April Q&A
“Why is "length and athleticism" so important for the defense?”
Length and athleticism is becoming more important for defenses because football is evolving. Offenses are getting more athletic and used hybrid players who carry the size of one position and the speed of another. Defenses need to compensate because the gap between offense and defense is slowly growing. Offensive creativity is at an all time high and where defenses of the past could work downhill from the box and over the top with the secondary now they are being challenged sideline to sideline.
What does that mean for the Badgers' defense? Well, to put it simply, personnel-wise the Badgers' defense entered last season behind the rest of the conference. Most of the conference runs variations of the spread or pro-spread offenses. Very few are what we would consider pro-style offenses from the past outside of Iowa. Even teams like Michigan want to use their athleticism on offense and spread out defenses melding the old school philosophy with new school schematics. So, we need defenders to compensate. From a schematic point of view, being better athletes and being able to create better separation between yourself and blockers allows defenders to be more aggressive and flow more to the football. It's less about holding your ground in one spot than it is about engaging blockers, breaking blocks, and getting to the football.
It also allows you to use more movement on defense, showing various simulated pressure fronts, something that Dave Aranda has become famous for over the years. It allows us to spin in and out of coverages, which presents problems for the offense in terms of conflicts of assignment. It's hard to put a defender in conflict if you don't know where he's coming from. With better athletes on defense we create conflicts for the offense. Being more athletic on defense means that we will be less likely to be caught off guard by up-tempo offenses, so it is an important step towards "modern football" to be athletic. And that's the direction we want to move because that's where football is heading.
“Is Trech going to take over the starting spot from Pauling and if he does will Pauling move to WR?”
I don't think it's going to be a situation where Trech takes over the starting slot receiver spot from Will Pauling. It's a situation where we're going to get both of them on the field at the same time. In the past, Phil Longo has based his offense out of 11 personnel. Based on the players he had on the roster that was the personnel grouping that gave him the best options. I think we're going to see this year, especially with the question mark of the tight end position, more of a reliance on other personnel groups and players like Trech are moving us in that direction.
We are going to see a lot more 10 personnel packages, and that means both Trech and Will Pauling on the field at the same time. This creates new problems for the defense because again, like we just talked about with the defense being more athletic, to use two dynamic players like that in the slots are going to force defenses out of base personnel packages. Even nickel packages might not be dynamic enough if the offense keeps getting faster and faster which will force opposing defenses into packages that are designed to handle that much speed at the slot positions. Which is good new for the running game, and the vicious cycle will begin.
Also, both those players are very capable of being inserted into the run game or into the package play game. It's important to have more dynamic athletes on offense, and it will give us new options in that position. So it's not going to be an either-or situation. It's going to be both, and I think we're going to see a lot more different uses of personnel this season than we did last year. Because now, we are starting to fill out the bodies and, more importantly, the player types that Phil Longo would want if he would want to expand his offense.
"I miss Jim Leonhard."
Who doesn't miss Jim Leonhard? He is the epitome of what Wisconsin football was all about. A walk-on player who built himself into an All-American Then went on to have a successful career in the NFL and is now one of the best young coaches in the game. But He's not coming back.
I've always thought that his pinnacle would be in the NFL. This year he is starting that journey because that's where he belongs. Our heart might have seen him as the perfect replacement Paul Chryst, but at the end of the day, there were so many questions about him taking over. His future might very well be as a head coach, but he needed more than half a season as an interim HC to gain the experience necessary to succeed. So what did he do after he left Madison? He spent a year learning how to be a head coach from his head coach. Now he's going to stretch his intellectual game by plying the skills he cultivated at the college level in the NFL.
Like anything you love you at some point you have to let it go. If it comes back, it was meant to be. So now that Jim has moved on to the NFL let's see what happens down the road. He's still young and in the early stages of his coaching career. Stranger things have happened.
Thank you to everyone who submitted questions to this month's Q&A. If your question wasn't answered here be sure to check the video below as I answered more questions there, and be sure to check my latest post on Badger Notes where I answered even more!