Topic: Gazette: MU defense unable to overcome loss of McClellan

[ZackUSAF82]

By Doug Smock
Staff writer

WHEN ALBERT McClellan tore his anterior cruciate ligament in his knee in early August, it was absolutely the worst thing that could have happened to Marshall and third-year coach Mark Snyder.

But you knew that then, right?

And now that we’ve driven a stake in the Thundering Herd’s 3-9 season, let’s take a long look at the impact. It’s every bit as startling as expected.

By Conference USA standards, the patchwork defense of coordinator Steve Dunlap wasn’t awful, finishing seventh of 12 teams in points and total yards against. And it actually held title contender East Carolina to a touchdown in the season’s highlight, a 26-7 win.

But if you saw the Herd’s 46-39 win over Alabama-Birmingham, or the five other games it gave up 38 or more points, you know how ugly it got at times.

Seven rushers had 100-yard games, but the Herd’s real Achilles’ heel was pass defense. Quarterbacks had a pretty good year against the green and white, completing 63.9 percent of their passes for 3,118 yards, with 23 touchdowns and only four interceptions. The pass efficiency rating, a superior measure to passing yardage, was 147.2, putting the Herd 10th.

Link: http://wvgazette.com/section/Sports/Marshall/2007112523

[catfanatic1979]

Well at least someone in the paper realizes that our secondary was the worst part of our defense!

[svherd]

Albert is excellent, but even he couldn't styme the flood of opponent points. Until the DB's get better and we start becoming aggressive on D, this will be the constant - we'll have to outscore teams to win.
Frankly, I love high scoring games, as long as we win. It is CUSA, not the Big 10, we will hardly ever be in games that are 10-7, etc. Look at the ave. scores of CUSA games, most are shoot outs, nothing wrong with that, Snyder needs to adjust his thinking, this is not OSU and the B10.

[jstherd]

Just another article by a good ol boy media guy saying "Synder was not at fault for three losing seasons. NO ONe and I mean NO ONE can predict what would have happened if Albert had played. This media apologist need to get aome new topics.

[Thunders]

Albert's injury did hurt us considering we still don't have that great of talented depth. He would have helped out a lot this year. I don't think he would have given us 3-4 more wins but maybe 2.  He is a great player but Snyder can't rely on one guy to save us. We need depth at every position. When a star goes down we need to be able to still run our team on all cylinders.

Nichols should be the next to be fired as secondary coach. He has been horrible since he has been here. He needs to be reassigned or something.

[_sturt_]

Smock, as usual, has it right.

Rocket science on his part? Brain surgery?

Nah.

Elementary logic... If A, then B. If B, then C.

No pass rush, you'd better have excellent DBs.

If you don't have excellent DBs in that situation, you're going to be giving up bou coup yards and points.

Yet, it is an elementary logic has appears even still to elude the Noseless.