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Game Thread Illinois at tOSU, Sat. Sept. 26, 12pm ET, FOX

I know there's going to be a lot of hand-wringing about the defense, and the idiots over at 97.1 are going to rage bait people all week to make it seem like this is a defense being coached by Kerry Coombs.

Given the situation, yeah it's not ideal. At all. I'd like to win every game 84-0 but that's not realistic. More importantly, I'd rather a young team on defense get pushed around and challenged a bit for two reasons: It will keep them hungry and it gives them and the coaches quite a bit to work on. No one should be debating on if they needed to grow this season - 8 new starters, a few guys who came in to the program from outside, etc etc.

The key every year is growth. It's far better to have these issues in Game 4 than it is to have them in Game 12.
 
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Offense looked elite and made a lot of plays in the second half. If McCuin doesn’t have a drop they only punt once. Running game looked good and Ja’Kobi gives it his all.

Defense is a work in progress, moreso than I thought. Thankfully, I think a lot of the issues have to do with communication and understanding how responsibilities change when teams motion and shift. A lot of promise and they show a lot of faith in the freshman. Not sure how things will work out, but they’re nowhere close to their ceiling.
 
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Good news is that this was a pretty great performance from the offense. Only reason they didn't score in the 3rd is because they literally couldn't on the field. Defense was pretty yikes today though.
Here’s a stat to ponder. Our offense had 27 first downs, while our defense gave up 25 first downs. Total yards and time of possession were close as well. Yet we won by 3 TD’s. The big difference in this game is that we finished drives and kicked 6 extra points and no field goals.

That conversion rate is unsustainable for the whole season, even for this offense. So the Defense better UnF&&K itself quickly, because there are better opposing defenses ahead of us.
 
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I know there's going to be a lot of hand-wringing about the defense, and the idiots over at 97.1 are going to rage bait people all week to make it seem like this is a defense being coached by Kerry Coombs.

Given the situation, yeah it's not ideal. At all. I'd like to win every game 84-0 but that's not realistic. More importantly, I'd rather a young team on defense get pushed around and challenged a bit for two reasons: It will keep them hungry and it gives them and the coaches quite a bit to work on. No one should be debating on if they needed to grow this season - 8 new starters, a few guys who came in to the program from outside, etc etc.

The key every year is growth. It's far better to have these issues in Game 4 than it is to have them in Game 12.

That is all fair, but I don’t think it’s unreasonable to be critical of the defense‘s performance today. A lot of the same things we saw in the last couple games last year and first couple games this year continue to be a problem. Missed tackles, inability to get off the field on 3rd and 4th down, lack of turnovers, lack of pressure on the QB. I can live with growing pains, but today just looked like pains. I’m not seeing any improvement over what we’ve seen in the last few weeks to think they are trending in any direction.

That being said, I have nothing bad to say about the offense. I could nitpick over the running game, but we’ve been clamoring for the offense to just throw the ball if that’s what they're good at and that‘s what they did. And they did it very well. 8 drives for 6 touchdowns. That’s going to be difficult for almost any other team to match. If the defense can start making just a few more plays, this team can be very dangerous.
 
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That is all fair, but I don’t think it’s unreasonable to be critical of the defense‘s performance today. A lot of the same things we saw in the last couple games last year and first couple games this year continue to be a problem. Missed tackles, inability to get off the field on 3rd and 4th down, lack of turnovers, lack of pressure on the QB. I can live with growing pains, but today just looked like pains. I’m not seeing any improvement over what we’ve seen in the last few weeks to think they are trending in any direction.

That being said, I have nothing bad to say about the offense. I could nitpick over the running game, but we’ve been clamoring for the offense to just throw the ball if that’s what they're good at and that‘s what they did. And they did it very well. 8 drives for 6 touchdowns. That’s going to be difficult for almost any other team to match. If the defense can start making just a few more plays, this team can be very dangerous.
There's criticism and then there's bashing. The main game thread had both.

I think my criticism of the OSU-based media is spot on though. 97.1 just rage baits people. It's the model the TV news media has been using forever. It leads to unreasonable expectations of perfection. I've never met someone who is perfect, especially when they were in college.

I think there's a LOT of improvements to and scheme adjustments that need to be made but I'm some fat idiot sitting on his couch. I'm not in the room but I can't imagine the coaches who know a lot more than all of us combined are ok with what we're all seeing. I saw a few things that make me question exactly what the scheme really is even - because it seemed like there was no set base defensive formation.
 
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