[washingtonismoney]

Of course, I wouldn't put this as my top problem with the team's performance right now. Or even in the top five or whatever. It's a minor problem. But I've been a bit disappointed with the performance of the defensive backs.

If you think back to last year, in the first two games of the season, Meeks and Holder were incredibly dominant -- like no pair of corners I've seen for Stanford. They simply erased their opponents. It seemed like most of the pressure and sacks derived from the quality of the coverage (rather than strong pressure making coverage look good). Of course Holder and Meeks were injured soon thereafter, but I assumed going in to this year that we'd be seeing play like that early part of last year.

I'm having trouble placing the precise performance level of the DBs right now; certainly good against inferior opposition against Rice. Against SC, they generated some absurd interceptions but didn't exactly play well aside from that. Even poorly. And against Rice, the quality of pass defense seemed more driven by pressure (which was gratifyingly frequent) rather than the defensive backs' play. Certainly they were beaten pretty frequently in the last drive of the game.

So while I wouldn't call it a major disappointment, or get too much on Akina's (or the players') case, there's been some under-performance -- at least relative to my expectations.

EDIT: to wit, Stanford has 7 PBUs so far this year. It had 10 against K-State alone. 16 total through 3 games.

[washingtonismoney]

Of course, I wouldn't put this as my top problem with the team's performance right now. Or even in the top five or whatever. It's a minor problem. But I've been a bit disappointed with the performance of the defensive backs.

If you think back to last year, in the first two games of the season, Meeks and Holder were incredibly dominant -- like no pair of corners I've seen for Stanford. They simply erased their opponents. It seemed like most of the pressure and sacks derived from the quality of the coverage (rather than strong pressure making coverage look good). Of course Holder and Meeks were injured soon thereafter, but I assumed going in to this year that we'd be seeing play like that early part of last year.

I'm having trouble placing the precise performance level of the DBs right now; certainly good against inferior opposition against Rice. Against SC, they generated some absurd interceptions but didn't exactly play well aside from that. Even poorly. And against Rice, the quality of pass defense seemed more driven by pressure (which was gratifyingly frequent) rather than the defensive backs' play. Certainly they were beaten pretty frequently in the last drive of the game.

So while I wouldn't call it a major disappointment, or get too much on Akina's (or the players') case, there's been some under-performance -- at least relative to my expectations.

EDIT: to wit, Stanford has 7 PBUs so far this year. It had 10 against K-State alone. 16 total through 3 games.