08-24-2023, 07:13 PM
* Porter praised Gregory and cited being a defensive coordinator at Washington as a credential showing what a good coach Gregory is. That made me feel old. Gregory was only DC at Washington for one year. It was what Gregory was doing at Cal when Porter was a toddler that was really impressive. But of course I get why recent experience for such a good recent defense as Washington will be the salient point in Porter's mind and why he wouldn't get caught up on a detail like Gregory being DC one of the eight years there.
* On points of emphasis from Gregory, it's toughness, physicality, being sure tacklers, and making plays. Always noteworthy when Ben asks a coach and one of his players the same question and they answer the same, in this case physicality. I do wonder if Gregory is built more for coaching the tackling part of safety than for coaching the coverage part. That's what his resume and the interviews so far would suggest to me.
* Another thought I have is that emphasizing physicality and the other things Porter mentioned may be Gregory trying to make chicken salad out of chicken feathers. To be polite, our safety room lacks athleticism. Wyrick had the slowest 200 meters and 110 meter hurdles I've ever recorded among Stanford players. Every track time I saw for Gilman was abysmal, including one I want to refuse to believe is now starting at DB for Stanford, a 12.06 100. The one track mark I have for Porter was a heinous 18' 8.5" long jump that among all Stanford players I've ever tracked only beat out a linebacker and a kicker. We are challenged in the back end. I am trying to put on a brave face about this because our coaches are, but my guess is the coaches know they have to play with the cards that are dealt to them and they have to make the most of this group until they can get better guys in via recruiting. Our lot in the back end this year may be massive vulnerability but at least we can try to coach up toughness, physicality, and sure tackling. The problem with that is that our guys are slow and unathletic but they're also tiny: 5'9" 194 for Gilman and 5'10" 183 for Wyrick (and remember roster heights and weights are always inflated rather than understated). It really would be pretty shocking if our safeties aren't a liability.
* Porter says the defense is a lot more Cover 3 and not as much quarter quarter half (new term for me....evidently combo of Cover 2 and Cover 4). I don't know much scheme but as I understand it Cover 3 is seen as more conducive to guarding against the deep ball (because the deep guys get to divide into thirds rather than halves or in the case of quarter quarter half one guy taking half and the other two dividing half the field) and is also a run defense-friendly alignment because it allows for a heavy front. Considering what we know about our safeties' lack of speed, it makes sense we'd try to protect them with more deep coverage. Considering what we know about the Wisconsin defense and stopping the run, it makes sense that there would be coverages that facilitate run defense. Just giving this a moment's of thought, it seems plausible to me that Cover 3 would make sense given our personnel. That being said, I don't feel like we know enough to say what things are likely to look like this fall (and to be honest I'll need somebody else to tell me if patterns do emerge). We've mostly heard from other DBs and coaches about the variety of coverages rather than Cover 3 above others, and Porter's comment somewhat contradicts Manley saying the new defense "is kind of the same in terms of Cover 3/man" (which Wright made a similar point). But I do note Manley mentioned Cover 3 twice and Wright also mentioned Cover 3, so maybe we have an insight here. In closing the answer, Porter talked about there being a lot of variations on Cover 3 and single high safety looks. As I understand it single high safety is Cover 1. So maybe this isn't that divergent from Manley and Wright. Maybe it's just not as much Cover 2 as they suggested? As I go down this rabbit hole I can feel myself overthinking this. Maybe somebody can tell me what it looks like against Hawaii....and then maybe it will look different against USC.
* However best to characterize the coverage schemes, Porter said it's been great because the defense is sending pressure every chance they can get, which is nice because it gives safeties less time to cover. Chalk up another data point to pressure.
* Porter says it's been difficult to defend our quarterbacks' deep balls. Per my above reflections on the athleticism limitations in the safety room, I think this is going to be a vulnerability this year. But as with all practice reflections, failure by one group is success by the other (and vice versa), so we can hope this is saying nice things about the QB deep balls.
* Didn't bite on "quarterback of the defense" and said guys at all levels of the defense are making calls. I do wonder if this is truly spread out in the April defense, which we've heard relies heavily on communication, or if responsibilities are concentrated in a few guys. From the way coaches and Porter now talk about it it kind of seems to me like a lot of guys have to be able to make calls. Where Porter really wanted to take this question was in talking about safeties being the last line of defense. One notable comment was that because safeties are the last line of defense they have to make sure they don't have mental busts/errors/missed assignments, an echo of Gregory.
* Porter talked about how he feels everybody on the team is getting antsy and want to get out there and play somebody else rather than ourselves. I'm getting this sense too. I'm sure it happens with all teams at this part of the calendar. But I do wonder if there's an additional element in a rebuild of wanting to get out there and show the world they don't know the real you, and, a bit more pessimistically, an element of wanting to get out there and see if all the enthusiasm and energy from recent months amounts to something. Taylor talks about legitimate confidence and I think it's such an important phrase to understand a rebuild. Right now none of our confidence is legitimate. They haven't earned it yet. Last time they were on a football field when it counted they were getting embarrassed. I bet our players are indeed antsy to prove the world wrong....and to see where they are.
* I'm usually not one to be all "oooh oooh look at our players' academics" but how can you not with a Bioengineering major who can talk about his lab experience engineering E. coli to detect staph? It looks like Porter made the honor roll two years ago and not last year, but there's no way I would have gotten good grades in this.
* On points of emphasis from Gregory, it's toughness, physicality, being sure tacklers, and making plays. Always noteworthy when Ben asks a coach and one of his players the same question and they answer the same, in this case physicality. I do wonder if Gregory is built more for coaching the tackling part of safety than for coaching the coverage part. That's what his resume and the interviews so far would suggest to me.
* Another thought I have is that emphasizing physicality and the other things Porter mentioned may be Gregory trying to make chicken salad out of chicken feathers. To be polite, our safety room lacks athleticism. Wyrick had the slowest 200 meters and 110 meter hurdles I've ever recorded among Stanford players. Every track time I saw for Gilman was abysmal, including one I want to refuse to believe is now starting at DB for Stanford, a 12.06 100. The one track mark I have for Porter was a heinous 18' 8.5" long jump that among all Stanford players I've ever tracked only beat out a linebacker and a kicker. We are challenged in the back end. I am trying to put on a brave face about this because our coaches are, but my guess is the coaches know they have to play with the cards that are dealt to them and they have to make the most of this group until they can get better guys in via recruiting. Our lot in the back end this year may be massive vulnerability but at least we can try to coach up toughness, physicality, and sure tackling. The problem with that is that our guys are slow and unathletic but they're also tiny: 5'9" 194 for Gilman and 5'10" 183 for Wyrick (and remember roster heights and weights are always inflated rather than understated). It really would be pretty shocking if our safeties aren't a liability.
* Porter says the defense is a lot more Cover 3 and not as much quarter quarter half (new term for me....evidently combo of Cover 2 and Cover 4). I don't know much scheme but as I understand it Cover 3 is seen as more conducive to guarding against the deep ball (because the deep guys get to divide into thirds rather than halves or in the case of quarter quarter half one guy taking half and the other two dividing half the field) and is also a run defense-friendly alignment because it allows for a heavy front. Considering what we know about our safeties' lack of speed, it makes sense we'd try to protect them with more deep coverage. Considering what we know about the Wisconsin defense and stopping the run, it makes sense that there would be coverages that facilitate run defense. Just giving this a moment's of thought, it seems plausible to me that Cover 3 would make sense given our personnel. That being said, I don't feel like we know enough to say what things are likely to look like this fall (and to be honest I'll need somebody else to tell me if patterns do emerge). We've mostly heard from other DBs and coaches about the variety of coverages rather than Cover 3 above others, and Porter's comment somewhat contradicts Manley saying the new defense "is kind of the same in terms of Cover 3/man" (which Wright made a similar point). But I do note Manley mentioned Cover 3 twice and Wright also mentioned Cover 3, so maybe we have an insight here. In closing the answer, Porter talked about there being a lot of variations on Cover 3 and single high safety looks. As I understand it single high safety is Cover 1. So maybe this isn't that divergent from Manley and Wright. Maybe it's just not as much Cover 2 as they suggested? As I go down this rabbit hole I can feel myself overthinking this. Maybe somebody can tell me what it looks like against Hawaii....and then maybe it will look different against USC.
* However best to characterize the coverage schemes, Porter said it's been great because the defense is sending pressure every chance they can get, which is nice because it gives safeties less time to cover. Chalk up another data point to pressure.
* Porter says it's been difficult to defend our quarterbacks' deep balls. Per my above reflections on the athleticism limitations in the safety room, I think this is going to be a vulnerability this year. But as with all practice reflections, failure by one group is success by the other (and vice versa), so we can hope this is saying nice things about the QB deep balls.
* Didn't bite on "quarterback of the defense" and said guys at all levels of the defense are making calls. I do wonder if this is truly spread out in the April defense, which we've heard relies heavily on communication, or if responsibilities are concentrated in a few guys. From the way coaches and Porter now talk about it it kind of seems to me like a lot of guys have to be able to make calls. Where Porter really wanted to take this question was in talking about safeties being the last line of defense. One notable comment was that because safeties are the last line of defense they have to make sure they don't have mental busts/errors/missed assignments, an echo of Gregory.
* Porter talked about how he feels everybody on the team is getting antsy and want to get out there and play somebody else rather than ourselves. I'm getting this sense too. I'm sure it happens with all teams at this part of the calendar. But I do wonder if there's an additional element in a rebuild of wanting to get out there and show the world they don't know the real you, and, a bit more pessimistically, an element of wanting to get out there and see if all the enthusiasm and energy from recent months amounts to something. Taylor talks about legitimate confidence and I think it's such an important phrase to understand a rebuild. Right now none of our confidence is legitimate. They haven't earned it yet. Last time they were on a football field when it counted they were getting embarrassed. I bet our players are indeed antsy to prove the world wrong....and to see where they are.
* I'm usually not one to be all "oooh oooh look at our players' academics" but how can you not with a Bioengineering major who can talk about his lab experience engineering E. coli to detect staph? It looks like Porter made the honor roll two years ago and not last year, but there's no way I would have gotten good grades in this.