go with Tommy? That was a really good BYU defense, but we survived that one.

Success at the next level

didn't do more to attack their offense. If nothing else, force the give to the motion guy and be prepared to go get him -- you know who he is and where he's going. Also, it's the riskier play for them. They have to get a tricker exchange correct, and that guy is running sideways in the backfield, ripe for the picking. Maybe we don't get him in the backfield every time, but you just need one per drive and they are way off schedule. And he's not Zachariah Branch -- you don't need to be scared of their speed. It was like one of those incredibly frustrating Navy games where we freaked out about the pitch and let them just give it to the FB a thousand times for 4 yards per.

As a result, the defense that shut down Caleb Effing Williams last year got eaten alive by NIU's RB. He was their best player -- probably their only offensive player of note -- and we let them use him to their heart's content.

Not to over play the fly motion. You have to have guys responsible for stopping it and they need to be aggressive on the edge and tackle well in space, but the number one mistake teams make is too many people watching the fly and then all of a sudden a lineman is in your face as they run up the middle.

Your interior players, especially LB’s need to be disciplined and stop the inside run first. It’s almost like defending the option. NIU didn’t preset a major threat with the fly, the guys they had running the fly were not dynamic, but that RB was a problem.

As you note, it can be hard to figure out where the ball is. Part of that is the speed of the fly motion, there’s also little technique things like the fly guy turning when he executes the fake so his back is slightly to the defense at the mesh point. It looks like you are getting the ball and also obscures the defenses view of the ball. Again causing that bit of hesitation.

In Canada you have unlimited motion with backs and receivers and we always used motion to our advantage, so hard for defenses when multiple people are moving.

That fly motion is tricky becauee if you play man, you are in a bad position if you chase it. But if you don’t you have to rotate your coverage and that can be difficult to execute consistently.

I think some of it was the different alignments NIU threw at them. Subtle wrinkles that ND hadn’t seen.

We played a team once that ran the same offense as us, so you think we would be pretty good at defending it. But they had about an 80 yard TD pass to a guy that was uncovered second play of the game. Because we thought we had their tendencies down and we had an automatic adjustment based on a certain formation and motion. They broke the tendency, we made the wrong post snap adjustment, TD. We realized very quickly we needed to scrap that plan.

It’s very easy to try to get too fancy with your adjustments against this offense and your kids play even slower because they are confused or make big mistakes. That looked like what happened in the first half. ND had a plan, but it was not working and was creating more confusion.

Just literally zero explosiveness on any cuts, even with guys who presumably KNOW how do do it, like Mitchell or even Mitch Evans. I don't know if it's something they're teaching (several plays where it looks like the technique is "get into the defender and push off him to one side"), a physical issue, or something scheme related (e.g. we are trying to set up late breaking option routes and the DBs were muddying our reads and we just played slow), or what but it's jarring to see.

Leonard has a ton of problems with bad decisions and sloppy footwork but I don't know how anyone could get into any type of rhythm with the complete lack of crispness at WR. Collins does OK at times but otherwise it's really, really ugly