re: Rewatch the game........

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But what amazes me is how someone could feel good about allowing a depleted team to rack up those kinds of offensive numbers on you, and nearly blow a 20 point 4th quarter lead.

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It happens with young teams, and yes, this team is young. If you don't believe that, you haven't watched football for very long. Take a look at the number of subs that played throughout the 2nd half. Once UNC gained momentum, LSU had a very tough time regaining it, but finally did with the blitz and fumble recovery at the end. That should have iced the game, but Ridley's fumble gave UNC life again.

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Anyone who says JJ hasn't improved isn't worth talking to. They have their minds made up. He played well. Does still hold the ball in certain situations though. But overall, got the ball out MUCH quicker than last year. Also, he is keeping the ball on options this year, whereas he ALWAYS pitched it last year and didn't even really try to fool anyone into thinking he'd run. They obviously drilled keeping the ball into his head this summer, so he has to learn to balance the pitch vs. the keep. The only REALLY two bad plays were the pick at the end of the half, and the intentional grounding. He held it too long on both of those and panicked. Other than that though, he was much more decisive and got the ball out. Still locks on to receivers though too a good part of the time. Needs work there, but honestly, the first read was usually open, shown by his great comp. % in the first half. So, it's tough to knock that too much.

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You can't say positive things about Jordan on this board. It isn't allowed.

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I didn't say it was impossible for anyone to feel this way.

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But I did rewatch it, and how anyone could feel good about what happened is amazing to me

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Anyway, I here what you're saying about almost blowing the lead. After our opening drive of the 2nd half, which ended with a fumble in the red zone, we wasted 2 drives, although we did try to go deep to Toliver so we weren't just being conservative, which let them hang around the whole third quarter, even though our D kept them shut out of the end zone.

But in the 4th quarter, we put together our best drive of the game and drove down and should have scored to go up by 27. Bad calls happen I know, but we didn't "lay down". We had a scoring drive taken away.

Then, with less than 11 minutes to go, up 3 TDs, UNC makes a great call against a young secondary and scorches us for a 97 yard TD. Now it's 30-17.

The next drive was killer, and Randle running a 3 yard route on 3rd and 10 is HORRIBLE, and was the worst play call the whole game.

Then the Heels take the momentum and drive down and score. 30-24. We don't get the ball back because of the BS onsides no call. But our D holds, they don't lay down. We have a huge sack and fumble on 4th down to end the game.

Then we get what should have been a 1st to ice the game, and Ridley fumbles again.

Again, THE D HOLDS. Despite the chaos of the last 10 minutes, they rise up and come up with a goal line stand to win. THEY DON'T LAY DOWN.

That team never quit. Things just spiraled out of control. I know how frustrating that can be, but it happens.

Ok . I rewatched it twice.
First, I really can't find any legitimately valid reasons to complain about Crowton's play selection or JJ's performance. through the T-Bob holding penalty around the 11:00 minute mark of the 4th quarter. This would have made it 37-10 and we start the bus. It looked like T-Bob flattened him, but it also looked like T'Bobs left hand may have grabbed the DL's jersey.

In fact, Crowton had a really nice mix going,and kept UNC off banance, but drives ended on turnovers. This surprised me on second viewing.

The OL was FAR from bad. Hurst was far from bad. T_bob was far from bad. They had pretty good push throughout.

The DL was solid. Nevis brought it hard. Brockers is such a natural.

The LB's didn't impress me as much, Kelvin excepted.

Jai eugene played pretty well in my estimation throughout. taylor was wildly inconsistent and out of position.the 97 yarder was a shocker, you don't see the rollout in that spot much and I think once Claiborne bit it was over. I can forgive that mistake because if they would have played a soft prevent I would have bitched about that too.

I agree with your JJ comments but J. Lee HAS to get a series or two. JJ loked a lot looser and the read option was a giant improvement, and when he blew it and made the wrong call the recognition of his mistake was clearly obvious to him. So he KNOWS what he's doing now, much more in command.

Stampley is NOT horrible, he just came in high too much. He needs to lower his head and drive with his legs and not his shoulders.

The Crowton bitchfest is mistaken imho upon further review. The flow, or lack thereof was due to turnovers.

The last 11:00 of the game are unwatchable and Chavis needs to tighten that up. Period. That was a MELTDOWN and we are lucky we held on.

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Stampley is NOT horrible, he just came in high too much. He needs to lower his head and drive with his legs and not his shoulders.

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Fair enough. I'm actually going to change that in the original post. I actually hate people who make comments about the players like that.

I will say he looks like, in addition to coming in high like you point out, he is out of position and not picking up the right person at times as well. I think he has a long way to go, and was one of the only players that looks like he HASN'T improved since last year. That's why I was so frustrated with him.

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taylor was wildly inconsistent and out of position.the 97 yarder was a shocker, you don't see the rollout in that spot much and I think once Claiborne bit it was over. I can forgive that mistake because if they would have played a soft prevent I would have bitched about that too.

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Agreed. I really think that was a fantastic play call by the UNC OC. Very rare to see that play called on 1st down from the 3 yard line. Unfortunately, Chavis said he was trying to get young guys PT at that point. Had Jai been in there instead of Simon, on his first play of the game no less, he might have been able to get over to stop that.

But Taylor biting so hard on that play action was inexcusable. Even moreso than Claiborne biting on the double move IMO.

I did notice the safeties lining up to far back. Especially on the 4th down conversion.

i still believe Crowton has no idea how to prepare a game plan for the type of talent he has.

Chavis Defense still gives up chunks of yards and cannot stop anyone on 3rd downs. how many times are you gonna allow a WR a free release of the LOS with a 10 yard cushion before you play bump and run? isn't that a strength of our CBs?

JJ is terrible!!! yes he completed 70% of his passes, but 14 completeions for only 100 yards (took out the one bomb for 51) is not going to cut it in the SEC. he still locks onto WR, holds on to the ball to long and looks to run after first read is covered. if Miles continues to let him play he'll be riding that caravan with him out of town.

let's face it this team has about 5 really good individual players (R.Shepard, Peterson, Randle, K. Sheppard, Tolliver) who will make a few plays a game to keep this team in some games. but until competent coaches get and in here and figure out how to use the talent in the program the correct way. LSU will always underachieve

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The offensive staff has clearly made improvements in everything from gameplan, to personnel use,

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I can't disagree too much with the rest of your post, but this I do. Any time you have the same RB fumble twice in one game, unless he's Darren McFadden or something, it's not good personnel use. There used to be a time when LSU running backs just flat did not fumble. If one did, he got a long time on the bench (more than 1 game) to figure out that it's not acceptable to fumble. Ridley should ride the bench until he figures that out.

The emotion of the game can cause carziness, me included. Plan to rewatch game today and hopefully draw more reasonable conclusions. While riding the MARTA back to hotel, initial reaction was to fire multiple coaches and bench many on team. Hope to have a different view after ready this post and re-watching game. Geaux Tigers!