Younger's defense

[Blue In BC]

The number of pts given up is a key metric for any defence in any league

Yes there are others but some are not giving that metric enough credit to try to show that our defense wasn't decent last year, which is was

I will evaluate this club between 1/4 and 1/2 way through

D has more issues than positives thus far but I have some hope

Agree the Os>Ds across the board at the moment

Some good debate here all

Tough match up this week

Agree gotta generate turnovers and protect the 🐖

The key metric is winning when you have the lead and the ball. The rest is window dressing.

[dd]

The key metric is winning when you have the lead and the ball. The rest is window dressing.

I would expand that to if your team has the lead can you stop the other team from scoring and winning the game. When push comes to shove with the game on the line, do you rise up and make plays that stop the other team from scoring or do you lay off and play soft zone and let them match the field and win the game. We all know what the answer is. I have zero faith in our defense in holding a lead and winning the game for us. Never. They fold everytime. They wait for the other team to make a mistake and self destruct.good teams don't make mistakes and you're going to have to make some plays to stop them. Our defense isn't that defense 

[Blue In BC]

I would expand that to if your team has the lead can you stop the other team from scoring and winning the game. When push comes to shove with the game on the line, do you rise up and make plays that stop the other team from scoring or do you lay off and play soft zone and let them match the field and win the game. We all know what the answer is. I have zero faith in our defense in holding a lead and winning the game for us. Never. They fold everytime. They wait for the other team to make a mistake and self destruct.good teams don't make mistakes and you're going to have to make some plays to stop them. Our defense isn't that defense 

Unfortunate but true. We saw games lost in the dying minutes because the defence couldn't get that stop. You know what they say about prevent defences.

[RebusRankin]

37+41+28=106 or 35.3 per game in three games versus Calgary.

34+21=55 or 27.5 ppg in the Banjo Bowl or LDG.

42 points allowed in the ESF to Montreal.

We played well on D against Montreal's 4th string QB and their back-up in the season finale. 23 points or 11.5 in those two games. We allowed 16 against the Rider's B team at season's end. So that's 39 points in 3 games or 13 ppg. They held Masoli to 14 early in the season.

My point, this defensive system struggled against good teams last year too.

[Throw Long Bannatyne]

Unfortunate but true. We saw games lost in the dying minutes because the defence couldn't get that stop. You know what they say about prevent defences.

Disagree, they lost the game when they gave the ball back to the Elks with 3:20 left on the clock clinging to a 1 pt. lead. After the punt the Elks began that drive on their own 53 yd. line, every team other than maybe Ottawa would have turned around and put enough points on the board to win the game in that situation.

[Blueforlife]

The key metric is winning when you have the lead and the ball. The rest is window dressing.

please let us know how many times that occurred last year

I don't agree that is more important than having one of the best total pts allowed

You could have a season when you only win couple times with the lead and the ball and have the worst record in the league and the worst defense

There are few situations when you would have one of the best total pts allowed and not have a good to great D, the average of pts allowed over an entire season tells you things

wee bit of cherry picking of the stats there imo

ah well, we won't agree on this one

the rest isn't window dressing, like I mentioned the other stats of yards given up also indicate a pretty good D last year, can't just ignore all those stat to try to support you narrative that our D wasn't good last year

as others have suggested we had an O problem last year, not a D problem, the O made a good D look bad on some nights as they were never off the field

yes our team as whole wasn't good enough to beat the good teams that is true, I believe with a better OC and O we would have won a few of those and our D's stats would have been even better

All this doesn't really matter as right now our D isn't great and we need to fix this quickly, if you thought our D was bad last year, I am not sure what you are calling it this year LOL

[Blue In BC]

please let us know how many times that occurred last year

I don't agree that is more important than having one of the best total pts allowed

You could have a season when you only win couple times with the lead and the ball and have the worst record in the league and the worst defense

There are few situations when you would have one of the best total pts allowed and not have a good to great D, the average of pts allowed over an entire season tells you things

wee bit of cherry picking of the stats there imo

ah well, we won't agree on this one

the rest isn't window dressing, like I mentioned the other stats of yards given up also indicate a pretty good D last year, can't just ignore all those stat to try to support you narrative that our D wasn't good last year

as others have suggested we had an O problem last year, not a D problem, the O made a good D look bad on some nights as they were never off the field

yes our team as whole wasn't good enough to beat the good teams that is true, I believe with a better OC and O we would have won a few of those and our D's stats would have been even better

All this doesn't really matter as right now our D isn't great and we need to fix this quickly, if you thought our D was bad last year, I am not sure what you are calling it this year LOL

There have been many examples of this problem. Interesting you think points given up is more important than winning as a key metric.

Most recent example is the game against the Elks.

It's true that a short pass play wouldn't have been automatically successful. It's more of a statistical probability. We needed a TD to win. What do you think the Elks would be most like to cover with little time left.

If you can't answer that without bias then I don't know what to say. Did the receiver in the deep shot look open?

[Tecno]

Disagree, they lost the game when they gave the ball back to the Elks with 3:20 left on the clock clinging to a 1 pt. lead. After the punt the Elks began that drive on their own 53 yd. line, every team other than maybe Ottawa would have turned around and put enough points on the board to win the game in that situation.

You bet.  TSN nailed it in the OTT game (I think) where they pointed out the O's are owning the D's across the league right now.  Scores are mega-high.  D's give up explosions and TDs.

Given that environment, if we wanted to win in the last couple of drives, we needed to MAKE SURE we drove the field and hopefully got a TD, but at minimum a FG.  Because most decent teams are capable of having at least 50/50 chance they can drive the field and score -- especially when it's the last 2 mins and they are in 3-down mode.  And many/most of our close losses in the last 3 seasons (some in GC's/ESF!) were because the O stunk up the joint and gave the ball back to let the other team win.

As such, I would seriously consider having the braintrust think about going in 3 down mode (before the drive starts!) in that situation.  I know it sounds nuts, but develop a gameplan that can get 8 yards on 2 downs and get a 90% plan for getting the final 2 on 3rd down -- whether perfecting some Brady runs or finally figuring out a sure 2Y short pass.  Maybe Perkins passing or handing off to Brady could do it -- like a Strev type option package.

Gut reaction will be "that's crazy talk", but we had a much better chance of winning if we were doing a 3-down dink & dunk for 3.5 mins to go vs giving the ball up when our D has NOTHING AT ALL to stop a dink & dunk strategy.  Or just give them the TD for free with 2 mins left so THEN we have time to dink & dunk the field ourselves.

[Tecno]

Unfortunate but true. We saw games lost in the dying minutes because the defence couldn't get that stop. You know what they say about prevent defences.

Ironically, we didn't change anything for EDM's final drive.  We didn't go any more "prevent" than normal.  It's just our whole D scheme is a form of pseudo-prevent D!

Now, you could argue we often go "prevent O"... and that's more of a problem.

We could only dream of being up so big that our D can go full "prevent", lol.  That hasn't happened in a loooong time.

[Blueforlife]

There have been many examples of this problem. Interesting you think points given up is more important than winning as a key metric.

Most recent example is the game against the Elks.

It's true that a short pass play wouldn't have been automatically successful. It's more of a statistical probability. We needed a TD to win. What do you think the Elks would be most like to cover with little time left.

If you can't answer that without bias then I don't know what to say. Did the receiver in the deep shot look open?

Never said that the overall record or winning was more important than low pts per game given up by the D, nice try there.

The missed deep shot was disappointing, we took what they gave us.  Yes short game might have worked, never will know.  Not really following you on this one.