"Edsall left the cupboard bare"

[Husky68]

Imagine swinging your golf club. Perfect swing. Perfect sound, ball lands right where you want it.

Now turn around, grab a club made for the other side, and swing the club from the other side and try to hit the ball.

Two seasons ago, we started developing OL's that can swing from both sides. We weren't doing that before, we had perfect swings from one side only, which is why of all the players we've put into the NFL in the past several seasons, our OL's have struggled the most, and the two that still are in the league, are there becuase they hung on long enough (DT) to be able to develop swings from both sides, once they got into he league OR: our former coach convinced the NFL head coach that other would be able to develop and was worth the high round pick. (WB)

It's fine in practice though, and it's fantastic for the pro scouts, but they don' have anymore leeway on the game fields anymore, it's got to click on the field this year.

And, BTW a 7 step drop, is textbook for setting up a pass protection pocket.

How is the Chesire Cat doing in the world that you, PP and GDL live in?

 

[huskymedic]

Wasn't Hurd drafted by the Seahawks? I thought he was 6th or 7th rounder for them.

Undrafted FA in 2011.

 

[huskymedic]

Two seasons ago, we started developing OL's that can swing from both sides.

I always knew that was the problem...

 

[noeynox]

Undrafted FA in 2011.

Thanks. I do remember now that he didn't participate at the combine and stuff.

 

[EdgewoodNHV]

WAnd the FG's still piss me off. Chad clearly struggles from the extreme outside hashmarks, you get a bit inside and he was pretty good. Since they were playing for the FG anyway, why wouldn't you center the ball for him? Do it just once and we win. We need a coach that isn't to old to be aware of what's happening on the field.

The important part is that you managed to find a way to blame the coach for missing a <30 yard FG.

 

[CTMike]

What's so hard to see that the combination of uninspired play calling AS WELL AS the lack of talent on O is the reason we've fallen off the last two years?? P and GDL rightfully should be called out for the coaching part, and people should rightfully wonder WTF Edsall was doing on the recruiting trail his last 2 years. Don't understand these threads where people insist it was one or the other. It was both. The D, while not perfect, generally lacked those problems.

 

[UConnDan97]

What's so hard to see that the combination of uninspired play calling AS WELL AS the lack of talent on O is the reason we've fallen off the last two years?? Don't understand these threads where people insist it was one or the other. It was both. The D, while not perfect, generally lacked those problems.

If you are going to continue with balanced and logical assessments on the Boneyard, I fear you won't survive here very long...

 

[Srqhusky]

I don't know what condition the cupboard was in two years ago but I like the way it's getting stocked now

 

[Palatine]

Not a QB - like having no pitching and losing every game 11-10.

It isn't the QB's fault we gave up a 90-yard drive to Temple in the last two minutes.

Our QB last year finished in the middle of the Big East in QBR.

The whole team under performed. The defense too. They played under there abilities. They came up short when the game was on the line. They were sucked in on numerous trick plays.

 

[upstater]

What good would it have done to drop 3 steps or step up in the pocket, 9 times out of ten there was no outlet for him to go to anyway, go deep or go home seemed to be the play most of the time. which goes back to the play calling / play making creativity on the wallpaper. lets hope that has changed, the players I talked to had nothing but positives to say about TJW and what is coming.

This is what I'm talking about though. I'm saying the OL was put into a position to fail by the coaches.

 

[upstater]

It isn't the QB's fault we gave up a 90-yard drive to Temple in the last two minutes.

Our QB last year finished in the middle of the Big East in QBR.

The whole team under performed. The defense too. They played under there abilities. They came up short when the game was on the line. They were sucked in on numerous trick plays.

A defense without an offense is going to eventually break down, especially late in the game. 3 and outs are poison to even the best defenses.

 

[ruskin]

This is what I'm talking about though. I'm saying the OL was put into a position to fail by the coaches.

Plus-1000000. Not very easy to block in a system where the other team has a pretty good idea what's coming, unless you're Art Shell against the Vikings. And those players are pretty rare, even at Alabama

 

[MilliniumPrince]

It isn't the QB's fault we gave up a 90-yard drive to Temple in the last two minutes.

Our QB last year finished in the middle of the Big East in QBR.

The whole team under performed. The defense too. They played under there abilities. They came up short when the game was on the line. They were sucked in on numerous trick plays.

Defense played a very good game, got no support from the offense, and ran out of gas at the end....and you call that under performing. Any one of multiple missed field goals or even one less three-and-out and we win that game. That loss was not on the Defense

 

[SubbaBub]

To the current apologists, yes, we were far from being loaded in terms of talent at offensive skill positions and our offensive line production fell off greatly from prior seasons (although I personally believe that this was solely due to change in philosophy, not dropoff in talent).

That said, those who believes that we did not have sufficient overall talent to win at least eight (pre bowl) games against the competition that we faced each of the past two seasons are kidding themselves. Anyone willing to state that Pasqualoni "inherited a trainwreck" is kidding himself.

P reliance on a walk-on QB was not the reason for the 5-win season in 2011. Proof: In 2012, we had didn't have a walk on QB and still only won 5 games. The coaching staff blew 3-4 wins (Vandy, ISU and WMU are indisputable.)

In 2012, the Oline play was atrocious. But yet again, the coaching staff blew 3-4 wins (NCST, WMU, Temple, and USF, take your pick.) The inablility to run the run ball after years of being able to run the ball can not be explained simply by the personnel. Proof: Most of the players saw the field the previous year, including the 1000 yd RB. The line was noticably underweight compared to previous years and anyone who watched knows we abandoned the smash mouth blocking scheme that was so successful. That is on the coaches.

Did Edsall's recruiting slide in his last year, probably. I bet he thought 2009 would have been his last year here. The whole point of bringing in a 60+ year old coach was to prevent a crash following the BCS season. How was the play Mrs. Lincoln? The other reason was an upgrade in recruiting. (I am not a buyer of the CT HS coaches angle as anything but frosting.) This year we will see how good a recruiter he's been because it isn't getting better as a member of the AAC.

Beating UM, MD at home and competing for the AAC title would be enough to flip my opinion. Beating Michigan isn't required but it would sure undo a lot of damage. Losing to both and going 5-4/4-4 in the AAC isn't enough to bring him back unless it is plainly obvious this team is close. Even then I'd still be looking at available upgrades.

FCF's post is the hard truth and there isn't anything else to say on this subject.

 

[huskymedic]

... and there isn't anything else to say on this subject.

Then why do people keep creating these threads...?? It's deja vu all over again. It's the same people with the same arguments on both sides - nothing new other than someone looking for attention.

 

[Jimmy Serrano]

What's so hard to see that the combination of uninspired play calling AS WELL AS the lack of talent on O is the reason we've fallen off the last two years?? P and GDL rightfully should be called out for the coaching part, and people should rightfully wonder WTF Edsall was doing on the recruiting trail his last 2 years. Don't understand these threads where people insist it was one or the other. It was both. The D, while not perfect, generally lacked those problems.

We have a winner.

 

[FAIRTIDES]

Past it's expiration date.

PP or the"post?"

 

[Waquoit]

PP or the"post?"

The vanilla

 

[Carl Spackler]

On my kids lives.......I swear the first thought I had after reading Cohen's post was......only Spackler is arrogant enough to answer that directly.

Just busting your balls Carl. Well not really, cause I really did think that but.....you know what I mean.

Only trying to help, take what I write for whatever you think it's worth.

As for former OL's that saw time in front of NFL people...off the top of my head since Edsall - Ryan Krug, Keith Gray, Zach Hurd, Mike Hicks, Mike Ryan would have been invited if not for the car wreck, Beatty, Thomas. Every single one of them generated the same kind of responses. Needs work. All for the same reasons. Believe me or not, I don't care. Tavarr Closs was in the Chiefs camp in 1998 I think, and released, but he was a Skip Holtz product and was a great OL, but had off field discipline issues if I'm not mistaken.

 

[TouchdownHusky]

No one ever said Edsall couldn't spot "athletes". He did well in finding guys who could run and where aggressive. He best areas with respect to recruiting where on defense and the OL. Where is was terrible was landing QB's & WR's . . . at least the ones who went to other BCS schools and starred. He couldn't land the blue chippers on offense (the ones with the most high school attention). These players went to Top 25 schools and UConn had to make due.

 

[Carl Spackler]

This is what I'm talking about though. I'm saying the OL was put into a position to fail by the coaches.

Fair enough. I think there was calculated risk to fundamentally change the offensive concepts in this program, so that we can recruit effectively on the offensive side of the ball in the future, and in many ways it's worked, except the most important one, because the team is 10-14. We've got win more than we lose this year.

But to me, with what's happened with the conferences, our ability to recruit in the future at the level we want to be at is going to very much related to our ability to produce NFL calibre players out of college regularly across the board, we are frigging lucky to have hired a guy like P - when it comes to recruiting. I'm on record with the other things I don't like about the guy.

Ryan Wirth is going to the Ravens camp BTW. We're going to have a lot of players going to the NFL camps regularly into the future, and the OL's should start joining the group again, and hopefully this time, hanging around a lot longer.

 

[freescooter]

A defense without an offense is going to eventually break down, especially late in the game. 3 and outs are poison to even the best defenses.

That is partly correct. But our defense wasn't outstanding despite the numbers. There are other numbers that don't make the big picture. Red zone defense was not good. We were tied for 108th. Turnovers were virtually non-existent. When the offense is struggling, a pick-6 or a fumble recovery on the other team's 20 can do wonders. We were near the bottom in terms of fumble recoveries with 6 and pass interceptions, also 6. So that Defense had some warts.

 

[Carl Spackler]

No one ever said Edsall couldn't spot "athletes". He did well in finding guys who could run and where aggressive. He best areas with respect to recruiting where on defense and the OL. Where is was terrible was landing QB's & WR's . . . at least the ones who went to other BCS schools and starred. He couldn't land the blue chippers on offense (the ones with the most high school attention). These players went to Top 25 schools and UConn had to make due.

My contention is that the difficulty in recruiting QB's and WR's was a product of a calculated risk taken by Edsall on developing a competitive program from the get go in 2004 in a BCS AQ conference. BY 2009, one full reruiting cycle, we had a massive road grader OL that averaged something like 6'4" and 320 across the board, but they were all one-dimensional when it comes to playing OL, and by that I don't - DO NOT - mean that the only run blocked. THe best example I can come up with that's not technical is the golf swing one I already gave, and we had no passing game to speak of on top of it. We played great D and Special teams, and we won enough to be a top 25-50 program in the country.

The goal has to be much higher than that. I want top 10, top 5, #1.

 

[Carl Spackler]

That is partly correct. But our defense wasn't outstanding despite the numbers. There are other numbers that don't make the big picture. Red zone defense was not good. We were tied for 108th. Turnovers were virtually non-existent. When the offense is struggling, a pick-6 or a fumble recovery on the other team's 20 can do wonders. We were near the bottom in terms of fumble recoveries with 6 and pass interceptions, also 6. So that Defense had some warts.

If you continually rely on your defense to secure a lead to win games, you are going to lose many of them. Possession of the ball, with the lead on the scoreboard, is how games are won.

 

[cohenzone]

While thinking you are supporting P, you gave two examples of his buffoonery. The D was clearly in disarray before they gave up two long gains late. My mother saw it, but P didn't? He couldn't call a timeout? They weren't worth anything after the game is over. And the FG's still piss me off. Chad clearly struggles from the extreme outside hashmarks, you get a bit inside and he was pretty good. Since they were playing for the FG anyway, why wouldn't you center the ball for him? Do it just once and we win. We need a coach that isn't to old to be aware of what's happening on the field.

And because we should never forget this - a coach with any awareness or sense of the game real-time doesn't put his only QB into the game at WR (just 1 play after a hard hit) so he can get blasted again with no protection.

Who said I was supporting PP? You missed the point totally. Just like Serrano who is such a savant that he's coached 10 Super Bowl champions. What the heck was arrogant about my post? The point was, and you can ascribe the problem however you want, that the difference in the records between our past teams and the PP teams is not particularly extreme. I named 2 games. and feel free to lay them all at the feet of PP if you want, where in one the D was in"disarray", not Brown's fault, right, just PP? And in the other a very reliable kicker sucked in a game we lose in OT. Should any of those fg attempts not have been tried? Even if the O performs better, which you can argue would have avoided the need for all of those attempts, all I was saying is the record is not all ascribable to this or that and the record was only marginally worse than in past years.

And the cupboard on O was bare in key positions. I don't recall who made what comments, but there have been countless comments about how many drops the receivers have had. My big problem was the same as everyone else's. The O was totally predictable, they used the wildcat when they shouldn't have, and the worst constant bad use of personnel was not making RG a much bigger part of the attack. As for talent recognition, RE totally failed to see Easley's talent for the longest time, and PP used NW in ways most people here had pleaded for in RE's last year. That does not mean I liked the offense. I pay a lot of money for my seats and if you think I love calling the plays ahead of time because I know what's coming, ah, no. But I'm also not a fair weather fan. I'm not quitting my tickets, as a bunch of people here threatened last year. It's my university and I support them. Hiring and firing coaches is somebody else's job, so I just go to the games and share thoughts occasionally on performance on this board.