This is 100% my thinking but hope it has some merit. I do tend to look for the positive so take this for what it's worth. My theory as to what happened.

Bud was afraid of giving up the long plays due to the lack of experience and play to date of our secondary so he backed the back 4 players off the line of scrimmage. Protecting from the long or big play.

Then he pulled the linebackers back a step or so from the line to give them the chance to see the play develop and get a good angle to attack or tackle. This required the front four DL to at least hold up the blockers to slow the play down.

What happened? The DL got beat most of the time. Reasons were the play of these front four (for various reasons) with them being pushed back into the linebackers. Notice the GT ball carrier not being touched until several yards past the line of scrimmage.

I could go on but you all saw the game. No need to add to our pain. Result was that we did not give up the big play but got hammered by multiple time consuming smaller plays and first downs.

So what's the positives? Not much but since our remaining opponents do not play the same system we can afford to go back to our traditional defensive alignment. Now we will need stronger play from the front 7 but there shouldn't be as much "thinking" involved but more attacking. Former Head Coach Ruffin of ECU was quoted on ESPN gameday Saturday and his comments I thought hit home for our Thursday performance. Not sure of his exact word but he said " having a clear mind allows for aggressive or an attacking play performance. And a cloudy mind leads to one being hesitant in their play and not being as successful" . Having 9 first time starters on defense led to my seeing first hand what Coach Ruffin meant.

So hopefully we can just throw out this GT performance as one where Coach Bud came up with a game plan that on paper gave us the best chance to succeed but in reality blew up in our face.