Doba dissects defense

PULLMAN – It’s safe to say that no college football coach would feel comfortable taking his team onto the field now for the first game of the season, not with spring football in its final stages on many campuses across the country.

Things are no different at Washington State, where head coach Bill Doba, having assumed defensive coordinator and linebacker coaching duties this season, spoke Tuesday about the process of trying to figure out how he’ll attempt to confuse and contend with Pac-10 offenses come this fall.

First things first. It’s been a constant refrain that the cornerback position is a chief concern for these Cougars in 2007. When discussing his plans and hopes for the defense this fall, Doba indicated again that the position would help to dictate everything around it.

“It really depends on the corners,” Doba said. “I don’t want to be so hard-headed as to say, ‘This is what I do.’ I’ve got to look at what we have and what our kids can do.”

But Doba would like to change what the Cougars do on defense. Last season – again, in part because of concern over cornerback play – the Cougars played largely zone defense, a significant departure from years past.

Doba estimated that WSU played man-to-man coverages no more than 10 percent of the time in 2006, possibly less.

In 2002, Doba’s last year as a defensive coordinator before handing over the reins to Robb Akey, the Cougars used a basic cover-2 zone look once all season. While Doba said he’d like this year’s defense to resemble that year’s Rose Bowl defense in style, he understands that adjustments will have to be made.

But, in trying to find a balance, Doba said he wouldn’t ignore a defense just because it might struggle in a specific situation.

“We as a staff have to prepare to beat most of the teams on our schedule,” Doba said. “We can’t say, ‘Well, this guy can’t hold up against Southern Cal, so we’ll throw that whole scheme out.’ We have to look at everyone on the schedule and see if we can win eight or nine games with these guys, and then for Southern Cal make that adjustment, maybe play a lot more cover-2.

“That’s the thing we’re struggling with right now. This week we’re looking at a lot of different types of zone blitzes and zone pressures.”

Or, in other words, the preseason experimentation is far from over – as it is with so many other teams.