(12-11-2023 01:13 PM)WRCisforgotten79 Wrote: Defense has always been a problem, no matter who the coach has been.
Only 8 times in a span of 38 seasons has Rice's offense outgained the defense.
But that's a measure of offense AND defense, not just defense. Lookong at the 8 years where the offense outgained the defense, the cumulative record for those years was 56-42, compared with an overall record since 1984 of 174-285-2, so those were clearly among the best Rice teams, period, of that era.
Looking at defense alone, the averge defensive yield in yards/game, by head coach, were:
Brown 430
Berndt 430
Goldsmith 400
Hatfield 382
Graham 415
Bailiff 445
Bloomgren 395
The best defensive stretch would be 1993 (Fred's last year) through 2002 (Hatfield's 9th) where the average yield was 372 yards/game, with the yield under 400 for 9 of the 10 years. Hatfield's first 9 teams gave up 371 yards/game, while his last 3 gave up 417 yards/game. To give a frame of reference, recognizing that the comparison is somewhat skewed by recent offensive growth, in 2023 that would be the difference between ranking 56th and 108th in team total defense. I've said before that Hatfield's demise was not so much because his offense was outmoded as because his teams quit playing defense; in the game that marked the beginning of the end for Hat, his offense scored 63 but his defense gave up 70. Goldsmith, Hatfield (first few years obviously with Goldsmith's defensive recruits), and Bloomgren improved defensive yields compared to their predecessors. Bailiff had the worst two individual years (2007 with 511 and 2016 with 505), and worst overall, perhaps in no small part because offensive numbers have been getting larger overall. Bailiff employed a very conservative game strategy that requires strong defense and kicking game to work, but his defenses and special teams were typically godawful. I never understood that disconnect. Nick Saban and Kirby Smart can be conservative; David Bailiff could not. He could win 10 games if he had a strong QB (Clement, McHargue) or lose 10 games if he ddn't. With respect to differences in level of competition, Brown, Berndt, Goldsmith, and part of Hatfield were against the SWC, most of Hatfield against the WAC with one year versus CUSA, Graham and Bailiff against CUSA, and Bloomgren against mostly CUSA with one year against the American.
The dilemma faced by any coach at Rice is limited numbers of talent, and while you can move the ball and score on offense with scheme and execution (the RUOwls approach), it takes dudes with talent to play defense. Do you figure that you don't have enough athletes on your roster to play good defense in any event, so you'll put what talent you have on offense and simply try to outscore people, or do you put enough on defense that you're competitive on that side of the ball, and try to improvise and execute on offense? Rice has had a bunch of coaches--Rice, Brown, Berndt--try the former and win fewer than 20% of their games. Goldsmith probably put more talent on defense than any other Rice coach--Larry Izzo, N.D. Kalu, Nathan Bennett, O.J. Brigance (started under Berndt), Tony Barker, Joe Davis, Matt Sign--but always kept a QB--Hollas, LaRocca, Emanuel--on offense. You simply cannot afford to be as bad defensively as Brown's and particularly Berndt's teams were. When you simply can't stop the other team at all, then you have to score on every possession to win, and that's incredibly difficult.
Ideally, you'd like for your defense to stop the other team on half of its possessions, The opponent's mistakes (penalties, missed blocks, etc.) will stop them about 1/4 of the time. Off an average of 14 possessions per game, that means they score 3-1/2 times. Assuming a mix of TDs and FGs, that leaves them scoring about 20-24 points per game. Holding opponents to 20 points is a pretty good baseline measure of defensive performance. Offensively, the Bill Walsh/Lou Holtz targets of 25 first downs, 30 points, and 35 minutes possession time (note that in this model it is TOP that enables possession time, not simply running the play clock down), mean that you have done well on that side of the ball. Do both and you will win.
The military academies deal with the numbers issue by running an offense based on athleticism and execution rather than size and specialized talent. Anybody they recruit to run the triple option can probably play somewhere on defense, and vice versa, which increases their effective numbers quite a bit. To go back in Rice history, I always liked the Bill Peterson concept of throw the ball on offense and play sound defense. I'm not sure Rice has enough athletes to have enough drop-back passing game specialists to make that work. I'm now kind of inclined toward mixing option running with the kind of passing game that a running QB can execute, in order to keep the personnel interchangeability with defense. As a couple of examples, Andre Ware was an option QB at Dickinson that Yeoman recruited to run the veer, but he found a home in the run-n-shoot, and Bert Emanuel was such a run threat that any time he got outside, the defense had to give up its shape to pursue, and that left easy passes all over the place. Frank Broyles liked to say, "Any time the quarterback breaks contain, there is a touchdown available somewhere on the field." That's a key to the run-n-shoot, and it was a key to what Dinger was able to do with Bert.
