Not that we needed one or anything. Multi-year starter for Pitt at MLB - Wendell Davis, welcome to NU. You'll look good in purple!
a new LB for NU
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So many people on this board were sure that Fitz would make a change at the end of the season. Unfortunately, I think we are stuck with Jim O'Neill for several more years.
I don’t agree. If next season is really bad, and even the purple koolaid klique is bracing for really bad, I think the pressure will start to grow thick. I will predict right now that if they go under 500, JON will be gone. And I bet other NUFB coaches will join him.
I wonder if former Northwestern coach now Pitt DC Randy Bates had anything to do with suggesting Northwestern be his destination?
I said earlier, but it bears repeating. It makes no sense to take away 1/2 of the responsibilities from one of your top position coaches, the guy Hank suggested should replace him. Yet, it seems to many that McPherson lost half of his job as the 'Cats hired a new CB coach. That is obviously BS! McPherson will be the DC this year - sharing the job with O'Neill. O'Neill has a year to find a job before McPherson is announced. This is similar to how Fitz dealt with Cushing - he takes care of his guys - it is part of what makes him so special and why we all love him as our coach. Be patient. The world does not end with a 3-9 season. The 'Cats will be fine and you guys will have your new DC soon enough. RELAX!
Interesting insight, brings a lot of hypotheses together. Not sure if Mac is the right guy but he only has to be "not JON" to be an improvement.
It is. The secondary coaching duties were likely divided up because of our continued switch to a heavy emphasis on the 3-3-5. The STAR defender has CB, S and LB duties at various times. The position seems to entail a much more complicated set of responsibilities than those of a safety playing in a regular cover-2.
Or, perhaps there was a super secret promotion, and NU has endowed a guy’s year long job search.
One or the other.
If JON gets canned, the question is do we stick with the 3-3-5 / 4-2-5 or do we get back to basics? Who will be the STAR defender for us in the former scenario?
I’m assuming Brandon Joseph, right? For all we know, he will be back. And it would be a great way to show off his versatility, with a dedicated position coach. I’m not sure who would be next up, but we are recruiting future candidates.
For the record, I’m not against the switch. We are only following the herd.
It is strange. People long for us to run a defense from the dawn of time, yet clamor for a cutting edge offense.
Joseph missed a lot of tackles last season, it seems he needs to be stronger to play that role. I think you would want a "bigger" safety in that role, especially to help with the run defense in the B1G.
SO I find the somewhat constant conflation of 3-4/3-3-5 schemes and 4-2-5 schemes to be fairly annoying. They are not remotely similar. A 4-2-5 is just an old nickel with your 3rd CB being more of a bulked up safety type. Everybody else fits the traditional mold of their positions in a 4-3.
Switching to any 3 down lineman scheme whether it's a 4 backer or 5 DB setup is ENTIRELY different and drastically changes the physical demands of the entire front 6/7. The read process starts to change significantly as well. A 4-2-5 is a pretty vanilla innovation off of the 4-3 to adjust to modern offenses. The 3-3-5 is a whole completely entirely different thing.
Whats the benefit of running either of those schemes when facing Iowa and Wisconsin (power run offenses) in your division?
Fantastic read. Explains a lot about the JON hire and the personnel transition underway. You can see it in this class.
So who would be the fire ant linebackers in the 4-2-5? Davis and Gallagher? I also wonder about BJo's effectiveness in this formation, he gave up a lot of broken tackles last year, while Azema came on strong in the latter part of the season.
To my amateur mind, this really emphasizes how much we were hurt by the poor linebacker play this season. You need some decent speed at linebacker and guys that are tackling machines. We had that in Paddy and Gallagher the Elder. While Bergin was an inspiring kid and hit anything that moved, he simply wasn't big enough or fast enough to be that dominant presence. Unfortunately, his LB partners were much worse.
One thing I think I know about football is that it is really really hard to cover up for a weak unit. One weak unit such as the linebackers makes every other unit on the D look worse than it really is. Those other players can't do the things they need to do because they are reacting to mistakes or missed plays by the weak unit.
We really need to fix the LB position is what I'm trying to say!
Neither Fisher nor Gallagher were particularly big or fast. Both played very sound fundamental football in a very sound defensive scheme.
All good but I want to point out that the DL didn't help (I'm well on the record about how pitiful the LBs were) Bergin & Co. Joe Spivak was rarely double teamed and this allows guards and centers get to the 2d level. Allowing LBs to roam and hunt the ball is a key to success.
Add that the DL didn't generate consistent pocket pressure, bat balls, or disrupt plays only makes weak linebackers look weaker. The signees today seems like DL was a priority. We need more depth and bodies that can protect LBs who can take on lead blocks at the point of attack. We don't need some DL. We need waves of them.
Excellent post. "Setting the edge" was also a re-occurring issue throughout the season.
Wisconsin themselves run the 3-4 system to tremendous success. JON is from the same tree as their DC. The 3-4 system can absolutely be effective against the run. However yes, you would stereotypically be sacrificing the standard approach to dealing with the Iowa/Wisconsin attack, fighting bulk with bulk, and relying on improved athleticism to deal with the run in order to maybe have a great advantage against schools like Purdue, MSU, Nebraska, etc.
One possible advantage of a 3-down system is it maybe allows you to make use of different types of recruits. Elite big guys are often the hardest guys to get and a 3-down system allows you to use less of those guys and load up on more available mid-sized guys. Of course, you also then usually need the biggest big guys of them all at NT.
I don't personally believe one is necessarily better than the other. I DO believe it's very weird to hire JON to be DC... then have him come in and run Hank's stuff and a 4-3 scheme. Why'd you hire a 3 down linemen guy to do that? Moving to a 3 down linemen scheme would at least make me feel like the Cats have a plan here.
I see what you are saying and certainly we can always use improvements on that line, but I wonder how much was the DL looking bad because a LB wasn't in place to make the play that they were set up to make. It sounds like the goal of these stack schemes is to have the DL just take up space so that more athletic filler guys can come in from behind and make the actual tackle. We really really lacked that with the LBs this year.
I’m wondering if that is the plan. We were really thin at LB this year, which may have forced the issue.
This caught my attention in the article:
“When Heacock followed Campbell to Iowa State in 2016, he originally ran a 4-3 defense. But three games into the 2017 season, everything changed. Heacock scrapped the 4-3 for the 3-3-5. Iowa State held eight of its final 10 opponents to 20 points or less, an uncommon run in the Big 12.”
Making that change in mid season and getting those results says a lot about ISU personnel. I can see why they poached that IMG kid Howard. He’s exactly the type of guy you want in that scheme.
It’s a terrible idea. We have historically had success against Purdue and Nebraska so I’m not sure why you would craft a defense specifically designed to neuter their offenses. Iowa/Wisco are our chief in division rivals so it would seem a defense designed with them in mind would make more sense (unless JON convinced Fitz that 3 down linemen is how you beat OSU…)
And most importantly, NU will never be able to recruit an elite (or even serviceable) NT in my opinion to fit into a 3 down scheme.
Just gloss over the part where I discussed how Wisconsin runs the same scheme and it's what they've used to build an incredibly dominant defense, sure, why not. Wisconsin destroyed Iowa this year on the back of their 3-4 defense.
1) Earlier this season, someone suggested that the linebackers needed a cool nickname like ‘the sky team’ to bump their play to the next level. They should definitely adopt ‘fire ants.’
“Northwestern Fireants Swarm Iowa”
“Cats Throw Fireants at Illini”
2) Discussing the types and sizes of the players filling new (to us) roles in the defense can occupy some time this offseason. There is a fairly large swing in the size of players who play the STAR at different programs. Being in the B1G West, I join those who think we will ‘skew big.’ But at this point, we know nothing. We don’t even know who will be on the roster.