Wednesday, January 10, 2007

Welcome aboard, Mike.

I'm late to the party, but I did want to throw in a few links.

WKYT in Lexington has posted a video report on Mike Archer's move which you can find here. I have not been able to get the sound to work, but that might just be me.

Mike Archer's bio
Mike Archer wikipedia entry (thanks to commenter Matt for the head's up)
NCAA football stats database (you can look at numbers from all of Archer's UK defenses if you're so inclined)

This should be an interesting change for us, because from what I've read, Archer prefers the 3-4 and also uses a lot of zone. We aren't used to seeing either. I was happy to find that he's not dead-set on one scheme over another; he'll evaluate our personnel and go from there. This is from a June 2004 online chat:

Scott Reynolds: If the defense entered a season short on linemen, would you change the system to a 4-3 alignment or would you convert a linebacker to a down lineman position and keep the 3-4?

Mike Archer: Yes we would. In fact, last year we played a lot of true 4-3 defense with four down linemen. The Ohio game was the first of many that we played that particular package. We continued to do it the rest of the year based on injuries and depth concerns that we had at outside linebacker. We will continue to work in practice on our 4-3 package and will use it in 2004.