For you to come away from Saturday's game against Memphis feeling better about the defense --- and the rest of the season, overall?

I'm literally just spit-ballin' here. And maybe this is too "pie-in-the-sky", but the thought crossed my mind this morning, and I'm curious if others can quantify it.

Obviously, the Bearcats have to win for you to feel great, but what else?

Is it holding Memphis to less than 500 yards of offense?
Is it grabbing a couple turnovers and limiting them to less than 28 points?
Less missed tackles (not sure how to quantify that)?

Serious question. Just curious...

I want to see sustained drives on offense and good fundamentals on defense. If we just don't have the talent on defense, then we just don't have the talent. But I don't want to see us getting carved up because of sloppy tackling and missed assignments.

I dont want to see any "tackles" where they bounce of the our man and run for another 10+ yards

How about Memphis punting on two consecutive drives while the game is still in reach.

Better overall execution - better tackling, less or no missed assignments, not giving up big plays. Playing the run tougher than the first 3 games.

(10-02-2014 10:03 AM)JPBearcat3 Wrote:  For you to come away from Saturday's game against Memphis feeling better about the defense --- and the rest of the season, overall?

I'm literally just spit-ballin' here. And maybe this is too "pie-in-the-sky", but the thought crossed my mind this morning, and I'm curious if others can quantify it.

Obviously, the Bearcats have to win for you to feel great, but what else?

Is it holding Memphis to less than 500 yards of offense?
Is it grabbing a couple turnovers and limiting them to less than 28 points?
Less missed tackles (not sure how to quantify that)?

Serious question. Just curious...

The difficult part is that this is ONE GAME. And it's against a program that has been really, really bad over the past few years, so it will be difficult to say that, if there is improvement, how much improvement there actually is.

Here's what I'd LIKE to see:
-A score that isn't at all close...let's say, a three-score margin (ie. 17 points or better). This would mean that the D at least stopped the UM offense at a comfortable margin compared to our Offense-versus-their-Defense.

-That the Defense forces AT LEAST one "three-and-out" series for UM's offense, per quarter (ie. I'd like the D to force 4 or more "three-and-out" series for the game). This is harder than it looks, hence why I set the goal low. It is not necessarily a tragedy if we give up one first down per series, but it'd sure be nice to see the D go out there and force punts from deeper on the field.

-At LEAST three sacks per-half (so 6 for the game). Getting penetration and pressure on the QB is something we haven't see much of. With a running-game, this might be hard to achieve as well, so I'd be at least comforted with 6 tackles-for-loss.

(10-02-2014 10:56 AM)BearcatJerry Wrote:  The difficult part is that this is ONE GAME. And it's against a program that has been really, really bad over the past few years, so it will be difficult to say that, if there is improvement, how much improvement there actually is.

Here's what I'd LIKE to see:
-A score that isn't at all close...let's say, a three-score margin (ie. 17 points or better). This would mean that the D at least stopped the UM offense at a comfortable margin compared to our Offense-versus-their-Defense.

-That the Defense forces AT LEAST one "three-and-out" series for UM's offense, per quarter (ie. I'd like the D to force 4 or more "three-and-out" series for the game). This is harder than it looks, hence why I set the goal low. It is not necessarily a tragedy if we give up one first down per series, but it'd sure be nice to see the D go out there and force punts from deeper on the field.

-At LEAST three sacks per-half (so 6 for the game). Getting penetration and pressure on the QB is something we haven't see much of. With a running-game, this might be hard to achieve as well, so I'd be at least comforted with 6 tackles-for-loss.

Thanks for being so specific, Jerry; these are the things I was throwing around in my head earlier today.

If we come out of this game with a win, and on top of that we've forced 6 sacks, had 4 three-and-outs, and a blowout score --- I'd feel like we won the lottery, honestly.

Just win for now. Their is time to keep improving, but I want to win in the mean time. Some years, one side of the ball takes a while to be competent. The question is by the time our defense gets itself together, will we be buried in an irrelevant season or will we be peaking just in time for ECU/Houston/etc with AAC title on the line? I would LIKE to see Memphis score <14 and win in a balanced performance, but every week that we pull out a W is another week we are buying the D to figure it out...so any win makes me feel good on Saturday.

BearcatJerry has it right. Our next game is at Miami so we don't have a lot of time to get better on defense. We need to get better fast.

This week will be a test but we need to dominate Memphis, especially defensively: force 3-and-outs, get 4-6 sacks, 2-3 hurries and hold Memphis to 100 yards rushing.

On offense, gain 200 yards rushing so we can control the game better and have no sacks so Gunnar & co. can do what they do best.

GO BEARCATS!

The thing is about our defense, it is fast and many times gets to runner behind the yard of scrimmage, but can't make the tackle. I would be happy with less arm tackling, and more than 3 man rushes. Toledo is a much better offense than Memphis. I want to see defense stop them like they did Toledo in the first half. I actually expect a great game form the defense and the offense to move the ball.

Less missed tackles. I stopped counting our missed tackles against tO$U at 12. In the first quarter.

Maybe they should bring in some local HS coaches to teach our players how to tackle....

Tackle well and put up a fight at the line of scrimmage. Look like a D that is warranted by a program in the stage of development that this one is.

How the heck guys who tackled well last year and who were generally fundamentally sound now look like they have no clue way too often is completely beyond me. Mouhon, Edwards, Tyson, Hartfield, Wilder et al are frontline guys in year 2 who look like shells of themselves this year so far.

I don't know if our defense as a whole is physically strong enough to do what needs to be done. They better get some stops, because Memphis is going to.

(10-02-2014 09:00 PM)CincyBro Wrote:  I don't know if our defense as a whole is physically strong enough to do what needs to be done. They better get some stops, because Memphis is going to.

Memphis is not a good group in the secondary. It gets really dicey once you get to the guy after Bobby McCain. And they will probably be without their best pass rusher in Martin Ifedi as well. UC can bomb away on this Memphis defense. I am more concerned about them wasting downs running the football in situations where Memphis knows they will run.

For what its worth if UC is going to show any competence on defense the rest of this year they have to do it against a Memphis team that is a year away from being good on offense.

Yeah, for me it just comes down to tackling. There's lots of extra stuff that would be nice to see, but right now I just want to see UC wrapping up and finishing the job instead of seeing RBs bouncing off a couple of defenders before getting taken down 9 yards down the field.

I want to see the offense put up 50 every night and as long as the D can hold the other team to 49 then I am alright with that

After the historically abysmal performance on defense I saw last week- a sign of a pulse on defense would be encouraging.

Anything else would be asking too much. The defense is pitiful.

(10-03-2014 05:17 PM)Bearcatbdub Wrote:  After the historically abysmal performance on defense I saw last week- a sign of a pulse on defense would be encouraging.

Anything else would be asking too much. The defense is pitiful.

A pulse? Maybe with a little cardiac resuscitation.



I'll be giddy for the 120th ranked overall defense to play a game like their the 90th ranked one!

Obviously, whatever you "wanted" to see, you didn't get it.