Utah defensive coordinator Kalani Sitake admitted the other day the Utes' defense isn't where he wants it (course I don't know of any coach who is totally satisfied!)
Here are a few thoughts on the defense, starting with his thoughts on the Utes' run defense
"The main thing is everyone has to trust each other," he said. "Everyone is doing a good job, it's just one guy here or there broke down and Oregon was able to capitalize on it. You might as well call them Air Force they ran so much.
"If we could keep big plays to a minimum the numbers wouldn't be so much," he said. "For the most part we hammered the run pretty well, but still, stats don't lie and we know we need to improve. Everyone just has to do their job."
Despite some of the key returning starters, he also emphasized the Utes' defense overall is young and replacing guys like Sean Smith, Brice McCain and Paul Kruger takes time.
"Any time you take away an NFL draft pick you are going to have growing pains," he said. "That is no excuse, but it takes some time to get guys to buy into the system. People say 'Why can't Derrick Shelby be Paul Kruger?', but people have short memories. When Paul was a freshman there were growing pains too and it takes work."
For comparison's sake, Kruger averaged 4.8 tackles a game in his first year at defensive end in 2007 and finished with 7.5 tackles for loss. Shelby is averaging 4.6 tackles so far and has two tackles for loss.
Links to today's Utah stories, a look at Louisville coach Steve Kragthorpe and notes.
A look at how Louisville plans to replace it's injured player from the Courier Journal.
2 Comments:
I hope Kalane Sitake can get it together. I don't expect him to be Gary Andersen, but he needs to call a better game and prepare the players more than what he has this year.
He also needs to get RJ Stanford out of there. That guy is seriously horrible. I like our safeties though.
Concerning the end play. I will say that it is good. They would have had at least 3 more sacks in the Louisville game, but were being held uncalled. The sacks happened after Louisville's blind side Tackle was called on a couple holding penalties and was forced to play honest. But in run support, Kruger was a master of outside containment something neither Misi or Shelby is mature enough to value as well.
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