polish
04-20-2006, 09:49 AM
From ESPN
1. Texas A&M defense: The Wrecking Crew is officially back. Or so says new D-coordinator Gary Darnell. "We aren't running from it," Darnell said Tuesday about the famed moniker that A&M had recently shied away from. "Now we've got to live up to it."
To try and do that, coach Dennis Franchione has gone back to his roots and brought in Darnell to direct a 4-2-5 scheme, which is the same thing Fran turned loose at TCU. The hope is that it combats the spread schemes A&M faces so much, which in part led to the Aggies surrendering over 31 points per game the past three seasons. In '05, A&M -- a team some in the media (especially some beach-loving writers) picked as a pre-season Big 12 titleist -- was actually last in the nation in pass defense.
Franchione is banking on the scheme to fix that. Having the additional DB on the field will match up better against four- and five-receiver sets, but also Darnell said because it's easier to dial up run blitzes out of the 4-2-5.
I ran into Fran at West Virginia and he sounded very pleased with what he saw this spring, especially from JC transfer Mark Dodge, a 25-year-old who landed the linebacker job opposite incumbent Justin Warren. "A natural" is how Darnell described Dodge.
The big X-factor at A&M is who takes over the "whip" position as the big, physical safety who sets the tempo for the scheme. Darnell concedes they're still looking. Perhaps the answer will come when JC transfer Jarius Neal, a 6-foot-3, 218-pounder with 4.6-speed, arrives in the fall. Darnell was quick to point out another big plus with this defense: "There's not quite as steep a learning curve," he said. "The complexity is kept to a minimum." That's because it is supposedly very segmented in teaching principles.
1. Texas A&M defense: The Wrecking Crew is officially back. Or so says new D-coordinator Gary Darnell. "We aren't running from it," Darnell said Tuesday about the famed moniker that A&M had recently shied away from. "Now we've got to live up to it."
To try and do that, coach Dennis Franchione has gone back to his roots and brought in Darnell to direct a 4-2-5 scheme, which is the same thing Fran turned loose at TCU. The hope is that it combats the spread schemes A&M faces so much, which in part led to the Aggies surrendering over 31 points per game the past three seasons. In '05, A&M -- a team some in the media (especially some beach-loving writers) picked as a pre-season Big 12 titleist -- was actually last in the nation in pass defense.
Franchione is banking on the scheme to fix that. Having the additional DB on the field will match up better against four- and five-receiver sets, but also Darnell said because it's easier to dial up run blitzes out of the 4-2-5.
I ran into Fran at West Virginia and he sounded very pleased with what he saw this spring, especially from JC transfer Mark Dodge, a 25-year-old who landed the linebacker job opposite incumbent Justin Warren. "A natural" is how Darnell described Dodge.
The big X-factor at A&M is who takes over the "whip" position as the big, physical safety who sets the tempo for the scheme. Darnell concedes they're still looking. Perhaps the answer will come when JC transfer Jarius Neal, a 6-foot-3, 218-pounder with 4.6-speed, arrives in the fall. Darnell was quick to point out another big plus with this defense: "There's not quite as steep a learning curve," he said. "The complexity is kept to a minimum." That's because it is supposedly very segmented in teaching principles.