the biggest things I want to see out of our defense:
More turnovers created. There are two ways to do that- 1. Get players like Deion Sanders, Darrel Revis, Ronnie Lott, and guys that are unbelieveable players. 2. Be aggressive and force the offense into making mistakes. Historically, the better defenses at MSU have been able to do #2 better than #1. Granted, we have had guys like Johnie Cooks, but that's not the norm. And the song is called the Bulldog Blitz and not the Starkville Two for a reason. Nothing against the Tampa Two- I think it's a great scheme. But I think an aggressive style defense fits players from Mississppi better in general, which is where most of our guys come from. Players from here like to blitz and get after the QB.
The second thing I want to see is an improvement in points allowed. I don't know that we were really horrible in that area- certainly not 2003 MSU bad- but the main idea of any defense whether it's a Starkville Two or a Tampa Two is to keep the other team scoring.
The other thing I want to see, and this was my biggest problem with Carl Torbush, is better overall gameplanning and also better in game adjustments from the defense. The reality is, Carl Torbush is not that much different than Ellis Johnson scheme wise, but I liked Ellis much better. Why? Because he had the ability to come up with a good gameplan 10 or 11 out of 12 times a year, and he was able to adjust in game. That's what I am most optomistic about with Manny Diaz and where I think we will see much improvement. We're going to give up points, no matter who our DC is- even if we had Saban. I just want the DC to be able to adjust instead of blindly rushing three guys and dropping 8 into coverage while the other team is gashing us like the Auburn game. If something isn't working, do something different.
As an aside, I say this: I think a lot of people hear "aggressive defense" and immediately Joe Lee Dunn 2002 pops into a lot of our fans head. Manny is not going to be anything like Joe Lee Dunn. We are not going to see 10 DB's and a LB to start a game- not a complaint at all, I thought it was funny and cost the other team a TO. We are not going to see cover-1 or cover 0 almost exclusively the entire game and have to hope that we have Fred Smoot and Robert Bean in the secondary to be good. What we will see is a guy running a base 4-3- a very common defensive front- and a guy that is going to have a lot of people moving around, a lot of different coverages, and a lot of different blitzes. MSU fans do not need to be afraid of an aggressive defense- some of our most successful have been aggressive- including our best ever in 1999.
