You're WAAAAAAAAAY off base:

25%: O-line. We're young, small, and thin. We are literally 2 injuries away from starting true freshmen walk-ons. Let that sink in. Mississippi State was deeper, more experienced, and bigger. They struggled in pass protection, causing Etling to hurry and miss some obvious reads.

35%: D-line: Once again, we're young, thin, and beaten to hell. Key was still coming back from injury and we lose another player to a targeting penalty. Our young thin line managed to hold up last year due to miraculous luck with the injury bug and outstanding back 7 play. Their O-line was bigger, deeper, and more experienced than our d-line, and once we lost too many players, we didn't have the depth to hold up mid-late game. Once our guys were winded, there was no relief and they couldn't get off the field.

20% WR's: Once again, we're young and inexperienced at WR, but that is no excuse for the number of drops we saw. I counted no fewer than 6 drops that would have resulted in points or first downs that instead killed drives. Etling put the ball where they could make the play, the play calling had them open, and they simply didn't execute. This is inexcusable and MUST be addressed.

20% Coach O: His players played without discipline, racking up nearly a dozen bonehead penalties, getting frustrated, and then, the most inexcusable thing possible happened to this team in the 3rd quarter: they gave up. That is 100% on the Coach. Coach O cannot give up nor can he allow his team to give up. Once of the great hallmarks of Miles's teams was that they fought and scrapped right up until the final possession (unless the other team had the ball, in which Chief would make sure they'd score). Issues of lack of depth and inexperience can be solved with time and recruiting, but issues of lack of focus and determination must be solved IMMEDIATELY or else they will snowball.

We knew coming into this season that our biggest issues would be depth on the lines and inexperience at WR. Pre-season injuries greatly exasperated the line issues. We are seeing the consequences of years of early departures and high ranked recruiting classes with out of whack priorities.

This post was edited on 9/17/17 at 11:01 pm

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Posted by keepitrealgoeswrong

Member since Sep 2017

25 posts

Posted on 9/17/17 at 11:04 pm to kingbob

By blaming the players more than the coaches you proved my point. Fitzgerald was quoted as saying something to the effect of when he ran he always had multiple blockers in front of him. Now tell me how often did we have varied blocking schemes? For example how often would 2 OL pull to the open side of the field blocking for Guice? I know that MSU did that all game because they as coaches are smart enough they couldn't beat up employing our style of coaching/playing of let's see who's stronger in the trenches. Our coaches have to do more to put our players in positions to win. You can't keep asking Guice to run up the middle with 8 or 9 in the box. You can't keep asking Chark to run fly routes double covered with Etling throwing him the ball. And you can't keep asking our OL and DL to be predict up front.

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Posted by semjase

New Smyrna Beach FL

Member since May 2014

11066 posts

Posted on 9/18/17 at 3:31 am to kingbob

quote:
WR's: Once again, we're young and inexperienced at WR, but that is no excuse for the number of drops we saw. I counted no fewer than 6 drops that would have resulted in points or first downs that instead killed drives.

Right after O hired Dameyune Craig 2.0 to coach WR's, I said to watch out for continued WR drops because Joseph is a Recruiter, not a technical WR Coach that can coach up his position athletes.

He doesn't know the finer points of catching a football and running great routes because he's never done it before.