as to what they are doing. It is why defenses (and offenses) at the pro level are so complex. It is to try and trick the offense into not knowing what they are going against because a good offense has ways to beat every defense.

Playing defense at the college level isn't about taking chances when your team is healthy and not taking chances when they aren't. It is about confusing the offense. It is about putting your players in the best position to succeed. As evidenced by our opponents points per drive metric, we were downright awful at stopping our opponent.

Certainly some of that is do to not having the players, which of course is on the coaches. The other gigantic piece is the vanilla scheme where the offense knows what is coming over and over again. Other teams put mental pressure on the QB by hitting them and confusing them. Our strategy is to put mental pressure on them by forcing them to throw to the wide open guy for the 5-10 yard gain. To me that isn't much pressure at all.

You don't need to take a ton of risks to change what your opponent is seeing. It does require actually rushing 4 or even sometimes 5 occasionally. But when you do this you confuse the offense so they don't know it is coming until the last possible moment.

These are very basic defensive concepts.