Beating up on a bottom feeder is something we haven’t done in a long time. Maryland is awful, but we have played other awful teams and struggled in recent years. So we finally beat a bottom feeder the way a good team should beat a bottom feeder. And that came one week after playing very competitively against Wisconsin.
Yes... progress is happening and coaching has a lot to do with it. This team could have just given up like Maryland’s players have given up. Or like our players in Riley’s last year gave up. These guys this year are fighting and scrapping to the very end. The coaches are doing a good job of keeping them focused and disciplined.
Our offense played competitively against Wisconsin, but as per usual, our defense didn't. When you're giving up 300+ on the ground to a team, your defense is getting its *** kicked.
Here is what really bothers me about some of the comments that Frost has made recently about our defense.
1) Frost says that Chinander is one of the smartest guys he knows, which indicates to me that Frost himself either doesn't know how to fix the woes of the defense, or he doesn't think the defense needs to be fixed for us to win games. In either instance, it's very unsettling to have the guy that is driving the bus not understand that the defense does indeed need fixing.
2) Frost is using statistics from the PAC-12 and applying them to the B1G, which is woefully short-sighted. If he really thinks that a defense keeping opposing teams to 30 or fewer points in the B1G will lead to a W-L record of 72-2, or whatever that ridiculous record was while at Oregon, that downright scares the crap out of me for our future.
Defenses in the B1G don't give up 30 or more points in the B1G with nearly the regularity that the PAC-12 does. If 30 points is his benchmark for our defense, we are going to be buying out another coach's contract in another 3 years.