Steele says defense is average, cites breakdowns versus Tech

by David Hood - Senior Writer - Tue Nov 01 16:07:41 GMT-04:00 2011

CLEMSON – To say that Clemson defensive coordinator Kevin SteeleKevin Steele
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Mad enough to chew nails is more like it.

Steele met with the media Tuesday afternoon in the WestZone to talk about the Georgia Tech game and the off week, and it was obvious that Steele’s “coach speak” hid his true feelings about what happened in Atlanta Saturday night.

"We're not going to talk a lot about it. They won the game,” Steele said. “They out-executed us. They physically did what they had to do when it was time to do it. Now, we had some guys play really good. There were some guys who played well – nine or so – and you could make clinic tape from it. But the problem is, with the option, it's assignment football. And it doesn't take but one guy. They found that one guy or two guys or whatever. I won’t get into that. You have someone standing there, don't chase the pitch. You’ve got the quarterback. What can I say?"

Steele said the break down by those one or two players was shocking, simply because he could take them into the film room and shown them last week’s practice where they ran each assignment to perfection.

“We had a very good week of practice,” he said. “You can take every play on that tape - every single one of them – and you can find multiple reps in practice with that play versus that call executed correctly. Now, why didn’t they take that into game? It breaks down for different people - some people out of nervousness and some people out of physical discipline. You and I react to different things different ways. We don't have enough time for me to psycho-analyze all that.”

Steele was then asked who played well.

“If I get into that, we start eliminating [the ones who didn’t play well],” he said. “I will say this, though - Brandon [Thompson] and Malliciah [Goodman]; Malliciah was a clinic tape. It was really encouraging to watch that. But he had that last year against them."

This week, the Tigers practice on Wednesday and Thursday before taking three days off and coming back Monday to prepare for Wake Forest.

"We're already deep into the second down game plan for Wake Forest,” he said. “We're taking this week like it's a normal week from a staff standpoint. Now, we won't feed it to the players as fast. In a nutshell, we have a lot of work to do. We're a very average defense. The bad thing about it is, you can take a huge percentage of our plays and see that we've been very effective. We've created turnovers and a lot of things that have led to points. But we still have the propensity in inopportune times to give up big plays."

He then said that his “checklist” of things to work on won't change just because it’s a bye week.

"That's always. The checklist doesn't change,” he said. “It is what it is. It’s alignment, assignment and technique, eyes, effort and tackling. It's not magic. So that's really what we do every day. This just allows us a bigger window. It's about expectations. The expectation is excellence. It's to play to perfection. Anything less than that is below our standard. We have way, way more plays where we're just not effective than I thought we would have had at this point in time."

The Demon Deacons are ranked 72nd nationally in total offense, 106th in the nation in rushing offense (104 yards per game) and 30th nationally in passing at 275 yards per game and Steele said they look a little different than they did last year, at least on tape.

“We saw a lot of different things last year - reverses, reverse passes, abstract formations, a lot of stuff,” he said. “Their quarterback is playing really well, their backs are playing well, and they're pretty traditional now in what they're doing. They're running some three- wide offense with a little bit of four wide. Some nakeds, boots, sprint-outs, normal one-back runs and normal two-back runs."