Coach Reffett

Ben Gooding · November 19, 2017

2 minutes ago, GMG24 said:

You know anything about our dline issues right now? No DL, and a d2 LB will always cause issues.

Linebacker play is definitely an issue. But I had an up close view of the game last night when Army was driving toward the wing and our defensive linemen were getting either bent backward onto their backs or chopped every other play. They looked like a confused hitter at the plate just accepting what was coming next. Linebackers were almost immediately lost in the wash because they had defensive linemen sitting in their lap. A few nice plays in the backfield or minimal gains on the FB dive/QB trail, 1 by Hambone and another by TJ. But other than that our front 5 were on skates or getting chopped.

Cerebus · November 19, 2017

35 minutes ago, GrandGreen said:

Defense is were relatively poor recruiting is showing up.

It shows up on offense too. It's just that Mason Fine is such an incredible playmaker he makes up for it. Without Fine I am not sure this is a .500 team.

Believe it or not we have landed one of those "once in a lifetime" under recruited gems that everyone who downplays stars (or @BillySee58's offer system) wants us to rely on. It's just that in this day and age they are incredibly rare. Too much information at everyones fingertips now.

So since our return to 1A we have had two, Booger Kennedy and now Mason Fine. It's wonderful and we are lucky to have landed one much less two, but the coaches need to recruit theirs asses off if we don't want this to all end when Fine graduates.

Ben Gooding · November 20, 2017

Yeah, recruiting obviously needs to pick up. This is unsustainable for the defense. We are losing a lot of good players this season on what is already a bad defense.

Side note, I wish they would have put the biggest and heaviest dude right over their center last night. I don't care if the dude is a bag of pudding. Flop that pudding right over the center and force some consistent doubles. Anything, anything at all would've helped.

GMG24 · November 20, 2017

Syd Moore,, no longer in the program, TJ #15 out early, lost Tillman Johnson, obviously our DL DEPTH IS SUFFERING.. please sweet baby football jebus let English come back ASAP

Edited November 20, 2017 by GMG24

BillySee58 · November 20, 2017

5 minutes ago, Cerebus said:

It shows up on offense too. It's just that Mason Fine is such an incredible playmaker he makes up for it. Without Fine I am not sure this is a .500 team.

Believe it or not we have landed one of those "once in a lifetime" under recruited gems that everyone who downplays stars (or @BillySee58's offer system) wants us to rely on. It's just that in this day and age they are incredibly rare. Too much information at everyones fingertips now.

So since our return to 1A we have had two, Booger Kennedy and now Mason Fine. It's wonderful and we are lucky to have landed one much less two, but the coaches need to recruit theirs asses off if we don't want this to all end when Fine graduates.

Disclaimer on my star system that I have said for a while now:

QB is the least important position when it comes to offer lists coming out of high school being a predictor of success in college. Followed by slot receiver/scat back types, and DBs. Development, accuracy, and fit for the system they play in is so important that offer lists can be misleading at QB. I would much rather have an extremely productive and accurate 5'10"-6' QB with no other offers like a Fine/Kellen Moore/Rakeem Cato/etc than a 6'4" with a few other G5 offers like Greer or Means. Prototypical size but no P5 offers usually means the QB is not accurate, which is a much bigger issue than being short in college.

Many/most of the great G5/non power conference QBs of recent lore have not had great offer lists because they were undersized but proved that wasn't a huge hindrance while running shotgun heavy offenses. Scat backs and slot receivers have similar cases often being under recruited because of size but being big/strong is not in their job description, so those guys often overcome light offer lists to be good college players. Same with DBs.

But when it comes to outside receivers (Guyton/Bussey), every down backs (Wilson/Smith), offensive linemen, defensive linemen, and linebackers, and actually all-CUSA players and not just role players, offer lists are a much more accurate in predicting where these guys end up.

Venson · November 20, 2017

3 hours ago, GreenN'walinsVet said:

Word was it was Reffitt that had the gameplay against Army last year. Im no coach, but it sure appeared to me that we ran basically a generic base defense last night.

I wonder if this was the plan. Instead of revamping our defense late in the year for what amounts to a meaningless game, i wonder if we just played base, and decided to put the game into the offenses hands.

That's an interesting point that I had not considered. It was killing me last night to watch them run the same base defense over and over with no success. I see your point about why change for one game that doesn't really mean anything other than an ego boost. It wasn't really critical to either team. I think both were playing for pride.

southsideguy · November 20, 2017

I think it was the NY Jets coach Web Eubank that said the best defense is a good offense. I wish we had the defense we had we won the HOB bowl.

Venson · November 20, 2017

2 minutes ago, southsideguy said:

I think it was the NY Jets coach Web Eubank that said the best defense is a good offense. I wish we had the defense we had we won the HOB bowl.

That's the one thing that Mac got right. John Skladany.

BTG_Fan1 · November 20, 2017

3 hours ago, GrandGreen said:

Defense is were relatively poor recruiting is showing up. Every fb division team NT has played with the exception of UTEP has substantially better ranked recruiting classes. There is some talent on defense, but not a lot of depth and teams like FAU and Army have exploited that. Reffitt has a very tough job and I think it is very difficult to judge him based on the talent he has available.

Recruiting on the offensive side has not been much better, but NT's offensive schemes and a budding super-star QB have covered that up.

Recruiting is not the problem.. the defense scheme changed from Ek to Reff.. when your 2 best and 2 of best in all of CUSA are lost or sitting on the bench it is time to adjust..