Ted Roof Comments

[BeauFoster]

I’m definitely not happy with the play of the defense today. The scheme seemed bad, the middle of the field was WIDE open ALL DAY, and tackling was poor (at times). I think a lot of the tackling was a product of taking bad angles.

The penalties were bad, we looked very undisciplined out there at times. A couple of the PI calls were ticky-tack at best, but they were called so what can you do?

We’re really missing some of our departed starters from last year - especially Stout. I said when Roof was hired that a regression may be less related to coaching and more growing pains from breaking in new players. However, after watching the last two weeks, I think a lot of the regression does lay on the feet of the defensive staff. Some of the issues can be worked out with proper coaching, some will only come with experience.

At this point, I’m not on the Fire Roof train just yet, but I’m definitely at the train station and looking at the departures board. If we lay an egg against UNC and later against GaSo (barring significant external factors), then I’ll buy my ticket and join in.

[hotrod2001]

Hey, the offense wasn't exactly stellar at times either. It's not the coaches who were letting 32 slip through their fingers like he was covered in Crisco.

Maybe Charlotte wanted it more. They want a rivalry with us and in response the last two years all we've done is balked at the idea and called them a commuter school. So they came into our house and did what we keep saying we want to do in two weeks in Chapel Hill. They want to make a statement against a superior in-state team and to be taken seriously. Our guys looked like they were expecting another train wreck coming into town, but Charlotte looks like they've got themselves a good young coach who's looking to make a name for himself and to bring the 'Niners along with him.

The boys need to wake up for the next game though. Maybe when you don't have a P5 opponent as your opener you start out the season sleepy or something, idk.

[AppStateMtneer]

We should not give up that much on Defense EVER... thin ice....

[The Rock]

I know firing roof isn’t happening anytime soon, and I’m not saying it definitely should yet, but if we perform like we did today any other week this season, we will be embarrassed. We had virtually no pressure on their QB, our DBs were abused, and didn’t find the ball. We let them catch it and interfered in the meantime. Poor tackling, and missed tackles.
Our special teams started off rough with 3 penalties in 2 plays, but ended up being what won the game for us.
If we let UNC’s Qb relax in the pocket all day and pick on our DBs, and whiff on tackles, we will get beat worse than we did at Clemson.
Not sure how a top tier defense has fallen off so much so quickly
And let’s not overlook our offense. Yes we put up points, but 14 didn’t come from offense, and I don’t think Concord has a steel curtain defense or anything. Zac seems to be off a little and not be able to get in a rhythm without running the ball regularly.

[GlassOnion]

Was not impressed with the Roof hire to begin with, downright livid now. We could save $$$$$$ and just let our athletes line up themselves and do better than this. We're going from a top 10 defense to a bottom 10 by the look of it. The players are there, they are proven performers. 6 figures for this steaming mess? I got into the wrong business.

[J_Mountaineers]

Ted was a horrible hire from day one. Today wouldn't have been as bad if our former defense was mediocre or below average. I cringed today, watching a former top 15 defense in college football being reduced to a bottom 15 defense. It makes zero sense that our scheme and strategy has changed. Change things if they are bad and leave them alone if they're not.

[AppfaninCAALand]

Two long runs surely skewed the perception - on both sides ---
526 yards by Charlotte is awfully hard to write off as missed assignments - it could have also been because of being in the wrong alignment signaled in ---

Those who know me, know I am not in panic mode - As many have said before me, I will take an ugly win over a pretty loss every day of the week - I am SURE the players are not happy with their performance and I clearly believe this defense will bounce back - As someone mentioned earlier, maybe this is a serious wake-up call while still remaining undefeated ---

Those two runs can certainly be blamed on missed assignments - it happens. But other than those two plays we did well against the run - that is a fair assessment by that original guy. But then again, there are definitely things to work on and I'm not sure Roof is the guy to keep the defense humming like we are used to. Firing the DC on a 2-0 team would be a little excessive at this point, however.

That being said, one issue I thought late was the D just looked tired. One of our guys, can't remember who, nearly had a sack late but appeared to give up. And all the penalties late! Part of me thinks after Evans ran that onside kick for a TD, the D was probably like "oh no we have to go right back out there?!?!". You take points wherever you can get them of course, but maybe it was just a case of our offense was scoring too fast?

Also, special teams did great - perhaps this season, we will see the benefit of having a dedicated special teams coordinator.

[Rekdiver]

We won. Charlotte is better than we thought and we are not as good as we anticipated. Coaches got a lot to digest.

[Trock44]

Why are we playing heavy man coverage and blitzing that much...Where is our heavy zone defense that forced opponents to sustain long drives?

[App90]

UNCC schemed our defense to the tee. The minute ASU’S safties came up in run support they changed the play and tossed the ball into 1 on 1 coverage. And our corners never looked back. If ASU’s safties stayed back they flooded the zone with three recievers. UNCC brought their China dishes to this game. Yes Thomas looks out of sync at times. And yes ASU’s defense looked lost and out of place at times. Arm tackles, missed assignments, bad penalties, and yes on those long runs our linebackers missed their gap assignments. Is this Roof or a communication problem of where you are supposed to be. Two times the running backs came out of the back field and no one was near them. One went for a TD the very next play went for 2 points. Seems to me our players havent quite figured out the system yet. Which is disturbing. See u in Chapel Hill.

[yosef69]

Could be in for a long year. Thank god the offense (evans) can score at will

[WVAPPeer]

With all that has been said - and I know most agree - UNCC must be given a great deal of credit - they came ready to play - their coaches had them well prepared - they didn't quit - I was impressed --- their QB was solid, their receivers were very good and we already knew their RB was All-Conf caliber - Now as much as we are down on our D they must really be down - If I heard correctly their D was top 25 last year and they gave up 42 points (the other 14 on their STs) -

[appstatealum]

So let’s look at the numbers. Charlotte rushed for 240 yards on 41 carries. If you take away Lemays 58 yard run and Fingers 68 yard run, we held them to under 3 yards a carry. I infer from this that we don’t have a scheme problem but missed assignments. To the point made on the lack of adjustments on the slants, fair point, but you can only do so much. The game plan was probably stop the run and see if Reynolds could beat them. He played well enough to do it, with some nice dimes and he took advantage of our inexperienced corners. As a coach, you pick your poison and hope it doesn’t kill you.

Good observation, but you are wrong. This is a scheme problem. When you play your linebackers that shallow., you are allowing the opposing team to engage the linebackers too early. Our strength is speed and now you are negating it. Second issue is, our defenders were getting into the backfield too early and the patience of a Benny Lemay gave them the opportunity to suck our defense in and then hit the gap with nothing in the middle. This is scheme, and it is a bad scheme because it plays Against our strengths.

I was trying to be optimistic about Roof, but a two game aggregate is showing me that this is a disastrous hire. We shouldn't be rebuilding, we should be retooling. Offense looks solid, not sure about the negativity towards that.... Defense was nationally ranked last season.....

[T-Dog]

Drink said at Mountaineer Talk that he wanted the defense to try to get more turnovers. And so there were countless failed arm tackles that resulted in large yardage plays. And then there were the times the UNCC RB would get past the first level and there was no one within 30 yards of him, and it happened multiple times.

The defense today was unacceptable and the Ted Roof Experience was in full effect today. I'm fine with getting rid of him right now considered the horrible defensive play calling he did over and over without a hint of changing.

[MrCraig]

Alabama lost to UL-Monroe in Saban’s first year. App lost to Liberty in Satterfield’s first year. There are countless other examples of teams losing games they should’ve won after they had a coaching change. Coaches bring new schemes and culture to a team, and that can cause some growing pains that result in losses. I was one of the people on this board calling for Satt’s head after the Liberty game. Then I coached high school for a while and learned what coaching takes. Roof may very well need to be fired. There’s no doubt our defense looked like trash today, but to say that a guy should be fired after two games is asinine. Florida State and Tennessee are garbage programs now because they have been so quick to fire guys. When you fire someone, typically you have to pay out the rest of their contract. Then you don’t have the money in the budget to get someone better, so you end up with someone worse, and the downward spiral continues. Roof gets this season. If the defense remains soft as wet tissue, he needs to go. But if he improves over the course of the season, you will all seem very silly.

[ah59396]

To take a little heat off our buddy Ted here, our tackling was god awful. I know you can attribute that to coaching discipline blah blah blah, but at the end of the day, Ted can’t go out there and wrap these guys up.

I look forward to what Drink and his staff (including Ted) do over the next two weeks to get ready for Carolina. We’ve got a lot of work to do, but it’s fixable and we’ve got the talent.

[Westisthebest]

You guys are all rediculous, especially chaz. We were crappy today on defense because it was a white out. Simple as that. Long as we don't do a white out again we'll be fine. Now if roof was the idea man behind a white out then we should can him.

[AppSt94]

So let’s look at the numbers. Charlotte rushed for 240 yards on 41 carries. If you take away Lemays 58 yard run and Fingers 68 yard run, we held them to under 3 yards a carry. I infer from this that we don’t have a scheme problem but missed assignments. To the point made on the lack of adjustments on the slants, fair point, but you can only do so much. The game plan was probably stop the run and see if Reynolds could beat them. He played well enough to do it, with some nice dimes and he took advantage of our inexperienced corners. As a coach, you pick your poison and hope it doesn’t kill you.

Good observation, but you are wrong. This is a scheme problem. When you play your linebackers that shallow., you are allowing the opposing team to engage the linebackers too early. Our strength is speed and now you are negating it. Second issue is, our defenders were getting into the backfield too early and the patience of a Benny Lemay gave them the opportunity to suck our defense in and then hit the gap with nothing in the middle. This is scheme, and it is a bad scheme because it plays Against our strengths.

I was trying to be optimistic about Roof, but a two game aggregate is showing me that this is a disastrous hire. We shouldn't be rebuilding, we should be retooling. Offense looks solid, not sure about the negativity towards that.... Defense was nationally ranked last season.....

So let me ask you this. And I respect your opinion and observation on matters of strategy and execution, so it isn’t meant to be argumentative; those weren’t the only times that we pressed the line with our linebackers. They were just the two that killed us with long runs. It seemed to work more often than not.

I get that the Roof hire wasn’t well received, but who were we going to get to come in and run the defense the way we were accustomed? Woody wasn’t going to come back. Ivey wasn’t an option.

I get why Drink hired him and I’m sure that he is being evaluated like the other coaches. The players love him and he has seen a lot. I know the players took the onerous on them for today’s play. Let’s see how they respond.

[T-Dog]

You guys are all rediculous, especially chaz. We were crappy today on defense because it was a white out. Simple as that. Long as we don't do a white out again we'll be fine. Now if roof was the idea man behind a white out then we should can him.

[Mjohn1988]

Woody is available. Defensive analyst for Michigan.

Woody’s D looked pretty bad at the start but then again he didn’t have the talent roof has and Woodys D turned out great. We really should have hired him back.