I think I will try to do these more regularly again, but they will be shorter. First, because this team just isn't worthy of the depth I used to provide. But more importantly, we are playing so many players that I have so little knowledge of that I can't even keep track of the defensive personnel at the moment.
What did we learn last night? Well, we learned that the incredible one year drop in season ticket sales didn't really effect how the stadium looked. Thank goodness. And that the students did care enough to come out. Thank goodness. But I don't know that we learned a whole lot about our football team. That is the best team we will play all year. That may be one of the best offensive teams in the country. And there was no reason to think we were going to be prepared and/or able to stop them. Spoiler alert -- we weren't.
I think the offense showed some potential. Certainly, many of the stats were promising. Pindell had a truly special game running the ball, with a confidence and a burst that I just didn't see last year. And a lot of passes were completed with a lot of open receivers running around and few drops. Frankly, the only issue with the O's overall performance yesterday was the three turnovers. Kudos for the staff for getting Pindell and receivers into space, and for remembering that you can throw to TEs, which we lost last year. But, there were also a lot of worrisome signs. I thought the OL underperformed. To my eye, Peart especially looked lost on the right side, which surprised me. And, as good as Pindell was, if we can't run the ball with TBs, and we can't throw deep from the pocket, by the time we get to Syracuse defenses will adjust and do better against what we did last night. Also, if you go back to vintage Edsall, we used to be great at turning total yardage into points. We used to specialize in getting 20 to 24 out of 310 total yards. To be in the high 400s, and only put up 17, won't cut it.
Special teams didn't play a big role, but were at least even against a good team. Tarbutt didn't look himself on KOs, but drilled his one FG opportunity that would have been good from 55 easy. The Aussie punter looked fine, as did both coverage and returns.
But then we get to the crux of the matter on D. A rational person would not have thought that we could have even slowed down their O. We couldn't. We played slower, and we were weaker up the middle, and no amount of scheming or substitutions was going to change that. As this is by far the best offense we'll play, and maybe one of the best in the country, I'm not worried about it. How bad will we be on D this year? Don't know. We may not know until the Syracuse game. But there was no reason to think we were getting the D up to anywhere near average this year coming into the UCF game, and nothing last night changed that.
So that's where we are. The building project won't be culminated this year. Dunn seems to be a competent replacement for Lashlee. The OL needs to be much better, both to finish drives and so Pindell lasts a season. And the D won't be miraculously fixed this year, although it's way too early to know if it will be marginally better or marginally worse. We will see. All we can do as fans is keep writing checks, keep showing up and be patient. As hard as it is to continue patience in the eighth year of sucking.
