This past Friday, in the hours leading up to Cincinnati’s roadie with Houston, I hopped on the Bearcast Media show The Left Bench with Darin Russell (@russThefield) and ZJ Jones (@TheUnrealDeal) to talk everybody’s favorite topic; Bearcats football!
For the better part of the first half hour we discussed UC’s preparation for Houston. How they should stop Greg Ward Jr, attack a ball-hawking the secondary, and the like. We also shared our gripes about Cincinnati’s defense that, while young, doesn’t seem to be playing in a system that helps protect or mask that inexperience. Typically that’s done by playing a shell, cover-3 or -4 defense like Steve Clinkscale has implemented this season. It’s a solid strategy that’s been proven to work in the past.
But the problem is this defense is still getting carpet bombed and lit up like the 4th of July. UC drops seven or eight players into zone coverage and the secondary still finds ways to let receivers run 20 yards ahead of them into the end zone. So why not try blitzing a little more and forcing some mistakes from the quarterback? At least try something different. Please?
Anywho, we shifted gears a bit and discussed Ben Levin’s (@levinmachine) article on the American Conference not being as bad as a lot of us originally perceived when we were jettisoned here after Big East football dissolved. It’s no picnic, no Big 12 or ACC, but all three of us agreed that with now-four top 25 teams being produced by the AAC, it’s not as horrible as we first thought.
You can listen to our entire segment below. Again, I’m on for most of the first half hour but there’s a good hour of The Left Bench remaining that I highly encourage you to continue listening to.
The Left Bench (November 6, 2015) by The Left Bench on Mixcloud