I listened to the interview with coach Ward the other day at the Spurrier Golf tournament on 107.5.
Something he said concerned me and I was wondering if anyone else picked up on it and had the same concern. He said he was going to concentrate on alignment and getting players lined up properly and the way he said it made it sound like that was his most major problem on defense. That concerns me as I think alignment should be the easiest thing to get right. Once you call the defense, the players should know exactly how to line up. The real problem comes after that when the ball is snapped. The hardest thing about playing defense is making your reads, reading the right keys, reacting to those reads, and then reacting to the ball. All this has to be done in a split second and you have to know immediately where to go and what do based on the read. If there is a twist to the play, like a reverse or some other unforeseen event, then you have to quickly react to the ball. It seems to me that alignment should be the least of our problems.
Something he said concerned me and I was wondering if anyone else picked up on it and had the same concern. He said he was going to concentrate on alignment and getting players lined up properly and the way he said it made it sound like that was his most major problem on defense. That concerns me as I think alignment should be the easiest thing to get right. Once you call the defense, the players should know exactly how to line up. The real problem comes after that when the ball is snapped. The hardest thing about playing defense is making your reads, reading the right keys, reacting to those reads, and then reacting to the ball. All this has to be done in a split second and you have to know immediately where to go and what do based on the read. If there is a twist to the play, like a reverse or some other unforeseen event, then you have to quickly react to the ball. It seems to me that alignment should be the least of our problems.
