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Posted

We need to get healthy in the Secondary.  Taaffe covers up a lot of the mistakes today.   But I was never a fan of the Akina hire and nothing I've seen this season makes me think I was wrong.

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Posted

Taaffe rectifies a lot of those mistakes.  He's a bit of a <redacted> but he knows where to put his guys on the field.  That wide open receiver on the right sideline would have never happened with Taaffe playing.

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Posted

Filsaime has been late breaking off his initial read to go help the cb over the top several times since Taafe's injury. The db's play dumb, soft coverage that qb's have absolutely abused in the last three games 

Posted

Secondary is fine. We have been torched two games in a row without Taafe. But Littleton and McDonald are studs, and we will be just fine. Hard to explain Stowers 67-yarder other than Guilbeau is awful and it wouldn’t have happened with Taaffe on the field. I’m still more worried about our OL. If PK is fine with Akina, who has forgotten more good DB play than we will ever know, I’m fine with it.  

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Posted (edited)

McDonald also didn’t play most of day. He’s been one of our best this year.

 

The soft ass coverage, bend don’t break shit needs to stop when we’re up 17.

Edited by ChemicalHorn
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Posted
12 minutes ago, BurgleBro said:

Been saying this since his missed block in seccg

I'm sure he's a good kid I just don't think he's very bright.

His PI on Kentucky's last drive in that game was the dumbest thing I've seen anyone on this team do all season. 

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Posted

Taffee being out sucked but I thought McDonald was able to hold the secondary together the best he could. Once he went down the defense had 3 easy targets to pick on. Williams just isn’t the same post injury, Filsaime is very meh, and Guilbeau is so obviously being picked on it hurts to watch. 

Posted
21 minutes ago, Dbeasy said:

The problem is that outside of Taaffe, our safeties are not exactly rocket scientists. They are quick and athletic but just aren’t processing fast enough. 

McDonald is probably the most athletic guy in the defense outside of Ant and Simmons. Hes also extremely smart. The problem with Taaffe out, Filsamie is in, and it’s been a problem. He and Guilbeau were bad today. 

Our secondary will be much improved against UGA, and it’ll be good next year. 

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Posted
42 minutes ago, Dbeasy said:

The problem is that outside of Taaffe, our safeties are not exactly rocket scientists. They are quick and athletic but just aren’t processing fast enough. 

Yeah so what happens next year when he’s gone? We can’t keep saying but Taaffee. 

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Posted
3 hours ago, Dbeasy said:

The problem is that outside of Taaffe, our safeties are not exactly rocket scientists. They are quick and athletic but just aren’t processing fast enough. 

Maybe better coaching can help with that 

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Posted (edited)

Is it definitive what Akina's role is on this defense/secondary?  I don't see his signature bump and run coverage out there so I would assume PK has the final word.  And Taafe absolutely loves the guy btw if you trust his opinion at all or not if you just want to bag on the old guy fine.  The guy has coached 3 Thorpe winners and had 20 of his DBs go play in the league.  He's got skins on the wall.

"Obviously, Coach Akina is one of the best coaches I've been around and he's taught me so much already," Texas defensive back Michael Taaffe said this week. "He elevates everybody's game. He elevates everybody in the room."

Seems to me some of the absolute potatoes we have back there might be more of the issue.  YOUNG guys who can't listen and learn and are trying to still rely on their athleticism.  If one "coach on the field" is missing and coverages get completely dropped then...

 

Edited by Scholz
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Posted
16 minutes ago, Scholz said:

Is it definitive what Akina's role is on this defense/secondary?  I don't see his signature bump and run coverage out there so I would assume PK has the final word.  And Taafe absolutely loves the guy btw if you trust his opinion at all or not if you just want to bag on the old guy fine.  The guy has coached 3 Thorpe winners and had 20 of his DBs go play in the league.  He's got skins on the wall.

"Obviously, Coach Akina is one of the best coaches I've been around and he's taught me so much already," Texas defensive back Michael Taaffe said this week. "He elevates everybody's game. He elevates everybody in the room."

Seems to me some of the absolute potatoes we have back there might be more of the issue.  YOUNG guys who can't listen and learn and are trying to still rely on their athleticism.  If one "coach on the field" is missing and coverages get completely dropped then...

 

I don't put much stock in what Taaffe says. Love the guy, but he's essentially a PR rep for the program. 

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Posted
On 11/1/2025 at 3:54 PM, jimmyjazz said:

Taaffe rectifies a lot of those mistakes.  He's a bit of a <redacted> but he knows where to put his guys on the field.  That wide open receiver on the right sideline would have never happened with Taaffe playing.

I dont argue that is probably true, especially when Taaffe and McDonald were out. That said it is the coaches' job to make sure the 2 deep is prepared to play. No matter who is in they should not be busting cover 2 coverages to give Vandy's only legit threat a ~70 TD. 

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Posted
6 minutes ago, HtownHorn said:

We played most of the 4Q without Taafe, McDonald, and Muhammed. Of course, we struggled.

Muhammed? I thought Guilbeau was taken out.. Either way I dont think that is an excuse for the complete breakdown. I dont expect them to be as good as the starters, but that kind of drop in production is just ridiculous. You cannot bust coverages like that. One thing of note is the LBs are not particularly good in coverage either, so this is more of a back 7 thing. The real frustrating part of this was the lack of football IQ. Texas busted coverages on Vandy's #1 guy, Eli Stowers. Not sure how you do film study and not note where he is on passing situations. 

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Posted
1 hour ago, Jimmy Two Times said:

I don't put much stock in what Taaffe says. Love the guy, but he's essentially a PR rep for the program. 

I dont put much stock in what Jimmy Two Times says.  Timmy two shoes is the real brains of the operation. 

Posted

2006 a top 10 rushing defense paired with the 108th ranked pass defense.

To be fair, he had a roster of Aaron Ross, Michael Griffin, Tarell Brown, and Marcus Griffin.   I mean what can you expect from 3 NFL (and a Thorpe) players to work with?

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Posted
2 minutes ago, Jimbob said:

2006 a top 10 rushing defense paired with the 108th ranked pass defense.

To be fair, he had a roster of Aaron Ross, Michael Griffin, Tarell Brown, and Marcus Griffin.   I mean what can you expect from 3 NFL (and a Thorpe) players to work with?

In 2006 the Big 12 was all spread offenses so it makes sense 

Posted

The same people blaming Akina today were blaming Gideon in 2023. We've seen this playout with PK's defense twice now. When the linebackers and secondary are young/inexperienced, there are a lot of holes and coverage busts. Once we get them trained up, those go away. I think we ask our defenders to do a lot in terms of understanding the overall defense. That leads to hesitation and mistakes early on. But when players get it, it works really well and creates a very flexible and capable defense. And the hate of Akina is ridiculous generally. Using the fact that he has consistently put DBs into the NFL against him is crazy. He clearly knows how to teach the position, although with a specialty in man-coverage. We probably could and should have run more man coverage against Vanderbilt at the end. But I think we put a lot on emphasis on players learning during a game. And if they don't rep it in a live game, they don't get the experience necessary to learn what to do and what not to do. 

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Posted

Here is Scipio's write up on the defense (credit to @satyanash) along with a scathing review of our DB play:

Relevant portion for those who don't want to click a link:

Quote

SECONDARY

Safety play was a disaster. I don’t think it’s overly harsh to say that Xavier Filsaime has no idea what he’s doing. He missed two critical tackles and he repeatedly took bad angles. He’s passive when he should be closing on the ball in front of him. If he made up mental gaffes with athletic playmaking, you take the trade off, but there’s no playmaking and for a track fast guy, his play fast isn’t.

Derek Williams was hit six times on six targets for 139 yards and two touchdowns. They weren’t “slowed by knee injury” errors. They were mostly “I don’t know what my responsibility is right now” and passivity. There’s some larger scheme things going on that you can’t just throw on the players, but covering the deepest man in Cover 2 when an opponent is trying to furiously rally is on the safety job description.

When the backstop of the secondary falls apart, people start trying to overcompensate. Littleton didn’t play well in the slot and he overran a likely sack on Pavia. Guilbeau and Muhammad played well enough. Roberson did OK except for a weird offsides penalty playing press man. We never took away Pavia’s preferred spots (anywhere between the hashes, short throws outside).

He was 16 of 18 for 204 yards and two touchdowns between the hashes and he converted multiple third downs with short throws at the sticks outside. He threw only 4 balls 20+ yards down the field and the only one he hit was the busted coverage to Stowers. The other three were in zero danger of being caught. Two landed out of bounds.

His preferred passing heat map is easy to read – no Waze required – and Vandy didn’t have disguise advantages. They were just dropping back and throwing, down 24 points. Pavia can’t throw big boy routes and we respected the whole field in off coverage like he’s going to dice us up throwing 20 yard outs and 18 yard digs outside of the opposite hash. That’s insane. I don’t think he was forced to make a hard throw all game despite an often withering pass rush.

We were straight up bad all game, even before MacDonald came out. It was just covered up by our pass rush. Which is part of why it's nice to have such a good pass rush. 

What's news to me, however, is that Scipio puts a lot of the blame on Derek Williams. I've been blaming Guilbeau for most of the breakdowns. While I think Guilbeau definitely shares part of the blame, it may be that he's trying to do too much from the CB position to make for poor play from Williams. The more I watch the Vandy game the more I have to agree that Williams seems to have lost something in terms of his aggression and awareness. I still think Guilbeau is a poor fit at CB, however, and should move back to nickel. 

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