Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Trying to pinpoint the reason for the surprisingly poor Kansas defense this year would be like trying to tie a shoe with one hand. The pass rush has been poor. The secondary has struggled and has made personnel changes. The pass defense has had some of the worst statistical performances in the history of the school. But lately, poor tackling has been dooming the KU defense.
In each of the Jayhawks’ three Big 12 losses — at Oklahoma, against Texas Tech, and at Nebraska — poor tackling has been a theme of the postgame press conferences. It was most noticeable on Saturday, as Nebraska was able to break several tackles to turn short gains into big plays.
“We’re just not a good tackling football team right now,” coach Mark Mangino said. “We’re having trouble getting people on the ground on the first hit.”
Junior safety Darrell Stuckey attemps to make a tackle on a Nebraska running back.
And while some have pinpointed the spread offenses of the Big 12 and how it’s hard to make a lot of open-field tackles, Mangino stressed that wasn’t the problem with his 6-4 squad.
“We’re having trouble right in the box,” Mangino said. “We brought somebody blitzing into the gap where they ran the ball on three or four occasions and didn’t put him on the ground.”
Players all have different reasons for the dismal tackling but its hard to determine just what the major reason is. The Jayhawks did lose Aqib Talib and James McClinton on the defensive side of the ball, but they returned nine starters from a team that was considered a good tackling team in 2007.
The 2007 squad allowed only 16.4 points per game while this year’s defense has been shredded for 28.2 points per contest.
“We’re just playing too straight-legged right now,” said linebacker James Holt. “We don’t have enough guys flying around to the ball. When we watch film, we can see that there’s no urgency to get to the ball or anything. If we don’t correct it for this game then its going to be a long game.”
Indeed, the Jayhawks will face one of the top offensive teams in the nation in No. 3 Texas on Saturday, meaning that the Jayhawks’ tackling woes better improve quickly or it could get ugly — fast.
“We work on it every day in practice,” Mangino said. “We teach it and reteach it and some players have improved greatly because of that work — and some have not.”
One reason for the tackling struggles could be because of some injuries that the KU defense is struggling to overcome. Caleb Blakesley and Richard Johnson Jr. have been banged up on the defensive line and linebackers Joe Mortensen and Mike Rivera are battling lingering knee injuries.
“People aren’t able to run around like they can when you have that going on,” Holt said of the injuries. “It’s hard to get around if you only have so many people flying to the ball. It just makes it hard to tackle because if you have one-on-one tackling, it makes it easier for the runner to get by you.”
With two games remaining in the regular season, including Texas and No. 12 Missouri, better tackling is imperative to helping the Jayhawks have any chance of pulling off the upsets.
“There’s no sugarcoating it or getting around it,” said cornerback Justin Thornton. “As you can see we’ve lost a few games and you can probably attribute that to poor tackling. Either you tackle well or you don’t, and when you don’t tackle, you don’t win.”
— — Edited by Scott R. Toland
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