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On the surface that looks completely different from Bud's approach. Bud wants to force the QB to beat you with low percentage plays. Basically, counting on the QB not being an NFL type talent who can hurt you with precision passing and top-notch decision making. Take away the easy stuff and make them work for it.

Chizik says hey, sit back, let them take that easy stuff and make sure you tackle. We're not going to be burned. They're not all NFL level talents so they are bound to make a mistake eventually and as long as we limit our mistakes and keep them in front of us we'll be okay. Completely opposite.

But....they kind off feed of the same premise. They are defending offenses with young kids who are likely to make mistakes.

I think Chizik's method serves him well, not only because he has an offense to lean on, but also because it becomes increasingly difficult to score in the red-zone. When there is less field to defend the defense can tighten up. I'd generally be okay with letting teams kick field goals in lieu of giving up back-breaking 80 yard TD plays. But its so much more fun to watch an aggressive defense punish offenses.

Bud's style is much more entertaining but Chizik's might be the safer route so long as you have a reliable offense.

In regards to UNC, that is what I am hoping Fuente can change. I don't want to see us content to give up yardage because I am of the "not another yard" mentality. But now that we could potentially have an offense that can score or at least not go three and out several times in a row, I hope the defense will be better rested. And I hope they are more willing to take some risks, I think the past few seasons it has been hard to take big risks because the offense couldn't repay the favor.

This sums it up well, additionally, playing that much man can open you up to more consistent/longer scrambles as there are more players downfield with their eyes away from the QB. The young secondary, which as mentioned was being shuffled around a good bit, could not be expected to handle more complicated and nuanced zone coverages, we at times had difficulty getting lined up correctly. To clarify, I like a lot of our leverage man, and I take pride in our secondary in their ability to play on an island over the last few seasons, but it would have been much better if we could have mixed it up and disguised some coverages.

To touch on what I meant with running a more conservative base cover 2/3 would be similar to what UNC did last year. They played most of season with two high safeties, which allowed teams to nickle and dime them downfield and find some success running the football with fewer bodies in the box. However, they attempted to take away the big plays over the top and in the run game by always having their safeties deep. I don't particularly like this, but when you can trust your offense to score you can afford to play like this, knowing you will likely give up some long drives/points, but also you will get stops because opponents would usually have to put together long drives, with less help from bigger plays, so there is more time to self-destruct or just fail to execute on a set of downs.

Short answer

so what does the long answer look like?

Thanks!! I had a blast making that. Glad you enjoyed.

Chris can correct me if I am wrong here...But losing CJ Revis, Kendall was huge as well as the other starters. It forced us to play a lot of youth where we were either not planning on having them play too many snaps or not at all. Players were having to rotate between corner, nickel, safety which are three different responsibilities. Ideally you'd have depth and corner, nickel corner, and safety so that you don't have to ask one guy to play three positions. In addition there is only a week to prepare for each game. So asking one player to learn CB and then the next week learn safety means that the formations can't get overly complicated or you have a high risk of blown coverage.

When you sit in a cover 2 or cover 3 you are only rushing 4-5 players and having 2 line backers drop into coverage (zone). This means we were likely not going to get any penetration in the run game. We saw last year how vulnerable we were to running even without a successful pass game. By running 70% man free it means it frees up players to rush the qb or defend the run. It also means putting the CB's on an island because the safety is expected (sometimes) to participate in that run defense. If your CB blows coverage then it is either a big gain or TD.

Bottom line is that is not how Bud wants to run his defense and it has to be so frustrating to know what you want your defense to do and what you can actually do based on two huge losses so late into the preparation for the season to start.

Team Cookie is like the Dr. Pepper of soda machines, both Coke and Pepsi offer it

I down voted "Cosby victim", not the general premise.

Is the U back?

Agreed. Nothing to get worked up about just a new medium.