Our pass defense is the main problem. If it was just average, we would be 5 and 1. What bothers me the most is that a few years back we had a defensive backs coach who had the players believe in him. I recall they came to practice early and stayed after to work on their foot work and technique. Some of those players are still with us in Troy J and Quency L I think. It was the best pass D we had in a long time. He left the next season for Purdue I think. My issue is that our scheme seems weak, not just the players. I know our front 4 can't get pressure most of the time and that hurts. But we seem to always be chasing the receiver not defending against the pass. The coaches say that the other team is keeping 7 in to block so only 4 are in the pattern. We should have 7 to defend the 4 and they get wide open.
The losses in the league were to experienced coaches who I think control the assistants and the schemes on O and D. They make quick changes to our scheme and mostly win that battle against our coaching staff. In the USD game we came out strong on O, but after 2 series changes were made and we were in trouble the rest of the half. I hope that our coaches can learn from this and get better. I also think the head coach needs to be closely in control of the new and inexperienced assistant coaches so we don't get out schemed with an experienced coach against our inexperienced coaches. Sometimes I feel that assistant coaches who get to be head coaches still have sympathy for assistants and give them too much authority. We can’t afford to hire experienced and proven assistants so we need to guide our assistant coaches until they prove themselves.
We sure need a change in our pass defense scheme so we win some games.