Improvements to take the next step

[CTMike]

Well its interesting you feel that way but Stairmaster's comment is probably the most inaccurate I've seen on this board. No one roots harder for the front of the jersey than I do. Period, end of discussion.

 

[weyuo]

I don't want our DE's to gain any weight in the offseason, I want them to get quicker. Carrezola is heavy enough. When the QB breaks out of the pocket we need to have some ability to put pressure on and catch him. That was a glaring deficiency yesterday. The same for our O-line. Our guards need to be quick enough to not get beat as often, get to the spot to get leverage, maybe pull to block and block downfield. We need less brontosauruses and more lions at every position. We also need another running back. A quarterback who can make quick reads, and is confident enough in his ability to fire the ball in there is mandatory or we will be lucky to make a Bowl.

agree 100%. Less dinosaurs and more lions!

 

[Nostical]

I'd say that any of the hardcore season ticket holders that spend there time on here root just as hard if not harder.

I'll accept that you root just as hard for the front of the jersey as I do. But not harder.

 

[FDNY99]

I'll accept that you root just as hard for the front of the jersey as I do. But not harder.

Fair assessment...I think that applies to anyone else on here as well.

 

[ktuck911]

If anything on defense we need, it's an edge rusher.. That bend but don't break defense we run, with lack of a consistent offense, is gonna keep us at a .500 winning percentage at best, in our conference alone...

 

[Chin Diesel]

Another angle to remember with the bend but don't break philosophy.

Soft defense is less stressful on the defenders and allows them to play more plays. An aggressive defense requires more rotation of defenders and that requires depth.

Think of a parrallel of playing zone defense in basketball vice man to man.

Tying this all together, the lack of good offensive line play means few drives that suck up clock time, means defense has to be on the field for more plays, means a team needs lots of depth on defense or conserve energy on defense.

You can't decide to play an aggressive attacking defense in a vacuum. It has to be complemented by the other parts of the team. There is no free money.

 

[ktuck911]

Another angle to remember with the bend but don't break philosophy.

Soft defense is less stressful on the defenders and allows them to play more plays. An aggressive defense requires more rotation of defenders and that requires depth.

Think of a parrallel of playing zone defense in basketball vice man to man.

Tying this all together, the lack of good offensive line play means few drives that suck up clock time, means defense has to be on the field for more plays, means a team needs lots of depth on defense or conserve energy on defense.

You can't decide to play an aggressive attacking defense in a vacuum. It has to be complemented by the other parts of the team. There is no free money.

good assessment... with pups like Freemon, Parker (hopefully he moves back to OLB/DE), Lawley, Atkins.. this should lighten the burden a bit on the edges one would think.. get these guys in a rotation, and hope they can all contribute and help keep our defense fresh... without a pass rush (along with the consistency of the offense) it's that much harder to win games.

 

[TouchdownHusky]

Lastly, coaching on offense. Im sick of the playingnot to lose type football. Thats an awful way to play FBS level football when you have to prove your worth. We cannot afford to play like that on offense. If we don't have the players to play BIGGER than we need to start working a little harder recruiting wise....or get coaches that can come in and make it happen. Even FCS level opponents defenses we played against kept at least 8 men in the box on us. Imo, embarrassing and unacceptable.

So true. UConn needs to get players and coaches that can play offense the way it's played everywhere else in college football.

 

[SubbaBub]

Coaching-Clock management clock management , clock management. We need to seriously open up an offense it seems every team in FBS even FCS has one except us.

Players
Oline, Oline, Oline its pretty sad that a defensive player (Graham Stewart) is the one who is the reason we scored our only TD today.

WR,TE- Need to make plays, its gotten better but guys other then Noel Thomas have to step up.

RB-Improve the depth chart

QB play- Sherrifs needs to develop a qb clock, be a better decision maker and work on his accuracy, he's one tough qb though. Our Qb depth needs to be addressed asap, I'm sorry but Boyle shouldn't be any higher then 3rd string on our depth chart.

Defense- We need to wrap up on tackles, lets be honest the turf tackled Davis on that one conversion near the end. The D still kept us in the game and gave us a chance.

Special Teams- God awful and thats being nice, too many 10-30 yard punts.

The to do list is still quite lengthy. The OL gets all the scorn, but the LB didn't pressure the QB at all which is why you run a 3-4 in the first place. They also need to cover better and get to the ball carrier quicker. They were markedly better at both this season, but like the team overall, it won't be good enough going forward. The WR/TE need to cut down on the drops. I have no idea where we are at RB given the linen issues. I think both main guys are slow for this level, but they don't need to be speedy if they can hit the hole.

I think Shirreffs holds on to the QB job. He needs to get over the shell shock and work on delivering the ball on time and on target. Tuck and run can't be the first option even if it was put best weapon. He took a number of sacks, pressures, when he didn't need to take them.

On D, the DL need to get a little more push up the middle. Too many runners were met after a 2-3 yard gain. I'd like to see more press coverage, but the results speak for themselves. Maybe just mix it in more liberally.

We will need something out of the return game. If not a home run threat than at least a solid possession catch guy that can get enough hidden yards to flip field position occasionally.

Overall, I think the team needs another off season in the weight room and the film room. The size is still their, need to add power and recognize the reads and keys a bit faster.

 

[EJHarrington]

I feel we have NFL talent at WR (Thomas), RB (Newsome), and possibly TE (Myers). I also like the way Beals looked when he was out there. We could use a tall WR to step up.

The obvious need is OL improvement. It was better this year but still not near close to being good enough. Until the OL improves, a QB like Shirriefs who has ability to make plays out of chaos in the pocket even though he has a below average arm is probably the best choice. Once the OL improves, we then need to find a gunslinger at QB.

We need a punt return game. Until we get the OL fixed we are going to have to play similar to how we did this year (i.e., conservative, close to the vest, keep games close). Having a punt return game could win us one-two games a year that we would otherwise lose.

Game management needs improvement. There were way too many times the plays did not come in fast enough from the sideline.

Overall, a positive year and step back to respectability. My expectations are sky high for next year because I believe Diaco will get the OL figured out.

 

[TouchdownHusky]

What I can't understand is why we cant find a QB? Hell there are better QBs playing 1AA. I mean since Dan O we haven't had a QB that could consistently hit the side of a barn from 20ft.

Been saying that for years. Got to find someone who can throw.

 

[cttxus]

So, I guess I was a little bored last night after all the holiday festivities had wound down, so I decided to pull some data together into a spreadsheet. Yup, I was really bored.

Anyway, I thought I'd see how the AP Top 25 ranked teams stacked up from a total defense and total offense standpoint using NCAA statistics from all CFB games played through 12/26/2015, to see if there were any correlations. BTW, there was little difference in the rankings between all the final polls.

My objective was to try and determine what it would take for our beloved Huskies to crack the Top 25. As of 12/26 UConn was ranked #35 in total defense and #123 in total offense out of 127 FBS teams.

Was this a scientifically sound study? No. And should our goal be to crack the AP Top 25? I'd argue it should be, along with winning the AAC east division and league championships. To support that claim, 3 other AAC teams were ranked in the AP Top 25 including Houston (14), Navy (21), and Temple (24), so those goals do compliment each other.

After all the analysis, here are my observations and conclusions:

1. Our ranking for total defense at #35 is better than 12 of the AP Top 25 teams. However, those 12 teams averaged 40 pts/game on offense, and none averaged under 31 pts/game. Conclusion: our defense is good enough to achieve the goals stated above.

2. The 13 teams ranked ahead of us in total defense also averaged 32 pts/game on offense. Of those 13 teams, only 3 teams averaged less than 30 pts/game (WI=27, FL=25, Northwestern=21), and those 3 teams had the #3, #6 and #11 ranked defenses, respectively. Conclusion: Even the top ranked teams on defense find a way to score roughly two touchdowns more/game than UConn. Again, we're good enough on defense already--we need to score a lot more points.

3. The 13 teams ranked ahead of us in total defense averaged 189 rushing yds and 222 passing yds/game on offense vs.our 125 yds rushing and 186 yds passing/game. They also averaged 10 yds/punt return vs our average of 0.4 yds, which was dead last in FBS.

In summary, all of the above analysis simply supports with facts what all of us have been saying here for a long time. We need a big improvement on offense to have any chance of taking this program to the next level. How we do that is for people with better football smarts than me to figure out. I just hope the coaching staff has significant improvements on offense as their #1 priority going into 2016.

 

[mauconnfan]

Been saying that for years. Got to find someone who can throw.

You have to love a QB who can keep drives going with his feet and Shireffs can do that. He's a tough tough kid and I give him a lot of kudos for that. But 17 pts a game ain't making it in today's college football offensive showdowns I'm afraid. You need a better line to run the ball with your backs and a kid who isn't afraid to hang in the pocket and has an arm to make plays - that's required in this day and age to make it to the big time. Sheriffs was the best they had, they need better though to be as goos as people around here would like.

 

[weyuo]

This years team was so young and only into year two of the Diaco regime/experience/experiment(call it what you will) that it's hard to judge whether the level of recruits that they are attracting can, by junior year compete on a top 25 level. I'm not talking about one or two making it to the next level(NFL), I'm talking about the bulk of the starters being able to compete with top 25 caliber opponents. I think the best recruiting Diaco did last winter was getting Balis. If they can improve the over all strength and speed of the team over the next 8 months that should go a ways towards fixing "most" of the problems on offense. I believe that if the defense could play from a position of having a decent lead for a change you'd see more blitzing and tighter coverage on receivers. This year it was bend but don't break by necessity because there was no room for error. Lets see just how improved this team is come next September. If the O-line is still the Achilles heel next season then something in the coaching staff has to change.

 

[Scoe]

Coaching-Clock management clock management , clock management. We need to seriously open up an offense it seems every team in FBS even FCS has one except us.

Players
Oline, Oline, Oline its pretty sad that a defensive player (Graham Stewart) is the one who is the reason we scored our only TD today.

WR,TE- Need to make plays, its gotten better but guys other then Noel Thomas have to step up.

RB-Improve the depth chart

QB play- Sherrifs needs to develop a qb clock, be a better decision maker and work on his accuracy, he's one tough qb though. Our Qb depth needs to be addressed asap, I'm sorry but Boyle shouldn't be any higher then 3rd string on our depth chart.

Defense- We need to wrap up on tackles, lets be honest the turf tackled Davis on that one conversion near the end. The D still kept us in the game and gave us a chance.



Special Teams- God awful and thats being nice, too many 10-30 yard punts.

Time to revisit this thread, we've taken steps alright we fell all the way down the stair case, and stuck in a dark dungeon.