I don’t understand it. – CougCenter

A list of things I don’t understand about the final two weeks of Cougar football:

I don’t understand why the WSU defense considers this a collapse.

We gave up 53 points to SJSU. We couldn’t stop San Diego State. This is us. I realize we’re giving up more points, but I think that’s mostly because offenses are finally realizing where our deficits are and blowing plays that take advantage of it. No sudden drop in the quality of our game.

From what I understand, we were ranked in the top 20 in the country, were heavy favorites each of the last two weeks, and technically had a path to the College Football Playoff, but this defense has played like this all year. We haven’t gotten worse and our defense has never been better than the MWC offenses we played week in and week out (except Utah State). Some of these crimes just didn’t take advantage of it. We were never serious competitors.

I don’t understand why the last two weeks seem so dramatically different to people than weeks 4/5 where we lost 52 to San Jose and 45 to Bosie State.

I don’t understand why we’re so bad at the details.

Good defense is the cumulative effect of small things. It’s all about safety when you need the right footwork to stay above the summit on deep routes. It’s about the linebackers fulfilling their gap responsibilities in the running game and then “retreating” to the ball carrier when the ball goes somewhere else to support him in the tackle. It’s defensive ends who push the lineman back to make the hole smaller, even if they can’t make the tackle themselves.

A good defense is like a boa constrictor. They pack every inch of an offense and then squeeze it until it comes to a halt. We seem to do the second part in waves. If the secondary is killing the wide receivers, the defensive line is way too loose with the quarterback. So the offensive falters. When the defensive line and linebackers put pressure on the running game, whoever tackles the ball carrier narrowly misses the target. So the offensive falters. Rinse and repeat. The inability to have 11 people working at a high level at the same time makes us completely incompetent.

What I don’t understand is the reason. I have a few answers, the most damning of which is that too many of our athletes simply aren’t athletic enough. But after thinking about it for a weekend, I agree that this is not a sufficient explanation for the serious technical play-to-play error the Cougs had on Saturday.

I don’t understand why we still aren’t able to implement techniques that these guys have been working on since the spring. Mike Leach’s offenses had their problems, but they got tighter as time went on. More disciplined. More technical. Generally more effective. The man was clearly an effective teacher and his offenses reflected physical and mental development over time. I don’t understand why the same doesn’t apply to Dickert’s defense.

I could make positive assumptions and argue that his scheduling decisions hid underperforming athletes for most of the season, but that doesn’t explain why those athletes don’t seem to get smarter, more detailed, and better positioned as the season progresses.

Again, why are we still unable to implement techniques that they have undoubtedly been working on since the spring?

I’m not saying that Dickert and Schmedding are bad teachers, but I am saying that good teaching usually bears more fruit.

I don’t understand why individual players haven’t gotten better.

I don’t understand the complaints about the scheme.

If it is technique and athleticism that allows the defense to pressure the offense until it is dead, then it is the scheme that allows the defense to “pack every inch of an offense.” There are many ways to get defensive players to cover offensive players. If defenses are networks, then specific schemes are the pattern of the network. When people complained about the system and defensive performance on Saturday, I had to think about two things in particular.

a) What does it mean for a defense to be “sound”?

Solid defensive plans ensure that there is someone on defense responsible for stopping the attack, no matter what it does. In the running game, this means that there is a player for every gap. In the passing game, this means that there is one player for each route or part of the field. A “solid” defense system is like a net that has no holes.

Sometimes defensive coaches use unreliable schemes. I remember Mike Breske, Mike Leach’s first DC, being criticized for doing just that. It rarely works. Unsound plans steal from Peter to pay Paul. They leave a gap in one part of your defense to gain a huge advantage elsewhere. If the DC can guess well, this can lead to big defensive plays. It can also lead to big offensive plays. It is essentially gambling, and like gambling, it rarely pays off in the long run.

Developing a solid defensive plan is sort of the absolute prerequisite to being a defensive coordinator, and in my opinion it’s one that WSU defensive coordinator Jeff Schmedding delivers. A lot of people are upset, which is fair, but I’ve seen a lot of people suggesting that the defensive strategy over the last two weeks hasn’t been sound.

It was. But no plan works if you don’t act on it. No scheme will work if you can’t execute the technique. There are many reasons to criticize Schmedding and Dickert’s defensive training, but the suggestion that they use flawed or unsound schemes just doesn’t seem right to me. We almost always have players next to/near the offensive players. The recipients are not alone, they are simply not covered. The running backs are hit but not tackled.

I don’t understand the complaints that our plan is broken.

b) The schema must be more than just “solid”. It has to be additive.

If the goal was to create and teach a solid scheme, many people could serve as defensive coordinators. What great coordinators do is create staff programs that actually *expand* the skills of their players.

To take the net analogy to the extreme, the key is not only to design a net without holes, but also to choose a pattern for the seams that makes it as strong as possible given the materials used.

If you have a safety who has a hard time staying with fast receivers, choose a scheme that allows him to do so… and doesn’t require him to do so. If you have defensive linemen who don’t have much torque, choose a scheme that allows them to move or lean so they can convert their speed into power instead. The world is full of great answers to problems, and great coordinators select the ones that allow their players to bring out their best attributes in the match-ups that benefit them the most.

It’s hard to argue that Schmedding and Dickert have done that much in the last few weeks or at all this season. Even Dickert has admitted this, saying repeatedly in September that he came out as coach and the players picked him up and still won.

I don’t understand why it doesn’t seem to be getting better.

I don’t understand the decisions Schmedding and Dickert make.

Life and football are about making difficult decisions that involve compromise. While Dickert blamed poor defensive performance in September, he didn’t use that tone after OSU’s loss. Instead, he blamed “a lack of playmaking at the core of our defense.”

I wrote last week about how Dickert seemed to favor schemes that put a lot of strain on his inside linebackers, and so I have a hard time interpreting those comments as anything other than challenging these guys*.

*Although I would be open to extending this to the safeties who also struggled against OSU and reside on the interior of a defense.

This brings us to the fundamental question when it comes to evaluating defense plans. What alternatives are there? It’s easy to sit back and say something didn’t work, but it’s harder to judge what’s right when you don’t know the next best alternative. It’s the backup quarterback fallacy. Fans always love the replacement until they see him play. Coaches see the substitute game every day. That’s usually why they play starter. This is especially true if the starter is working poorly.

Do Schmedding and Dickert make decisions that don’t work? Without question. Are Schmedding and Dickert asking players to do things they are not capable of? Also without question. The problem is that that doesn’t necessarily mean they aren’t making the best decisions. Sometimes a team just isn’t very good and coaches have to ask too much of *someone*.

You ask yourself: “Should we be unfair to our safety or our midfielder?” Who is more likely to cope with this? Who do we have who can lose just a little instead of a lot?

In those moments, the question isn’t, “How can I help this player be great?” It’s like an American election, you ask yourself, “Who can least be the worst?”

The problem is that we can’t see from the stands what options they didn’t choose. We don’t see them practicing. We have no idea what the alternatives are or whether the coaching staff will actually choose the least worst plans. We can just see that whatever they chose is terrible.

I don’t understand why Schmedding and Dickert made this choice. But they seem bad.

It will probably cost one of them their job, fairly or unfairly, but given the money that goes into all of this, that’s not an unfair conclusion. That standard is the standard, and the Cougar defense has been below it all season.