Jacobs gets the message

[Bonehead]

Actually, that is just poor reading comprehension on your part, I never said anything remotely like what you posted.

Nope - reading comprehension is spot on - you may want to choose your words more carefully!
Go Chandler!

 

[HuskyHawk]

Even after a win against a good team we get this? It's pretty simple folks, we won the turnover battle without playing like a turtle on offense. Diaco has said it over and over, we have to eliminate the plays that cause losing. Go back a couple years, it's the same story. I was worried when I saw the fumbled snap and we once again spotted the opponent 7 points. But from that point on, it was UCF that made the mistakes, the plays that cause losing.

What I've seen is a team that early in the year, presented risk of disaster if they tried to do anything. The pinnacle was USF, where doing nothing was safer than doing anything remotely risky. They've evolved. The offense line is better, and the play calling and execution of the plays is allowing us to throw with low risk. Whitmer has learned to manage the game, and the designed runs for him have helped. I think we need to get our backs outside the tackles, but I suspect that may present too much risk still, we'll see if that comes next.

This isn't anything new to anyone. Manning threw for 400+ yards yesterday and lost, because his team made a handful of mistakes.

 

[Carl Spackler]

We talk a lot about the players improving and developing, we rarely talk about the coaching staff requiring that same learning curve. This coaching staff and especially Diaco have developed quite a bit since the start of the season. I know that posters ripped Diaco for his "evaluation" comments, but I think you can finally see a few things. Mike Cummings did a very good job getting the ball in the hands of our playmakers against UCF. He kept their D guessing. Started out peppering short middle and the sidelines in the passing game and later came back to the middle (McQuillan) for big plays in the second half. He found a way to get the ball in Foxx's hands and to use Foxx to make others more effective. It's tough calling plays when you're not comfortable with the limitations of your players (playmakers).
I know the Tulane game was rough, but one positive I took out of it was the lack of penalties - especially by the oline. My take was that the coaching staff started getting through to these kids - building the discipline and attention to detail. We still have a way to go, but the progress is evident.

Agreed, but let's not go anointing anyone king yet. Tulane and USF were most definitely winnable games, that were lost, IMNSHO on coaching. Temple, BYU, Boise - lost those with play on the field - and ECU, we didn't make enough plays down the stretch on offense again, and left the defense to try to win it. The elements and weather were the primary factor we won on Saturday, the reason for generating turnovers, etc. etc. Because the game was still a one possession game late with the D on the field, and there were suspect things happening again. I don't want to soil a great feeling, of winning - so no need to bring specifics of it up. Safe to say, what've I've said is enough, and the coaches and players I'm sure have looked at the film in detail.

Let's see what happens this week against Army at Yankee Stadium. It's goign to be a completely different environment, and potentially distracting for the players. They'll be in MLB baseball locker rooms? Playign in Yankee Stadium? How cool is that - I'm totally psyched for them all.

BUT - If the kind of coaching improvement and discipline that you're talking about is really happening, we should win this game handily, we will not let winnign a single game, the way we did, inflate any egos.

Army's greatest strength as a football team, is that they will be disciplined and coached to play a certain way - option football on offense, and solid hard nose gap control on defense. Their team consists mostly of guys that were all high school valedictorians,high school football captains, community leaders, etc. ..but not the kind of physical specimen of athlete that is going to be overly dominant. They will win, if they win, with discipline and assignment perfect play, with less mistakes than we make. They are the kind of individuals off the field, that Bob Diaco wants to recruit and produce at UCONN with his individual player development program.......Army recruiting is not the same as Navy recruiting in recent years - Navy will be a much more physical than mental test in the future.

I don't believe for a second that we don't have the talent to win this game handily, but we will need to be more assignment disciplined and better game planned and mentally prepared than any other game so far this season.

Can't wait. Been looking forward to this one for a long time, had hoped we'd be in a better position going in than 2-6, but whatever, at this point, there is nothing to do, but consider 1 game at a time anyway.

 

[Husky25]

If we don't have any talent, explain the last two weeks.

There is more to college football team than talent. Players are developing. From the looks of it, Development was not a high priority in past years. This isn't a PlayStation game and real life does not occur in a vacuum with a reset button.

 

[gioff23]

JJ is a blowhard. WTF? EVERY team playing FBS has talent - to suggest otherwise, is to have awoken yesterday to understand that simple fact. Winning sports, any sport, is so much more than talent. If talent were the driver to Ws and Ls, Michigan would be 7-1, Florida would be in the Top 10, USC and UCLA would dominate and Mack Brown would be coaching at UT as they drove for a 5th NC. Can someone take away his typewriter, please. He and Dez and the rest on their "sports" team are the reason i stopped paying for the HC.

 

[DoctorWho85]

JJ is a blowhard. WTF? EVERY team playing FBS has talent - to suggest otherwise, is to have awoken yesterday to understand that simple fact. Winning sports, any sport, is so much more than talent. If talent were the driver to Ws and Ls, Michigan would be 7-1, Florida would be in the Top 10, USC and UCLA would dominate and Mack Brown would be coaching at UT as they drove for a 5th NC. Can someone take away his typewriter, please. He and Dez and the rest on their "sports" team are the reason i stopped paying for the HC.

Watch out JJ might call you out on public access TV.

 

[Palatine]

Nope - reading comprehension is spot on - you may want to choose your words more carefully!
Go Chandler!

Nope, you completely missed the point and are now doubling down. I said nothing like what you PRETENDED I wrote. You built a straw man and knocked it down. Good job.

 

[Bonehead]

Nope, you completely missed the point and are now doubling down. I said nothing like what you PRETENDED I wrote. You built a straw man and knocked it down. Good job.

Wow - I didnt know you knew how to give a compliment - touche!!
And you didnt make a point...

 

[gioff23]

And here's Des and his expert analysis. Right up there with JJ's, see we do have talent analysis.

Line: The protection held up very well, and when it does, UConn looks like a different team. Chandler Whitmer was sacked twice Saturday. Deshon Foxx broke through for 102 yards on 11 carries. B-plus

Running back: Subtracting Foxx's numbers — and Whitmer's 20 — UConn had 57 yards on the ground from the backs. That has to improve. In the Northeast, for any successful team it is a must, especially around this time of year. C

Hmm, so the OL was the strength and the RBs were the weakness. Well, um, uh, ..... I guess the young pups missed the gaping holes the OL was creating.

 

[Husky25]

And here's Des and his expert analysis. Right up there with JJ's, see we do have talent analysis.

Line: The protection held up very well, and when it does, UConn looks like a different team. Chandler Whitmer was sacked twice Saturday. Deshon Foxx broke through for 102 yards on 11 carries. B-plus

Running back: Subtracting Foxx's numbers — and Whitmer's 20 — UConn had 57 yards on the ground from the backs. That has to improve. In the Northeast, for any successful team it is a must, especially around this time of year. C

Hmm, so the OL was the strength and the RBs were the weakness. Well, um, uh, ..... I guess the young pups missed the gaping holes the OL was creating.

What you didn't read was this: "Take away those four interceptions, and the UConn defense was awful in the turnover battle. UConn has to get more turnovers."

Umm you can't interpret stats like that.

 

[huskypantz]

I agree with that post but would add that attitude of the coaching staff has seemed to changed. Instead of the "it's all about us" and "BYU is our partner in getting better" stuff, the word "WIN" is creeping into Diaco's vocabulary. You can see the game plans and play calling becoming more aggressive and wrinkles being added. They are starting to use players strengths rather than just rotating guys. Diaco is finally acting like winning is important and that makes a huge difference in the attitude of the team.

The reason they were rotating in guys was to figure out each player's strengths and where they fit into the big picture.

And yes, agree that the word "win" entered into the coachspeak vocab of late.

 

[Palatine]

The reason they were rotating in guys was to figure out each player's strengths and where they fit into the big picture.

And yes, agree that the word "win" entered into the coachspeak vocab of late.

AS they could have done in practice or by watching tape of the previous year which Diaco refused o do.

 

[huskypantz]

AS they could have done in practice or by watching tape of the previous year which Diaco refused o do.

Do you really believe what you post?

 

[BlueMAB]

It's been 4 years since we've seen players and a team actually improve throughout the season. It's almost like some of us forgot that it can happen. Some of us.

Usually that's called good coaching. Usually.

Oh well, I'm going to enjoy what hopefully becomes the turnaround.

 

[husky10]

AS they could have done in practice or by watching tape of the previous year which Diaco refused o do.

Aren't you the one preaching that they can't know how good Boyle is because they aren't giving him a fair shot to play in games, that they can't know how good he is from practice alone, not to mention he was abysmal in games last year?

 

[Bonehead]

Do you really believe what you post?

I hope he doesn't...

 

[nelsonmuntz]

It's been 4 years since we've seen players and a team actually improve throughout the season. It's almost like some of us forgot that it can happen. Some of us.

Usually that's called good coaching. Usually.

Oh well, I'm going to enjoy what hopefully becomes the turnaround.

Were you overseas last season? The team got much better as the season wore on.

 

[FfldCntyFan]

Many unpaid experts on this board spent quite a bit of the past nine weeks criticizing Cummings ability to call plays, run an offense likely many other things. Early in Saturday's game (anyone who watched a DVR version, or better yet, a live feed) a paid expert pointed out a play that Cummings called that was exceptionally well designed but poorly executed. Shortly afterwards he stated that he had watched extensive tape on UConn (if you heard the broadcast it was obvious that he wasn't lying) and had seen many plays that were exceptionally designed but not executed by our offense. This reminded me of the brief time when Alex Karas was part of the MNF broadcast (he didn't last long because of his contentious relationship with Howard Cosell) when a few times a game, after a big offensive play, Cosell would state that it was an excellent play call and Karas would follow "the call was pretty good but it was the execution that made it excellent".

Look at the USF game, look at the Tulane game, hell, look at the Stony Brook game. Until very recently (two byes and a nine day break between games helped greatly) the offensive line had trouble blocking air (actually there were too many plays where air was all they were blocking). Now that the line appears to be figuring it out we can actually do some things on offense (which help the defense tremendously on a couple of levels) people are b!tch!ng about the fact that many here felt there wasn't a lot to work with on offense (and that it would take time to get the offense going). Only in the Boneyard.

 

[metsfan2323]

Many unpaid experts on this board spent quite a bit of the past nine weeks criticizing Cummings ability to call plays

and rightfully so. If you haven't noticed we are running a different style offense the last two games. The pro style/fullback sets continued to fail even vs UCF, while the newly discovered shotgun spread option sets moved the ball and won the game.

 

[BlueMAB]

The team got much better after the coaching change and the competition declined..

FIFY