I agree the secondary was less than impressive. But my suspicion is that the ridiculous cushion we saw in a handful of games this year (reaching new levels of ridiculousness vs Georgia) is Coach K's proclivity. His default comfort-zone is aggressive play in the front seven (which I love) and dropping the corners back, inviting the other team to march to our red-zone on a steady diet of 5 to 10 yard passes. I remember Purple-Patterson addressed this right out of the gate when he was brought here as an advisor. Sark has even expressed a desire to play more press / man coverage... and I thought this is what we were recruiting for with longer CBs. But it has yet to translate to the field... consistently.
While Coach K has been wildly successful and is obviously a great defensive coordinator... I'm almost ready to suggest that his defense may not be very "DB friendly." Our secondary was outstanding in 2024... which kind of makes us forget the consistent blown coverages in prior years. The Bobby Burton analysis team said that our secondary had a lot of trouble with "handoffs..." I guess meaning one guy releases coverage and nobody picks up coverage.... kind of a lack of communication? But while our defense has carried the Sark regime (thank you Coach K), the secondary has been the consistent weakest link in that strong chain.
Bottom line, Akina (IMHO) is a proven DB coach. Keep him away from Defensive Coordinator like you're pass protecting, but he's more than solid in the secondary. While I didn't always care for Akina's past fondness to run out 5 DBs under 5 feet and 10 inches... he's a proven commodity. What I'd say we really need is someone strong enough (like Gary Patterson or Sark) to put their foot down on the "Bend but don't Break" philosophy that Coach K seems so comfortable with.
