PonyFans.com

I hate to say this, but tackling in many cases looked worse than the previous Bennett years where everyone was complaining about the tackling. Is this a maturity issue with your players?

I think they have instructional videos on this. Anyone near a 24-hour Wal-Mart?

Does Tom Emansky have a tackling video w/ Fred McGriff?

In many case, they hit hard enough. They simply fail to wrap up and/or go in with heads down and arms out. Several times last night the attempted tackle was jumping on the ball carrier's back, only to be shrugged off. And, most of our guys seemed not to want to hit their running back - #23. He sent an early message our guys seemed to get.

They were tackling high...that's all.
Nothing I saw can't be fixed.

Part of the issue is that protracted drives weren't an issue. 4 plays and under a minute to score, and the defense hasn't even warmed down yet before they go back out.

So the D is doubly screwed because not only are they giving up yards in long drives, but they are worn out the next drive.

Clearly, the D has to deal with 3rd down conversions. The middle 10-15 yard route was open all night; Tx State's QB just kept throwing it high.

All-in-all, the offense bailed the D out tonight, but I did not get the sense that I did after UNT last year. This D produces turnovers, and it pounces on them.

They just have to tighten up the mistakes.

and I'll point out those seam routes are Texas Tech's bread and butter. Remember about 2 years ago when one of those Tech receivers caught 15 passes basically running the same route all nite between the hash marks.

couch 'em wrote:I hate to say this, but tackling in many cases looked worse than the previous Bennett years where everyone was complaining about the tackling. Is this a maturity issue with your players?

it is more like a physicality issue. when you have only a handful of players on efense willing to go out and play hard and the rest just want to be apart of the team, you wont win games like that

There was atrocious tackling but even more disturbing was the total lack of containment. Many of those runs around end, not even option plays, just end runs, the ball carrier went untouched for 20 or 30 yards.

mrydel wrote:There was atrocious tackling but even more disturbing was the total lack of containment. Many of those runs around end, not even option plays, just end runs, the ball carrier went untouched for 20 or 30 yards.

amen. Every time I tried to see who had contain...most of the time I wasn't successful, as they blocked down or our guys were elsewhere. Are our ends that bad? Where were the outside backers?

TxSt ran a play directly out of Tech's playbook that went big last year at Ford, the year before in Lubbock, and likely will next week. Almost looks like an end-around...but the long and short of it is most of the work is getting to the outside after a little misdirection...and off to the races they go.