Tougher defense needed for UNLV to improve

Weird. UNLV began its football scrimmage here Saturday with a few offensive series in which skill players were immune from contact. Running plays. Passing plays. It was like a situational game of flag, like watching last season’s defense all over again.

Difference is, the Rebels meant not to tackle this time.

Contact soon commenced over the 90-minute affair, but whether UNLV has a better handle on one of the game’s basic concepts (it is OK to force the guy with the ball to the ground) can’t possibly be known until the opponent is someone other than a roommate.

Mind-set. You hear the word all the time in sports, how important having the correct one is to being successful. There is the type of mind-set where you consider your skills and opinions permanent, where you exist terrified of change. There also is the type that allows you to use failure as a way to mature and improve and develop.

The Rebels had better adopt the latter when defending this season. They need to be tougher, more physical, more confident, more technically sound.

They need to wrap up every once in a while.

“It’s a state of mind,” coach Mike Sanford said. “We were not a good tackling team last year. We’re working hard on it and becoming better.

“Last year is last year. The past is the past. But we do want to try and build on some of the good things we did toward the end of that season.”

Teams arrive to a 2-10 record countless ways. No one area is protected from blame. UNLV’s defense more than did its part in creating last year’s nightmare, proven statistically in the harshest sense.

Consider: Among nine Mountain West Conference teams, the Rebels ranked last in scoring defense, total defense and pass efficiency defense, eighth in rushing defense and seventh in sacks.

UNLV also stood no better than 82nd nationally in any of the five categories and was 108th against the run and 113th against the pass.

Yeah, it’s apparent a new mind-set is needed.

Sanford agreed to the extent he made a subtle but telling offseason change to his staff, promoting Kurt Barber to co-defensive coordinator alongside Vic Shealy. At the time, Sanford said he hoped the move would help cultivate a more physical attitude among the team’s front seven, that something needed to change on a defense lacking the one attribute — toughness — which defines the game.

“We have raised the bar in terms of our expectations to be more physical,” said Barber, who also coaches the defensive line. “We’ve had more physical practices. We have preached every day about buying into what we want from them. It is visible so far.

“To me, tackling is 70 percent effort and 30 percent technique. You need good technique, but you also have to want to get there and be in the proper position to make a tackle.”

Scrimmages rarely provide tangible evidence of how a specific side of the ball might perform when a season begins, but it’s not difficult to surmise a few things from Saturday:

UNLV is exceptionally inexperienced at cornerback, meaning how much pressure it generates up front will go a long way in determining how many stops the Rebels earn each week.

This is not a defense that can afford to give any quarterback — much less the likes of a Colt Brennan from Hawaii — more than a breath or two to throw. Average quarterbacks with time will hurt the Rebels. Great ones potentially could carve them to pieces.

“We couldn’t get over bad plays quickly enough last season, and because of that, we just broke down too easily,” senior linebacker Beau Bell said. “We can’t have that kind of effort again. Not at all.”

Bell is the defensive leader who missed the last five games in 2006 with a sprained ankle, an injury that caused many to wonder if he could have played but instead chose to sit as the final weeks slipped by. He heard the claims. He knew others were questioning his — here’s that word again — toughness.

“It made me mad,” Bell said. “It bugged me. But no doubt about it, I have a lot to prove this season.”

He’s not the only one. It begins with a mind-set, the one that allows failure to help you improve.

The process officially launches with the season’s first tackle. A reminder for whoever attempts it: Wrap up.

Ed Graney’s column is published Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday. He can be reached at 383-4618 or egraney@reviewjournal.com.