re: Game Day Pumping LSU

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this is what soured me. They were playing 2 safeties deep, giving us underneath passing routes all game. Nuss was 20-24 for almost 200 yards, and in rhythm. BK comes on at halftime and says he wanted to establish the run in the second half.

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I think he anticipated USC making adjustments on defense. He was right as they decided to take Lacy out and not let him beat us in the 2nd half. He knew we needed to run the ball to keep them honest—so we could keep the passing game going—and hopefully what we all considered the best unit on our team—the OL—would take over and we would pull away in the 4th quarter.

I think that would have worked except for 2 main things: 1) Nuss never ran the ball around the end to keep their edges honest on the zone read. Their edges crashed down on every play and it basically gave them an extra run defender in on every play. Whether that was Nuss not making the right reads or they weren’t really options and he was told to give it every time, Sloan should have noticed that from the booth and either told Nuss to start keeping it in when it was there or call 3 or 4 designed running plays for him. Just 3 or 4 yards on 3 or 4 plays would have been enough.

2) This is related to 1. We only threw 1 pass to Pimpton out of 12 personnel. They knew when he was in the game it was either going to be a run or he was just there to pass protect. He was only in there to block on every play but 1. And he’s not a good blocker at this point. So gain, the edge on his side just crashed down and either blew him up or blew by him on the way to the RB or Nuss which forced him to throw the ball away due to the pressure.

And not noticing this and adjusting, made it where we just ran fewer plays in the 2nd half. We didn’t run the ball more times in the 2nd half, we just ran fewer plays so the runs were a higher %.

A couple of other things too. Chris Hilton being out hurt worse than we thought it would. It moved Daniels outside and Anderson into the slot. Anderson played well, but he was wide open most of the time. From all reports in practice, Nuss and Daniels had a really good connection in camp. So I was perplexed why he wasn’t more involved. Apparently it was because he was running out of the slot most of the time. And if you saw any tape of the All-22, a few of Andersons catches could have gone for long TDs if he and Nuss had been more in sync and breaking his routes more vertical stead of horizontal when he had nobody behind him. Not blaming Anderson, just saying that Daniels probably turns those catches into much more yards because he and Nuss are more on the same page on those plays.

And finally, USC has a pretty good defense—they aren’t the same team as last year, they replaced 10 of 11 starters. And Lynn is a damn good DC and called a helluva game. Still could have—or should have won—but there are “reasons” we lost, not just “excuses.” And there is a difference.

But at the end of the day, most objective fans probably considered that much more of USC winning the game than us losing it. It sucks, but tip your cap, learn from it, get better, and move on. I mean, what’s the alternative?

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The question is what would daniels have done later? He sat the second half out against them last year....it appears.

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Huh? You think Jayden sat out the 2nd half of the FSU game last year?