Brown trust that the db’s won’t get burned, I think we will start to press a lot more and not allow the dink and dunk to work. Until then, keep the db’s back, and force the qb to complete an obscene number of passes to move the ball down the field. While I agree in general with the Rakes post, I think more pressure is almost always the better option in college, esp. against inexperienced qb’s. Very few of them will have the patience that Lindley did last week. Remember, their goal was to not get embarrassed, winning would have been icing on the cake. Michigan’s qb’s will not be so patient, especially if we can score early.
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