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I don't have a whole lot to say this week, so this will be on the brief side. We played a road game against a legitimate top ten team that is much, much, much better than us in almost any way you can imagine, and wanted revenge, and they beat us easily. No matter how manic this board gets, we did not learn a whole lot either good or bad about us on Thursday night. If we win either of the next two, we are in good shape for a bowl game. If we lose both of the next two, we still have a realistic chance to go to a bowl game. I don't want to fly back from Tampa 2-5, but if we do it won't be because of Thursday night, Cincy or USF. That always looked like a 3 game losing streak. We needed 2 of 3 from Navy, UVA and Syracuse. And for those saying "well, getting to 6-6 is not where we want to be" you are right, it isn't. But HCBD is not going to turn PP's program around by designing brilliant X's and o's. If he turns it around, it's going to be because he recruits better OL and pass rushers than we have. Because for all the whining about BS (and we certainly learned he can't throw long accurately, if you hadn't figured that out last year), this team doesn't have a good enough OL and it doesn't have a discernible pass rush and if you can't dominate turnovers, like we did last year, the ceiling is competence. And that will be our ceiling until we get to see what HCBD's recruits can accomplish as upperclassmen, because we are not likely to be getting the kids of recruits who can not just start but actually turn your program around in their first and second years of play. It took our one NFL QB a full year to be helping us. It took a TB who led the country in rushing a year and two thirds before you could tell he was an impact player.
On offense, defense and specials almost nothing to say about specials. Lemelle is clearly now allowed to return punts when he has room, which can only help us. Coverages remained more than competent. Return games remain well below average, but that isn't likely to turnaround until we have more speed on the roster and an older and more athletic roster generally.
On D, running D remains solid. I liked that we somehow generated a little more pressure on the QB than we've been doing, although it didn't get us far against Ward who could simply run out of it. The failure to be able to defend the pass is obviously our biggest problem right now. Summer has to not lose his confidence -- he's made tons of plays for us and as bad as he's been those are the best two passing attacks we'll face and now we need him back. Watkins really isn't ready to be a starting Safety yet. God knows if he ever will be. Hopefully guys redshirting and learning and being brought in will have more overall defensive team speed than we have. But having said all that, we've now played 5 games and generated only 2 takeaways. This, after a year in which we lived on takeaways. So you can look at it one of two ways. That we just aren't good of generating them, and that fact alone will make this year much tougher than we hoped it would. Or we're just not getting our share of brakes and when it evens out we'll be fine. I'm not optimistic but we'll see.
On O, shout out to Thompson, a former in-state walk-on who got his first carry from scrimmage and looked like he belonged. Love those stories. I think Rutherford played LG, even though it looks like Vachery and Hopkins both saw the field. Thomas really is a superior player with the ball in his hands. Mayala is coming on strong. We were unable to get anything at all out of the running game, however, as they put everyone in the box to defend the run and the short pass, and while we hit some intermediate passes we couldn't hit enough of them, or any long ones, to get it done. Again, Houston is just a superior team, and I don't think we learned much at all. But they'll have to be much better against Cincy if we're going to get something done.
So we got beat bad by a better team. The season moves on. I still think that we are capable of doing more as a hole than we've seen, but we'll see.
On offense, defense and specials almost nothing to say about specials. Lemelle is clearly now allowed to return punts when he has room, which can only help us. Coverages remained more than competent. Return games remain well below average, but that isn't likely to turnaround until we have more speed on the roster and an older and more athletic roster generally.
On D, running D remains solid. I liked that we somehow generated a little more pressure on the QB than we've been doing, although it didn't get us far against Ward who could simply run out of it. The failure to be able to defend the pass is obviously our biggest problem right now. Summer has to not lose his confidence -- he's made tons of plays for us and as bad as he's been those are the best two passing attacks we'll face and now we need him back. Watkins really isn't ready to be a starting Safety yet. God knows if he ever will be. Hopefully guys redshirting and learning and being brought in will have more overall defensive team speed than we have. But having said all that, we've now played 5 games and generated only 2 takeaways. This, after a year in which we lived on takeaways. So you can look at it one of two ways. That we just aren't good of generating them, and that fact alone will make this year much tougher than we hoped it would. Or we're just not getting our share of brakes and when it evens out we'll be fine. I'm not optimistic but we'll see.
On O, shout out to Thompson, a former in-state walk-on who got his first carry from scrimmage and looked like he belonged. Love those stories. I think Rutherford played LG, even though it looks like Vachery and Hopkins both saw the field. Thomas really is a superior player with the ball in his hands. Mayala is coming on strong. We were unable to get anything at all out of the running game, however, as they put everyone in the box to defend the run and the short pass, and while we hit some intermediate passes we couldn't hit enough of them, or any long ones, to get it done. Again, Houston is just a superior team, and I don't think we learned much at all. But they'll have to be much better against Cincy if we're going to get something done.
So we got beat bad by a better team. The season moves on. I still think that we are capable of doing more as a hole than we've seen, but we'll see.
