ChambersWI said:
you've got to remember Ngata was double teamed all night.
I mean, Ngata is a consensus first team all-american, and the only defensive lineman on Oregon worth mentioning.
I saw him fight through a couple of double teams and hit Peterson in the backfield.
DT is the hardest position to jduge. Ngata plugs holes and gets penetration a lot, but you've also got to look at other factors. The fact that they double teamed all night shows me he had an impact on the game (if you think AP would run up the middle like he did late had Ngata not been double teamed, your dead wrong)
I didn't see double-teams ALL NIGHT at all. I focused on Ngata on every play. At first he was double-teamed. By virtue of the position he plays, he would be double-teamed in the NFL. The standard of a good NT in the NFL is not simply getting double-teamed. You have to have success against the double team as well. He was getting HANDLED by the double team. And guess what, in the second half, they stopped double-teaming him so much, and that is when their ground game started hitting on all cylinders...when they started single-blocking Ngata which left another lineman free to pave some creases for Peterson.
Sometimes Ngata made them pay for the single blocks. Most of the plays brought up in this thread were occasions like that. But, he really only made them pay for the single block I would estimate three times (his two tackles, plus like one other time where he disrupted the play). The rest of the time, Peterson was busting loose and the Sooners were scoring two 3rd-quarter touchdowns. Then the interesting part is when Ngata left the game, Peterson had a few more decent runs, but all in all that is when the Oregon D started STOPPING the Sooners offense and giving their own offense a chance to win the game.
What was alarmingly apparent to me is that the only service that Ngata does for the Oregon DL is take up two blockers which affords their other talented DL men to dominate. But, when the Sooners figured this out and started blocking Ngata with just Chris Chester, Ngata didn't present himself as a serious enough threat to force the Sooners to go back to the double-team. It's like a guy who tries to rob a store with his hand in his pocket like its a gun and he's got everyone scared until someone gets brave enough to knock the robber's hand out of his pocket and they all discover that he doesn't really have a gun there.
I was alarmed by Ngata. He's not a finished product at all. He's got potential because of that "Planet Theory" but right now, I think Manuel Wright in his limited playing time has shown that he's a more valuable DL than Ngata so I have to wonder if it would be worth drafting him #15.
Here's one thing that is both inexcusable and undeniable. Ngata was almost always the last defensive lineman to engage the offensive line on any given snap. No first step worthy of note whatsoever. Even if your job is to stay home at the line of scrimmage and tie up two blockers (which appeared to be the case), you still need that good first step to get leverage so you can dictate position, not have the linemen dictate position to you.
I just don't think he showed me anything there that made me say hey, this is a guy that can play the nose for us. And, if he's not the NT, there's no point putting him in this attacking penetrating style of defensive line when the guy isn't an attacker or a penetrator.
