Reply to thread

Message: [QUOTE="SubbaBub, post: 4380245, member: 523"] My resolve not to accept minimal improvements remains strong. Sorry, if that's a downer for people. Overall: As I said, a minimal improvement over last year. Instead of losing to an FCS team, we won. Yaaaaayyyyy! But we went into the half 7-3, turned the ball over and only pulled away because they wore down (another plus). We also ran in a TD with under 40 seconds left. My issue is not with the sportsmanship (we need to run plays and get guys action, even garbage time action). My issue is that we otherwise scored once in the 1st half and twice in the 2nd against live tackling dummies (football wise, I'm sure the student athletes of CCSU are fine people and will have a positive impact on society.) Offense: Difficult to explain why the O came out so flat. I hope it's not a lack of recovery from USU. That wouldn't bode well for our plan to close the season strong. The run game backed up its Week 0 performance to the extent we should be able to consistently get something on the ground as occasionally break a few for chunks. Other than LB play, more on this later, this appears to be where the biggest leap has been made. The passing game is still an abomination. The turnovers are unacceptable and not to be too harsh on a true freshman but he isn't ready and has some serious flaws in his game that won't be solved by more playing time. He's not an NFL QB, will never be an NFL QB, but we don't need him to be anywhere close to that. We need him to throw the ball on time to the open receiver or throw it away. I think he has a major problem with accuracy. If you consistently place the ball on the wrong side of the receiver, every out route sees the ball behind, this will lead to many, many picks and several TDINT's. It's going to happen. He also looks like a guy who played on a really good HS team that didn't give up a ton of sacks or QB pressures. He looks like he's staring down the pass rush. This is something that can be fixed with playing time but playing Michigan and a few other legit P5 teams isn't the right kind of playing time. If he doesn't improve, I hope Mora isn't going to wait until he costs us a winnable game before he starts the QB carousel. That is the most Edsall thing he could do. My prediction is that the Michigan game gets out of hand and we will see every healthy QB at least once. If he's not the guy for this season, redshirt him and play someone else for NC State/Fresno. Now, the WR corps we anticipated being a strength isn't available and that is a tough break but outside a few drops there seems to be enough raw talent to work with. The play calling is 100% better than it has been. We seem a lot less predictable, something we all wanted. Instead of running twice, passing 3rd and long then punting, we appear to be managing down and distance a lot better and instead of a steady diet of off-tackle runs, jet sweeps, bubble screens, and out routes, we are actually attempting to use the entire field. That alone is worth a few more points a game. Defense: The jury is still out on whether the D can keep us in most of our games but other than the obvious abuse the secondary is suffering due to the soft coverage, it appears we are better at every position and as a whole. The DLine isn't getting pressure like we'd hope but they aren't getting gashed for 5-6yds before first contact either. They stuffed the run pretty good up the middle vs a pass first USU and an undermanned CCSU. Cuse will be their first big test. The LB crew has been the best unit overall so far. They are making contact closer to the LOS, covering the middle of the field and making sure tackles at a rate that we haven't seen in quite a while. Bigger tests going forward but so far, so good. There isn't much to say about the secondary, but my eyeball test would suggest the talent is better than the soft coverages we are playing. It spite of still getting lit up on short to medium pass routes, they are recovering well and making tackles. They are getting their heads around a lot more than we've seen (and suffered some lousy calls despite that fact). That USU offense was legit and they were only a handful of plays (and 11 points) away from mission accomplished (keeping us in the game). I hope they can show better, but it doesn't appear as lost a cause as the numbers might indicate. If we can make a big leap here before the schedule lightens up, we might get that strong finish. The play calling upgrade shows. Rather that run base defense every single down, Mora is mixing it up. I doubt he's satisfied and don't think he's found the right balance of risk/aggression yet. Seeing them getting off the field more regularly is a pleasing change this year. Every 3 and out feels like New Year's Eve. Mora will need to decide his best squad/scheme before the FIU game. We want the best guys playing against FIU/BallSt/BC/UMass whomever that is. Those 4 games will define the season and set us up for an outside shot at a bowl bid. If we are sitting with 4 wins with 2 not impossible games to play, Mora will have delivered on year 1. If we are at 5 wins with 1 to play, no one can say they are disappointed with the season. [/QUOTE]

Verification: First name of men's bb coach

Forum statistics

Threads: 164,673

Messages: 4,406,061

Members: 10,221

Latest member: abbbb