Neither the offense or defense has been very good, which is why we’re 2-3 and lucky not to be 0-5. Now we’re down our best two play makers on offense. The competition level will help some weeks, but if both units are not working on doing something better or different, we aren’t going to see much improvement.

As far as the defense goes, I don’t know how they expect to stop the run when they often start in an alignment that is out numbered from the start. It’s simple, bring more defenders into the box on run and short distance downs. You can’t expect 3 DL to stop at least a 4-5 yard run when the numbers are 3 against 5-6 at the los. To illustrate this point, when Toledo was running it well to get into fg range (before the Ah You strip), we still aligned with our safeties 15 yards back and our olbs 8 yards back. They had tight formations with 6-7 blockers against our 3 DL and 1 mlb , so it wasn’t shocking to see them getting 5-6 yards a run. The defensive alignment never changed even when they got into fg range and it was an even more obvious run. That’s why on the Ah You strip he made the play when the rb had picked up an easy 8 or 9 yard run. There’s no excuse for some of the alignments they use on running downs. It seems that they believe the DL should be able to beat double teams or clog better for the lbs to fill, not consistently happening. And they play call scared, are super concerned about getting beat on play action.

The results have been a porous run defense and long sustained drives for the opposition, and that’s unlikely to change unless they alter the scheme. Playing more man when it’s more likely a run than pass and moving lbs closer to the los into the box down makes more sense. At least let Dayan play more man.