- Rewatching the game. If you do so, watch Trumbetti and Martini the entire time on defense. Make sure you have a puke bucket by your side. They were dominated every single play.
- Rochelle was really good.
- Where is Tillery's motor? He wasn't getting owned like Trumbetti, but wasn't a factor. He basically held his ground and that's it.
- Jarron Jones same as Tillery.
- Studstill is in on the tackle or in the picture almost every play. Him and Crawford are going to make some plays this year.
- Julian Love (27) played a lot more than I thought.
- I think on the big TD Coleman gave up, he wasn't just burned by athleticism like I thought. He was over playing the hitch, you can tell because he's shuffling more than running. Can't do that against a guy like Hurt.
- Tranquill, thought he'd make more of an impact.
- I like watching Morgan play football.
- I thought Cage played well. 2nd best DL to me.
- Kizer is so good.
- I like how the OL played, both sides. I don't think the Right side was a noticeable lag.
- I think our RBs are all good, not great. They're not difference makers to me, but they can all play well. I'd like to see Dexter get more carries.
A big part of the issue I have with the game (defensively) wasn't only the 3-3-5 alignment but the personnel chosen to start in that alignment. Trumbetti is essentially a ROLB or WDE that was asked to play on top of the OT and in some cases it looked like the inside shoulder of the OT (4T-3T). No reason to have him that close to the ball. I'm not sure what BVG has seen to think that's a position he's going to consistently win from. If we wanted to run that, you rotate Jones, Cage, Tillery, and Rochell (I bet Taylor would've been fine there as well, that's 4-5 guys for 3 spots). You want to make it a jumbo, then you sub out JO for Trumbetti, as JO was essentially an extension of the DL for parts of the game. He lined up on the outside as a ROLB and in some cases on top of the OG, talk about boneheaded decisions. So we had Trumbetti as a 3-4 DE and JO as our ROLB. You are not going to win a lot of close yardage battles with those guys at those positions. Especially, against jumbo packages and a 250 lb RB/QB combo.
Also, either it was incredibly poor technique from that position, they were expected to do this, or a combination of both but on almost each snap it looked to me like Trumbetti was trying to win inside. And he kept getting turned and essentially taken out of the play. I would've liked to see them start wider, 5T, and play outside in more. It looked like they played inside/inside, if that makes any sense.
This is not me defending his play, it wasn't good, just to say he shouldn't have ever been in that situation. Keep in mind that Diaco had DE's that were Tuitt, Ethan Johnson, Sheldon Day, KLM, all those guys have at least 20 lbs. on Trumbetti. We currently have those guys (listed above), we just didn't play them there, at least early on.
In summation, poor alignment, poor personnel, and poor technique. At least to me.
