Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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even more with a different defensive philosophy from predecessor Bob Diaco (2010-13), now the head coach at Connecticut, whose successful ap- proach was more conservative and simple. VanGorder 's style is more elaborate, features more packages and exotic approaches, yet surprised the nation when the Irish ranked among the nation's top five in scoring defense through the first five games with rela- tively unseasoned personnel. When asked if the intense teaching aspect is more rewarding to him, Van- Gorder elicited laughter when he said "it will be." "It's not so rewarding now because mistakes keeps happening," Van- Gorder said. "We'll get to the point where we'll be a lot more solid … There are things you've got to be on top of, you've got to know and you've got to handle. Some things on defense are pretty basic and simple. "There are other things on defense that you better be on top of your game or it's going to get you, and we expe- rienced that at Florida State. They got us a couple of times with some things that we make very important here. We just didn't get the job done." Still, the 31 points were the lowest in FSU quarterback Jameis Winston's 20 career starts. THE CHANGING GAME When he was at Georgia 10 years ago, VanGorder said almost all the SEC offenses were cookie-cutter, pro- style images of each other, with the ex- ception of Lou Holtz's South Carolina teams that were more in the single- wing mode of today's rampant spread attack. Thus, playing a basic defense also was fairly common. "The single wing, the tempo and