I hope our young D-backs learned to tackle with the extra practice
- Thread starter nittanyjoe
- Start date
Fundamentals do need work. Besides poor tackling, the DB's and LB's have not been doing a good job of getting off blocks. Hopefully the extra practices have helped!
A
anon_xdc8rmuek44eq
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Agreed. I thought John Reid had an excellent year as a true freshman and I think he's only going to get better, but he had waaaaaaayyyyyy too many of these efforts last year (and twice in a row against Michigan):
I think we were a tired football team at the end of the season. The late bye week and lack of depth and injuries paid their price on this team.
Well, it would be nice if our Offense actually converts a third down or two this week so the Defense doesn't have 20 or 30 more plays on the field!
It's remarkable how bad tackling is today, even in the NFL. Wrapping and lifting are foreign concepts. Most DBs just throw their body at the ball carrier and hope for the best. One juke or spin by the ball carrier is usually sufficient to avoid the first tackler. Penn State's DBs, unfortunately, have been no exception. I'd rather see a defender grab and wrestle a ball carrier to the ground and give up a couple yards than fly at the ankles and miss.
The secondary was poor this year, sorry, gotta say it. They disappointed. Poor tackling all year, and when a play got into the second level they rarely were even able to fight off blocks from wide receivers. It was actually surprising, as I was under the impression our talent was better, but a lot of that was wishful thinking and over estimating our own kids.
I always thought that one of the main reasons why JVP was such a great coach was his focus on teaching the fundamentals. I think the teaching aspect was what he liked most about coaching (except maybe when he hurt his ankle trying to show one of the kickers how to kick-off!)
Our guys were still too young this year. Missed tackling is sometimes poor technique, but it's also being physically outmanned. Another year in the weight room will help with this immensely.
In all honesty, they haven't learned how to tackle over the past 4 months. Don't know why we would expect 15 extra days of practice to suddenly fix that problem.
