OXFORD, Miss. — Everybody can say what they want dissecting what has happened to the Ole Miss running game but it’s looked to me like it’s been an effort problem all year.
Apparently the Florida film showed that to even be true to the players.
“We put a lot of loaf on film,” defensive lineman Will Echoles said during the off week. That says an awful lot more than just those few words.
If a player is saying, it’s a pretty good bet the coaches have said that more than what Echoles said. They’ve also probably said it for a few weeks.
Defense has never been that complicated. Even Jimmy Johnson was saying when he was coach of the Dallas Cowboys and someone was asking about the legendary Oklahoma defense he learned in the 1960’s took to a national title at Miami, then implemented at Dallas.
I found out listening to him it wasn’t as much the playcalls of coaching but the work they did getting the right players in the proper mindset to just play football.
It basically comes down to “see ball, get the guy with it on the ground as soon as possible.” Echoles literally said the same thing.
Echoles says it comes down to wanting the tackle
“Just go find the ball and make the play,” Echoles said this week as folks have even questioned coach Pete Golding still calling the defenses. “If we’re not going out there executing our job and having that want to get the ball carrier on the ground, it’s never going to work.”
That’s about as straight (and accurate) as defense gets. It comes down to ability, attitude and desire. If you don’t have the last two of those, the first one doesn’t really matter.
During the bye week, the Rebels’ defense has been the biggest topic of conversation. Golding has covered it taking the blame for coaching and being completely politically correct.Behind closed doors, though, the conversations have likely been much stronger.
“It’s a good time for the bye week for us to really evaluate how we’re doing it,” Golding said. “The guys that are doing it, are they doing it consistently enough? Do we have some guys that we need to look at to play better football?”
Those are the questions the coaches have been trying to answer and there’s probably been some very honest conversations going on between coaches and players.
All of that’s behind closed doors, of course. Nobody’s allowed close enough to do any eavesdropping these days anywhere.
But looking at the film doesn’t take that long to figure out where the problem is. It’s not a talent issue.
Which may be the hardest thing of all for coaches to fix.
