It's the off-season now, let's talk Martínez and the secondary

[Evet Vols]

This isn't a "Fahhr Martinez" thread by any means. I don't want to support making a man upend his family when none of us see the full picture. I trust Heup and his decisions about his own staff, and who knows what's going on behind the scenes with the secondary. But we can all agree the secondary played really bad for most of the year, save for a few games when they were nothing short of stellar.

I want us to approach this from a football knowledge standpoint. So here's what I see, and I want to know other folks' take on it:

-It doesn't seem to me like the secondary is coached to tackle very well. They seem to not wrap up, their priority ALWAYS seems to be to strip the ball instead of just wrapping up and stopping further gains. It burns them, and they never seem to strip the ball anyways.

-They just seem to play soft coverage. Like rarely do I observe our guys just absolutely smothering a receiver. Maybe that's speed/talent, or maybe that's on Tim Banks, but that's what I see.

-They are absolutely not coached to turn and look for the ball, or if they are coached to do it, they don't. This is not disputable. They don't turn and look for the ball, hence the frequent PI's.

-During the South Carolina game I saw something that really bothered me. They ran a toss sweep, and our DB (I think it was Walker) had an open look at the runner. Instead of going at the ball carrier, he ran straight towards the blocking receiver. I mean like, changed direction to go attack the blocker. Maybe he's supposed to do that, I don't know, but it sure made for an easy first down for SC.

I would love to say "We need portal help", but a ton of our current players in the secondary are transfers.

Does anyone else see anything different? Or could give some insight here?

I would like to hear from Cam Sutton and other players that played for him that are in the NFL. They seem to be complimentary of Martinez.

 

[LWSVOL]

It seems like when we've been the most successful on D, we've have stormed the opposing offense with stunts, twists and blitzes on almost every play. Seemed like we did very little of that against SC. Have any idea why?

no I have no idea why. I think JB made the defensive adjustments and maybe they didn't have anyone else they felt comfortable making those adjustments. But that is just a guess.. really don't know.

 

[Adam Sandler]

Problem seems to be with man to man coverage, not being able to make plays on the ball, getting beat and allowing completed passes by qbs and wrs that should not have an advantage on us. Can easily be solved by talent upgrade in my opinion. Don’t think the problem is actually with Martinez, but with the talent, as has been the case in his career. He sends a lot of people to the league regardless of how they were rated so obviously he’s doing enough right given the resources available to him. What I don’t know is how do we close on these highly rated prospects given the trouble we’ve had trying to get them signed. Transfer portal, high school ranks, figure out how to get the best of the best and we’ll be fine.

 

[EtowahVol]

I'm not going to sugar coat it. Who remembers the years of Butch Jones and the brick by brick. Martinez was here then and we faced the same type of mistakes. Not tackling properly, not looking back ,never play press coverage. Martinez I will give him credit he seen Butchs' days numbered and left a year early. First thing I'd do is go look at the stats(NCAA) and see what team leads in interceptions, look at some tape and see how those guys do the basics. Then go after that coach. This is a business. Go get the best.

 

[VOLfrombama]

Correct me if I am wrong, but I don't remember ever seeing our Cbs playing bump and run or press man coverage. I assume there is a reason for that. NONE of them are physical enough to punch a WR and then stay with them thru the route.

This explains the tackling issue and the huge cushions and Zone coverage for most of the season.

They desperately need to get a lot stronger and work on fundamentals of man coverage and tackling for the next 8 months.

 

[LWSVOL]

The experiment with "Torch" Martinez has failed and failed miserably, much like Larry Slade's secondary, the pass coverage skills, techniques and ability is not taight, not understood and remains a wholesale concern for the program in an effort to compete day in and day out with the passing games from top tier teams, the pass interference calls from the Orange Bowl should be the necessary last straw after watching the secondary let other teams back in the games all season long, no lead is safe with this clown coaching and directing a critical component of an SEC football program.

maybe we need to go after coaches that coach secondary at the elite programs like Alabama, Georgia, Ohio St and Michigan..

 

[LWSVOL]

Correct me if I am wrong, but I don't remember ever seeing our Cbs playing bump and run or press man coverage. I assume there is a reason for that. NONE of them are physical enough to punch a WR and then stay with them thru the route.

This explains the tackling issue and the huge cushions and Zone coverage for most of the season.

They desperately need to get a lot stronger and work on fundamentals of man coverage and tackling for the next 8 months.

talent issue. They would be eating the WRs dust

 

[bpalmer28]

My insight is Martinez coaches the cornerbacks and Tim Banks coaches the safeties. So when addressing CB play, its Martinez group and when addressing safety play that is Banks. Walker is a safety

Just for clarification.

Do you know if Slaughter is in Martinez group or Banks? He played well this year I thought.

 

[VOLfrombama]

talent issue. They would be eating the WRs dust

The biggest problem is definitely a lack of talent.

Unfortunately, we have who we have, sans a portal addition. I don't think we can rely on incoming Freshman to play 60-70 snaps a game. They HAVE to get bigger and stronger or we are in deep doo-doo.

 

[Rocky Top T]

We need Walker and Slaughter at safety. McCullough needs to be on special teams

 

[VOLfrombama]

We need Walker and Slaughter at safety. McCullough needs to be on special teams

I thought Slaughter did a solid job at Cb for him to have very little experience at the position. He was physical to the ball. We saw him come up and make tackles and get his hands on some passes too. I would like to see him stay there.

 

[GUNTERSVOL]

The experiment with "Torch" Martinez has failed and failed miserably, much like Larry Slade's secondary, the pass coverage skills, techniques and ability is not taight, not understood and remains a wholesale concern for the program in an effort to compete day in and day out with the passing games from top tier teams, the pass interference calls from the Orange Bowl should be the necessary last straw after watching the secondary let other teams back in the games all season long, no lead is safe with this clown coaching and directing a critical component of an SEC football program.

Pretty easy to relate to the problems at CB. We have a board full of posters who attempt to make informed intelligent posts and simply do not have the ability. No matter how much guidance they get, they continue to languish in posting skills. Guessing that means we need to have Freak banned from his own boards for continuing to allow it out on the posting playing field.

 

[lexkyvol]

There are a few things dumb that Banks does that I dont like, but other D-coordinators have done some of it on RockyTop the same exact way. The one main thing is keep the DE inside the TE or end man on the line of scrimmage at times. As soon as I see it, bam.....yards to that side rushing.

Banks IMO is straight. I think he struggles with the cb technique and has to try and compensate for it with silly calls. Martinez' technique he has taught the cbs is boo boo ooo. face-to-face on a go/ fade route? wtf? and that's where so many DPI's come from.

 

[Delmar]

The biggest problem is definitely a lack of talent.

Unfortunately, we have who we have, sans a portal addition. I don't think we can rely on incoming Freshman to play 60-70 snaps a game. They HAVE to get bigger and stronger or we are in deep doo-doo.

And faster. Amen on lack of talent especially at CB. If healthy, the safeties are probably serviceable but our CB’s are too slow. That’s why they have to constantly have to play 10 yards off. Mind you, I didn’t care for Martinez’s coaching in his first stint and would not care if he leaves now. But I believe it is mainly a talent issue at cornerback that caused the biggest issue. Excited to see how the freshmen develop.

 

[GetYouSomeofThat]

It doesn’t seem like they turn their heads around very often. How many DPI calls did we get this year because of failing to turn the head around? They aren’t sound tacklers. They miss quite a bit. They rarely if ever press at the line of scrimmage.















I had a poster tell me that DB is the hardest position to coach. And that may be true. However you mean to tell me teams like Bowling Green, Alron, UTEP, Eastern Michigan and Northern Illinois can coach their DBs better than we can? Hell Northwestern won 1 game, ONE GAME last year yet had a better pass defense than we did.















I get it talent makes a difference. But you want me to believe our DB recruiting has been worse than the teams I just named? Bull****. The fact is Martinez ability to develop is severely lacking.

Those teams arent dealing with 4 and 5 stsr talent most snaps. Playing DB against a guy stronger, quicker amd faster than you means sticking to technique is difficult because youre rarely in position to make a play. Thus the soft coverage..







However, this Tim Banks and Willie Martinez cosched defense is 11-2 agaisnt a pretty tough schedule.

 

[LWSVOL]

Do you know if Slaughter is in Martinez group or Banks? He played well this year I thought.

Ha, I think a little of both. He was in safety group as backup until injuries moved him to Corner. That is when he showed up

 

[LWSVOL]

The biggest problem is definitely a lack of talent.

Unfortunately, we have who we have, sans a portal addition. I don't think we can rely on incoming Freshman to play 60-70 snaps a game. They HAVE to get bigger and stronger or we are in deep doo-doo.

They are struggling identifying portal help. They are evaluating them, but not finding something at this point. They are very excited about the freshman coming in as defensive backs. I agree the experience factor would hurt big time.

 

[Sarms58]

I want us to be better but honestly I don’t know how much of our shortcomings are raw talent based or player coaching based or scheme based. And of course having a decent to good run D means your secondary is gonna get tested more often. Add to that our quick strike, high scoring offense that puts our D on the field 35-40 minutes every game and most games the other team is behind and having to throw. There are so many pieces that fit together I think we have to be carful to just grab one and be certain it’s the right one to fix - especially if it involves changing the team chemistry that the coaching staff has nurtured.

 

[sjt18]

Position coaches have authority to teach technique and skills. They manage the players from an administrative standpoint. They operate under the Coordinator and in alignment with his philosophy/plan. If you see a CB line up 7 yds off a receiver on a blitz then immediately start dropping at the snap of the ball... that's very likely not because the position coach went rogue.

 

[bigorangepoppa]

I think some of it was that the receivers were faster than our dbs. The receiver was behind them and the ball was being thrown to them, our guys had to get the penalty rather than potentially giving up a touchdown. Hopefully some of the new ones are faster. I know we all hate Georgia, but their dbs were hanging right with our receivers and denying them the ball.

 

[jasonvol18]

I think giving Tim Banks another chance isn’t a bad idea but I think Martinez needs to go imo

Agree..I watched so many bowl games and even the group of 5 DB's on some teams played better than ours and knew how to turn and track the ball. There's no reason for our secondary to be coached so bad.

 

[LWSVOL]

Agree..I watched so many bowl games and even the group of 5 DB's on some teams played better than ours and knew how to turn and track the ball. There's no reason for our secondary to be coached so bad.

Banks coaches safeties, not Martinez

 

[HuntlandVolinColo]

This isn't a "Fahhr Martinez" thread by any means. I don't want to support making a man upend his family when none of us see the full picture. I trust Heup and his decisions about his own staff, and who knows what's going on behind the scenes with the secondary. But we can all agree the secondary played really bad for most of the year, save for a few games when they were nothing short of stellar.

I want us to approach this from a football knowledge standpoint. So here's what I see, and I want to know other folks' take on it:

-It doesn't seem to me like the secondary is coached to tackle very well. They seem to not wrap up, their priority ALWAYS seems to be to strip the ball instead of just wrapping up and stopping further gains. It burns them, and they never seem to strip the ball anyways.

-They just seem to play soft coverage. Like rarely do I observe our guys just absolutely smothering a receiver. Maybe that's speed/talent, or maybe that's on Tim Banks, but that's what I see.

-They are absolutely not coached to turn and look for the ball, or if they are coached to do it, they don't. This is not disputable. They don't turn and look for the ball, hence the frequent PI's.

-During the South Carolina game I saw something that really bothered me. They ran a toss sweep, and our DB (I think it was Walker) had an open look at the runner. Instead of going at the ball carrier, he ran straight towards the blocking receiver. I mean like, changed direction to go attack the blocker. Maybe he's supposed to do that, I don't know, but it sure made for an easy first down for SC.

I would love to say "We need portal help", but a ton of our current players in the secondary are transfers.

Does anyone else see anything different? Or could give some insight here?

I want our CBs playing so close that their Johnsons are sore from all the rubbin up on WRs!

I'd also like to see them break more on the ball for Ints. Either way they don't study enough film on routes, play too conservative or lack the drive.

Lastly, we need to teach our CBs how to correctly high point the ball and beeotch slap the ball out of WRs hands when they are coming down with a catch!

Dion was never a good tackler but he didn't have to tackle very often because he was good at pass defending.

 

[orangerush]

It’s a business, nothing personal, Martinez is a weak link.

 

[ATLVols]

The secondary had notoriously bad technique all year. That is coaching. I could easily see a change at the DB coach.