Will Shirreffs get through the year alive?

[UChusky916]

Aside from the overly-conservative play calling and knuckle-headed misdirection play-action call, the next biggest concern for me last night was Shirreff's long-term health. Not sure what this team would have done without him last night, bailing us out multiple times. He's a tough kid and I have a ton of respect for him.

Problem is, he took some BIG hits. Aside from the helmet-to-helmet hit which should have been a TD, there were multiple occasions where I was concerned for his health and watching to see how he got up afterwards. He put his body at risk A LOT yesterday... and that was against an FCS opponent! What about against the big boys? And I actually thought our O-Line was pretty solid last night, so things could have been much worse!

I hope Shirreffs taking off running was more of a product of the poor/conservative game-calling than anything, but we need to make sure he gets through the year healthy. I love the kid, and I don't blame him for running as much as he did... he did what he had to do, given the circumstances. He was electric on those spin moves to prevent negative plays. I just hope Diaco reels him in a bit to preserve his health. He could have been helped out a lot yesterday by some better play calling.

Curious to see how others feel about his chances to make it through the year healthy.

 

[huskyblooz]

The kid's got guts! But, he's much too quick to tuck & run.
Donovan Williams has to be prepared to take off his red-shirt.

 

[uconnphil2016]

I honestly am feeling guilty watching Shirreffs get repeatedly smoked after we saw what happened with Casey Cochran. The way he plays and the lack of protection are such a frightening combination.

 

[Husky92]

I don't blame it all on the line and play calling. I think Shirreffs is quick to run sometimes and when he does he thrives on the contact. He's a gamer and only knows one way to pay: all out. It's what makes him fun and scary to watch at the same time. You could see last night he was really trying at times to play safe but it just wasn't in his nature. With the game on the line he put himself in jeopardy to get the W.

 

[connman]

Either he goes down sliding which he did late in game or he will only last 5 or 6 more games with frontal hits

 

[tjhusky]

I think generally he had more time to throw last night but doesn't seem to have confidence in his throws.
Good qbs will get the ball to a place where it can be caught and not intercepted.
Good example was the Maine qb who did that vs BS who sailed a few passes. We didn't have any intercepted (or interceptions) but need to get our receivers a chance to catch the ball. We did it late and it worked.

On to my point. He trusts his legs not his arm. Bails out too quickly. Opposition knows it, stacks the box and keys on our QB and RB every play. At the end of the game when we had to pass and did it gave our entire run game a lift also.

And one of the many head scratchers last night... If BS is going to run so much why why why didn't we use him in the 4th and inches play early in the game?

 

[Ryan Phalen]

Aside from the helmet-to-helmet hit which should have been a TD....

Agree with the overall post 100%. On the quote above, the referee's mic wasn't working and, by rule, the ball becomes dead as soon as the helmet comes off (which happened outside the endzone)

 

[gioff23]

He either needs to learn to put ball up or he's going to have a short career (and trouble later in life). It's great to have a qb who can extend plays, but he's a run first qb and that's not good for him or us over the long term.

If the O line played so well, why was he always running for his life?

 

[Dooley]

BS is our ultimate warrior. Kid might be the toughest QB we've ever had. Problem is - we need to conserve our warrior to make those types of clutch, tough plays in games against opponents much stronger than Maine.

I also agree that he is too quick to run. I don't think he ever got to his second read last night. There was a stretch in 2Q that I was watching Hergy Mayala only. He was blowing his DB off the line every time. 4 or 5 straight plays he got off quick and had a step. But by the time the first step turned into "wide open", BS was already scrambling around for his life.

 

[Santini35]

This is culled together from a series of tweets, definitely getting run happy too early and he acknowledges it

Matt Schonvisky‏@MattSchonvisky
On #UConn play calling last night. Final stats show 50 run/23 pass. Sacks=2. Shirreffs said out of his 20 runs, only 5 had run options

So taking Shirreffs at his word, play calling was actually 33 run/40 pass. He knows he needs to make better decisions & talked after game
"I'll have to watch the film. Sometimes there was some miscommunication, sometimes I would say I slipped out of the pocket too fast and then later in the game, I felt much more comfortable sitting in the pocket. I think it was a combination of things, but it's definitely something we can improve on and right now we are 1-0 and now we just need to look at what we can do better and the errors we can minimize. I feel good about our team. If you looked at it a year ago or two years ago, who knows how we would have finished the game, but we prided ourselves all off-season on successfully finishing, so I think the whole mindset of everyone on the team was 'we were going to win.' [The fumble] was a bad play, huge momentum shift, but luckily we got it back and made some plays when we needed to make plays." Shirreffs

 

[Carl Spackler]

This is culled together from a series of tweets, definitely getting run happy too early and he acknowledges it

Matt Schonvisky‏@MattSchonvisky
On #UConn play calling last night. Final stats show 50 run/23 pass. Sacks=2. Shirreffs said out of his 20 runs, only 5 had run options

So taking Shirreffs at his word, play calling was actually 33 run/40 pass. He knows he needs to make better decisions & talked after game
"I'll have to watch the film. Sometimes there was some miscommunication, sometimes I would say I slipped out of the pocket too fast and then later in the game, I felt much more comfortable sitting in the pocket. I think it was a combination of things, but it's definitely something we can improve on and right now we are 1-0 and now we just need to look at what we can do better and the errors we can minimize. I feel good about our team. If you looked at it a year ago or two years ago, who knows how we would have finished the game, but we prided ourselves all off-season on successfully finishing, so I think the whole mindset of everyone on the team was 'we were going to win.' [The fumble] was a bad play, huge momentum shift, but luckily we got it back and made some plays when we needed to make plays." Shirreffs

Numbers confirm what my eyes saw. Our best offense out of the QB position was mostly broken plays. Got to work on that.

 

[Padutch5]

I don't blame it all on the line and play calling. I think Shirreffs is quick to run sometimes and when he does he thrives on the contact. He's a gamer and only knows one way to pay: all out. It's what makes him fun and scary to watch at the same time. You could see last night he was really trying at times to play safe but it just wasn't in his nature. With the game on the line he put himself in jeopardy to get the W.

He has happy feet. Yes, he had to bail out a number of times, but there were many times he just bailed to quick or forgot to check his secondary reads.