- Joined
- Aug 24, 2011
- Messages
- 22,275
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Well, one thing you can't say about this team is that it doesn't have guts. It was totally outmatched physically last night, and yet for 50 minutes, miraculously, there we were within 3 points. No one made mistakes. No turnovers. Almost no penalties. No horrific decisions. Just get pushed around for minutes at a time, and then someone make a play on D or, shockingly, make a drive on O, and there we were with a chance to win on the road against a team that had beaten Boise and Nebraska. I like this team's guts. However, if you are being out-talented and are trying to win a game on guts, you can't do stupid things. Remember the Obi gamble against Army for no good reason that let them back in the game? You have to know time and score. Shirreffs was going to get obliterated there (yet again) -- fine. It was a three point game and there was plenty of time yet. Throw it away or go down. But he tried making a really, really low percentage play there at a time it didn't have to be made. We show more guts at down 10 by our offense standing up and driving down the field to get us back to a one score deficit, and then our coach, yet again, goes for the low percentage play. (By the way -- Puyol's two kicks today each would have tied the score at Mizzou.) Yes, it could have worked and yes, but for the Adams penalty it wouldn't have mattered, but in football as in life, if you don't play the odds you will lose more than you have to. And I need to see this staff stop making long shot bets left and right and play the odds. But we do get the 3 and out, and then, on the dead ball, a fifth year senior captain gets whistled for a dead ball foul. I don't want to go overboard beating Adams up, because my guess is that as he kicked the ball he didn't think/know he was doing anything wrong. But a dead ball penalty in the 4th Q, for the second time in 5 games, could have been the difference between winning and losing. Until you are better as a team, position by position, you can't make this type of mental mistake. We made three back to back to back, and there went our chance of what would have been against all odds a huge win.
Before offense, defense and specials, a word about coaching. The TD play, once again, showed that the staff game after game can come up with a play that can hit for us without any individual having to make an outstanding play. But the inability to get out of the huddle on a timely basis repeatedly, which was not a problem earlier in the year, was exremely disappointing.
On offense what we saw, as we saw in Missouri, is that our OL is just overwhelmed playing BCS bowl team level competition and that limits what anyone else can do. And that was the crux of our problem last night. Having said that, a lot of the issues were coming from blitzes where, reminiscent of the GDL era, the problem was less the physical inability to make a block and more players not understanding whom they were supposed to block. Other than the one brain fart you can't blame the QB for anything last night, because he was constantly under pressure, but far too many Shirreffs carries versus either getting the ball out quickly or just handing it off to our TBs. Arkeel looked really, really good. It will be a shame if we can't put a competent OL together before he is out of eligibility. Thomas didn't make two catches that were there for him, including the long one early that could have changed the flow of the game. When our OL gives BEals or Noel or Arkeel a chance, they have to make the play. I think people here overrate our TEs somewhat, but we still have to use them. The good news is we probably don't see a defense again this year on the level of Mizzou's and BYU's, so hopefully even with our limitations it can now start producing better results. The bottome line is we start 1 senior, 3 juniors and 7 sophomores. They will get better over time. But no one can answer how fast and how much.
Real solid effort by all three kickers last night, and really solid effort by both punt and kickoff coverage units as well. On the onside kick, McAllister needs to take out the Cougar who moved to the ball. He wasn't going to be able to turn and get it, but he needed to think about keeping his opponent from getting it. I've given up on having anything good to see about our return units this year, but good for Nick Vitale for earning the job fair catching punts.
Unlike others, I thought the D played really well last night until the last few minutes. Yes, we gave up a boatload of yards, but that's not the name of the game. We totally shut down their running game for 3 quarters, before tiring. And, while we gave up passing yards, we kept everything in front of us and, for the most part, did a solid job limiting yards after catch. Our problem actually stopping (as opposed to containing) a good passing team is our lack of a pash rush. We had solid push up the middle all game from our bigs, but the moment their QB leaves the pocket he has all day to throw because we don't have anyone who can catch him once he's moving outside with any speed at all. That is our limitation for now. Myers, Adeyami, Fatukasi and CAmpenni (who did really well between them) aren't going to get faster, Stewart is never going to be a great blitzer and CArezzola has disappeared since we upped the level of our competition.
So, what does that tell us? That the fact that we started 2-0 meant to much to people (it meant we were better than the last two years, but that's not saying much), and the fact that we've lost three games to teams better than us -- one of which we were in for 60 minutes and one of which we were in for 50 minutes -- doesn't tell us we aren't much better than the last two years (although it does tell us we aren't back to the Edsall years either). The next two games will tell us a lot more about where we are, and how much improvement at winning games there will be last year to this. Win them both and we are clearly in the right direction and will just need one upset to sneak to .500, which, for me, would be very unexpected. Split them and we're most likely not bowling, but still looking to show with one or two more wins and not being destroyed in losses that we are clearly moving forward. Lose them both, and then Palatine can push to have Coach P back. So the predestined part of the season is over. Now we start playing teams that we'll beat or lose to on the field because our programs are or are not doing better than their peers. The jury is out.
Before offense, defense and specials, a word about coaching. The TD play, once again, showed that the staff game after game can come up with a play that can hit for us without any individual having to make an outstanding play. But the inability to get out of the huddle on a timely basis repeatedly, which was not a problem earlier in the year, was exremely disappointing.
On offense what we saw, as we saw in Missouri, is that our OL is just overwhelmed playing BCS bowl team level competition and that limits what anyone else can do. And that was the crux of our problem last night. Having said that, a lot of the issues were coming from blitzes where, reminiscent of the GDL era, the problem was less the physical inability to make a block and more players not understanding whom they were supposed to block. Other than the one brain fart you can't blame the QB for anything last night, because he was constantly under pressure, but far too many Shirreffs carries versus either getting the ball out quickly or just handing it off to our TBs. Arkeel looked really, really good. It will be a shame if we can't put a competent OL together before he is out of eligibility. Thomas didn't make two catches that were there for him, including the long one early that could have changed the flow of the game. When our OL gives BEals or Noel or Arkeel a chance, they have to make the play. I think people here overrate our TEs somewhat, but we still have to use them. The good news is we probably don't see a defense again this year on the level of Mizzou's and BYU's, so hopefully even with our limitations it can now start producing better results. The bottome line is we start 1 senior, 3 juniors and 7 sophomores. They will get better over time. But no one can answer how fast and how much.
Real solid effort by all three kickers last night, and really solid effort by both punt and kickoff coverage units as well. On the onside kick, McAllister needs to take out the Cougar who moved to the ball. He wasn't going to be able to turn and get it, but he needed to think about keeping his opponent from getting it. I've given up on having anything good to see about our return units this year, but good for Nick Vitale for earning the job fair catching punts.
Unlike others, I thought the D played really well last night until the last few minutes. Yes, we gave up a boatload of yards, but that's not the name of the game. We totally shut down their running game for 3 quarters, before tiring. And, while we gave up passing yards, we kept everything in front of us and, for the most part, did a solid job limiting yards after catch. Our problem actually stopping (as opposed to containing) a good passing team is our lack of a pash rush. We had solid push up the middle all game from our bigs, but the moment their QB leaves the pocket he has all day to throw because we don't have anyone who can catch him once he's moving outside with any speed at all. That is our limitation for now. Myers, Adeyami, Fatukasi and CAmpenni (who did really well between them) aren't going to get faster, Stewart is never going to be a great blitzer and CArezzola has disappeared since we upped the level of our competition.
So, what does that tell us? That the fact that we started 2-0 meant to much to people (it meant we were better than the last two years, but that's not saying much), and the fact that we've lost three games to teams better than us -- one of which we were in for 60 minutes and one of which we were in for 50 minutes -- doesn't tell us we aren't much better than the last two years (although it does tell us we aren't back to the Edsall years either). The next two games will tell us a lot more about where we are, and how much improvement at winning games there will be last year to this. Win them both and we are clearly in the right direction and will just need one upset to sneak to .500, which, for me, would be very unexpected. Split them and we're most likely not bowling, but still looking to show with one or two more wins and not being destroyed in losses that we are clearly moving forward. Lose them both, and then Palatine can push to have Coach P back. So the predestined part of the season is over. Now we start playing teams that we'll beat or lose to on the field because our programs are or are not doing better than their peers. The jury is out.
