Even though it’s been a while since Mark Snyder resigned as defensive coordinator and being replaced by defensive line coach Jim Heacock, I want to weigh in on the situation.
As many fans and sports writers know, the Buckeyes under Jim Tressel have always stressed solid defense, with consistent special teams and an offense that doesn’t turn the ball over. When Snyder was promoted after former defensive coordinator Mark Dantonio was hired as the University of Cincinnati’s new head coach, Snyder wanted to re-tool the defense. Sadly, Snyder got his way and he implemented among other things, zone defensive secondary coverage. This was in stark contract to much of the attacking nature of the Dantonio defenses.
Zone coverage is where the defensive back drops back in coverage on passing plays and is assigned to cover any offensive player that comes into their “geographic zone.” Some players and coaches don’t like zone coverage for a reason - the zones are spread out leaving gaps in the defense. This means that a spread offense can often tear apart zone schemes if receivers find the “soft” spots.
Zone coverage and schemes also make it harder to stop the run, not just because of the assignment the DB’s have, but because they are spread out on the field. What this means is that DB’s are rarely playing close enough to the line of scrimmage to help with run support, meaning that if a running back or quarterback takes the ball past the line of scrimmage they have a little bit more room to run around before being tackled or reaching the end zone.
Not only did Mark Snyder resign for another coaching job during the off-season, but so did long-time defensive backs coach Mel Tucker who is now the Cleveland Browns defensive backs coach. Tucker was a valuable coach who developed great DB’s and was also co-defensive coordinator last year alongside Coach Snyder. Since Snyder has left, the zone schemes and coverage's have been all but abandoned. Tressel promoted former defensive line coach Jim Heacock because Heacock and Tressel want to run a defense similar to that of former coordinator Mark Dantonio.
Tressel had more juggling to do on the defensive coaching staff and went to Michigan State’s staff and hired away the Spartan’s DB coach, Paul Haynes. Tressel also hired defensive specialist Tim Beckman. Beckman was previously the defensive coordinator and assistant head coach at Bowling Green State University. Beckman should turn out to be an awesome hire for Tressel as he is considered a defensive genius against spread offenses and has been a recruiting coordinator.
Haynes and Beckman are now combined with Heacock, Fickell (co-defensive coordinator and linebackers coach), and the new defense in 2005 should be similar to the aggressive defense that Dantonio used so effectively. The mainly negative issue I and other fans and sports writers seemed to have against Snyder was that his system and schemes were much too laid back for a team that had previously thrived on aggressive, attacking and strong defense.
In the 2004 season, Snyder’s defense only accumulated 24 sacks on the season, and there were two games where our defense didn’t get a single sack. During the 2002 national championship season, Dantonio’s defense racked up an impressive 39 sacks on the season, including 4 in the national championship game against #1 Miami. Dantonio’s defense wasn’t quite as successful in the 2003 campaign, finishing with only 31 sacks. A big reason for this was that Dantonio had to break in many new starters that year and we played in one less game in 2003 than in 2002. Regardless, it was still an impressive defensive season.
If you weren’t able to tell by watching the two different defenses that Snyder’s was softer and less aggressive, then hopefully those blitzing statistics paint the picture. Snyder put less pressure on quarterbacks and dropped too many men into zone coverage, so not only did we get less pressure on the quarterbacks, but our rush defense gave up bigger numbers than the previous two seasons as well.
In 2002, opposing teams ran the ball against us 409 times for 1054 yards which averages out to 2.5 yards per carry while giving up an unbelievable 5 rushing touchdowns the entire season. Not only did we allow so little rushing yards in 2002, but we only allowed 5 rushing scores the entire year as well. In 2003, teams ran the ball against us 400 times for just 739 yards which comes out to an average of 1.8 yards per carry, in addition to only allowing 12 rushing touchdowns. In 2004, during Snyder’s first year, opposing teams ran the ball 440 times against us for 1571 yards which averages out to 3.5 yards per carry, while giving up 10 rushing touchdowns.
As you can see, running backs had more success against the zone schemes that Snyder implemented as did quarterbacks. It should be mentioned that only three running backs ran for over 100 yards in a game over both the 2002 and 2003 seasons when Dantonio was coordinator. In 2002, only Wisconsin’s Anthony Davis ran for over 100 yards against the Silver Bullet defense, while in 2003, Wisconsin’s Booker Stanley and Michigan’s Chris Perry both broke the century marker for rushing yards in a single game against our defense. A notable stat for the 2003 season, in both of the two games we lost, the opposing team’s running back ran for over 100 yards.
In Snyder’s one year tenure as defensive coordinator, two running backs broke the 100 yard mark in a game. In back-to-back weeks of October 2nd and October 9th, Northwestern’s Noah Herron and Wisconsin’s Anthony Davis respectively both ran for over 100 yards in a game and combined for 3 touchdowns.
What we can expect from the new Heacock defense, is a lot more pressure off the edge with the initial pass rush in effort to make quarterbacks make mistakes. There will also be more run support from the DB’s, not just the safeties, but the corners. Heacock’s defense is going to be similar to Dantonio’s which often sent corners and safeties in some of his blitzing packages. So ideally we’ll be better this year at stopping the run and our coverage schemes will be much tighter, opting to go to man-to-man coverage schemes over the inferior zone coverage schemes which will hopefully constrain opposing offenses options.
Andy Steger
