Linderbaum, Hankins Mid-Season AP All-Americans

Hawkboys said:
Must have been decided before last Saturday.
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1) Bell is a first rounder.

2) He never had help a single time Saturday

3) Most importantly, using your infinite technical football wizardry, name for us a DB who should be put ahead of Hankins and why. Im assuming you have a ranked list with statistics compiled for other top DBs in the country; I mean, surely you do.
 
Fryowa said:
1) Bell is a first rounder.

2) He never had help a single time Saturday

3) Most importantly, using your infinite technical football wizardry, name for us a DB who should be put ahead of Hankins and why. Im assuming you have a ranked list with statistics compiled for other top DBs in the country; I mean, surely you do.
Click to expand...
I was at the game, and I didn't think he did that bad at all either. Our defensive strategy has always been to make teams run as many plays for as many yards as possible to get down the field against our strong defense without us stopping them or without them screwing up with penalties, turnovers, drops, slips, missed blocks, bad throws, etc. If they can do it, fine, now see if you can do it again.

Going into the game, we had allowed 5 drives of 10 plays or more, which amounted to 4 FG's and 1 where the team didn't score. 2 of Purdue's TD drives were 10 plays, one for 67 yards and the other for 75 yards. The other was 7 plays but for only 46 yards. They also had an 8 yard drive that yielded a FG and 2 seven yard drives, an 8 yard drive and a 15 yard drive where they didn't score. Certainly not ideal, but there were no quick drives, which is always our strategy. The problem was that PU didn't screw up enough.

Bell is a frickin' animal. He's strong, slippery, and fast. The best part of his game is his route running ability. He has an amazing ability to stick his foot in the ground when he cuts and has an amazing ability to accelerate after a cut. Because of this, I feel like our strategy was to make him catch it short and tackle him so he doesn't get a chance to run in space. Our biggest issue seemed to be missing tackles. Part of this was because we were worried about his ability to get open deep, and rightly so. Another was his ability to run routes so well, which gets separation with the DB. Let's face it, their QB had a day. It seemed like everything he threw was on a dime.

Bell's numbers in each type of drive:

TD drives: 5-77
FG drive: 1-47
No points drives: 5-116

So, 6 of his catches and 163 of his yards came on drives that totaled 3 points. We'd take that all day.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that Hankins didn't screw up or have that bad of a game. He was playing the defense the way we always play defense. The biggest problem is that he missed tackles against someone that's as fast, strong, and elusive as a friggin' deer.
 
Fryowa said:
1) Bell is a first rounder.

2) He never had help a single time Saturday

3) Most importantly, using your infinite technical football wizardry, name for us a DB who should be put ahead of Hankins and why. Im assuming you have a ranked list with statistics compiled for other top DBs in the country; I mean, surely you do.
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Also, common sense isn't allowed on this board, especially after a loss. Ban yourself.
 
Fryowa said:
1) Bell is a first rounder.

2) He never had help a single time Saturday

3) Most importantly, using your infinite technical football wizardry, name for us a DB who should be put ahead of Hankins and why. Im assuming you have a ranked list with statistics compiled for other top DBs in the country; I mean, surely you do.
Click to expand...

I don't understand how we use absolute freaks like Christian McCaffrey, Saquan Barkley and Bell in an argument that our defense can't get it done. Generational college players and absolutely freakish athletes, yet they're given almost no credit because the defense couldn't stop them and it was entirely scheme related and our team/coaches screwing up.

Cross over argument would be how Garza was a two time all-american and player of the year... He wasn't that good it was just that the opposing defenses stunk and weren't playing him properly. IMO It's just a stupid argument to use those guys as a comparison tool, because it's not just us that they are doing it against.
 
Fryowa said:
1) Bell is a first rounder.

2) He never had help a single time Saturday

3) Most importantly, using your infinite technical football wizardry, name for us a DB who should be put ahead of Hankins and why. Im assuming you have a ranked list with statistics compiled for other top DBs in the country; I mean, surely you do.
Click to expand...
Also - because Saturday, he was covering Bell on crossing routes that took 5 seconds to develop a couple times.

Here's an exercise for you. Have someone of equal athleticism and fitness stand parallel to you, then run whatever way they want to for five seconds while you try to stay right next to them without touching them. Do it 5 times. How often do you stay with them?

Hankins has covered literally everyone but the second coming of Jerry Rice. And he was in position on a lot of those throws anyway. A guy like that you have to bracket and hit him in the first 3 yards until he's uncomfortable and on those crossing routes you have to clock him coming across the middle till he gets alligator arms. Maybe a couple times before he gets the ball for PI (sorry, played DBack as well, and they are coached to do this occasionally). Phil doesn't jam or bracket unless the front 4 are getting home. They weren't Saturday.

With Moss out and Belton/Jacobs and Koerner having their worst day of zone help all year because they were tasked with stopping the running qb, and the time Perdue had to throw and Phil's coaching philosophy they couldn't do that Saturday. The job of covering Bellwas impossible.

Apparently, the Hawks were even late coming out if the tunnel for the swarm Saturday. I don't know what happened in practice last week, but clearly, nothing went right. Time to flush it as fans, and I say that as someone who was uber pissed.

What I'm kind of surprised by is that Campbell isn't on the list.
 
99topdawg said:
Bell is a frickin' animal. He's strong, slippery, and fast. The best part of his game is his route running ability. He has an amazing ability to stick his foot in the ground when he cuts and has an amazing ability to accelerate after a cut. Because of this, I feel like our strategy was to make him catch it short and tackle him so he doesn't get a chance to run in space. Our biggest issue seemed to be missing tackles. Part of this was because we were worried about his ability to get open deep, and rightly so. Another was his ability to run routes so well, which gets separation with the DB. Let's face it, their QB had a day. It seemed like everything he threw was on a dime.
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I would also argue that Bell is an extremely high-IQ football player in addition to his physical abilities. I saw multiple times in the game where he's got the line to gain like a GPS waypoint in his head. In the 2nd and 3rd quarters I had pretty much given up hope of us winning, so I watched Bell every single play.

Three individual times that I can remember were on 2nd and 3rd down and Hankins had started giving Bell more space from scrimmage because he had no other option. One of them was 3rd and 7, Bell took off on a beeline straight at Hankins and a converging Koerner and I thought, "What's he doing," and once he hit 8 yds from scrimmage he slammed on the brakes, caught a dime, and picked up a couple more.

Long story short, the guy finds first downs. He's smart and he knows that when guys go prevent on him (what other choice is there) he's got them whooped before the ball even gets snapped. And there truly is no other choice. Once the DL has established they can't get to Purdue's QB, you either try to hang with Bell and get burned with a deep ball and a score, or you try to contain him to short yardage and give up 1st downs. With the latter all you can do is hope for a bad throw or sack to slow the drive down and neither of those was happening Saturday.

It's just stupidity out of fans who don't think about the deeper game of football, and what's maddening is that none of this is super complex stuff. You don't have to be a coach or player to understand what's going on here, but people are just completely ignorant throwing blame at the wrong folks.

Bell is a Barkley/McCafferey type guy, and it just so happens that Purdue can exploit our weakness, which is relying on a team to make mistakes. They didn't make any.
 
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