i can't help myself ...
Doug and Ian have incited me to expand just a touch more on this before I can put it to rest for good. This one hopefully promises to be a bit more studied and a little less dependent on the baser language to convey my thoughts. Lord knows I've been known to cuss a blue streak in real life from time to time, but I do try and clean it up for you kids out there when I put things out here for public consumption.
Also, check everyone Dawg related, Ian, Doug, Paul, Kyle, Hamp, Realist, LD, they've all got things to say that fall somewhere in or near the realm of how I feel. Anyway, let's end this.
What's funny about this team or this program at this point is that, even at 28-0, I felt like we were still going to win. I knew if we ever stopped turning the ball over, they would not stop us on offense. I thought anything on the level of a 7 to 14 point deficit at halftime was imminently winnable, especially if we could make some defensive adjustments. That's what this team does to you, you just don't ever really believe they can lose until it's actually over. I really thought we were going to win, right up to the punt. And credit to the guys, especially the offense, they didn't give up at 28-0 and that at least says something.
Now as far as my man Blue, without a doubt Blue is a linebacker in the NFL, much like Davis has become. I love Blue, but he's always been a little cringeworthy for me, it just normally centers around his coverage skills, where I found him deficient even to TD. That's why my favorite defensive backfield was in '03 with TD playing with Sean Jones because it cut TD free to do his bonecrusher thing while you knew Sean John would actually be playing the position like a real safety. Of course, what a lot of people don't know or remember is that we tried to for two years to make TD a linebacker but we just kept running out of safeties and had to keep putting him back there. But he definitely displayed a varied ability to either go blowing by the play or have the play go blowing by him (i.e. Slaton's game winning run where he went by Blue one on one without even having to put a real move on him) last night that was particularly ill timed.
Now for Richt, I love him, but some of his game management, time management and strategic decisions make us look like a monkey trying to get to frisky with a football out there.
This may go more with Martinez too, but whatever offense we were practicing against the last 3 weeks, it couldn't have been there's. As Paul pointed out, the scheme was ridiculous, the lack of substitutions outside of the front 4 was ridiculous, the inability to adjust was bad, and the fact that we kept trotting poor Marcus Howard out there at DE to get tossed like a rag doll boggles the mind.
But Richt "coached" us from a 4th and 1 back to a 4th and 3 by giving them 5 minutes to think about and finally review Pope's catch/fumble when he took a timeout for no apparent reason.
He failed to use our 2 timeouts before the fake punt, so assuming that we'd been intelligent enough to actually put a formation out there to make them punt, we'd have had roughly 2:30 to 3 minutes instead of a minute and a half on the clock.
And the formation on the punt was just complete ineptitude. What's your scenarios there?
Line up normal and force the punt, forgoing a return, either they kick it in the end zone or Flowers fair catches around the 10. Either way, you've already proven multiple times you can drive 80 or 90 yards.
Or line up like a bunch of jackasses to try to set up a super special return, leaving the possibility of a successful fake wide open and leaving your best outcome as being a return to maybe the 30, I mean, they're punting from the 45, you're not going to get that much of a return regardless. It's nowhere near worth the risk.
And the worst part is, his explanation for decisions like that are so against facts, common sense, logic, and events in the game up to that point that it just boggles the mind. 5 years into it and he still struggles with clock management or balancing the risk/reward of losing the game on a fake punt with possibility of an extra 10 yards on a punt return.
So those are my complaints.
On the upside, the offense, when holding onto the ball looked good. TB and Lump had good games. I think all indications would be that they'll be battling for the starting spot next year and probably sharing 90% of the carries between them, and that's as it should be. AJ Bryant finally had something good happen to him, which will hopefully roll into next year. Massaquoi continues to play at a whole different level. So yeah, there's some good.
As far as our linebackers, I've always been skeptical of our scheme over the last few years where all of our linebackers are behemoth man-beasts, finally culminating this year where outside of Jarvis Jackson, the average size of our linebackers has got to be like 6-4 and 240. It's just getting outlandish, and signing Marcus Washington last year just plays into that since I'm pretty sure he weighed 270 by the end of the year. This year's class seems to contain more linebackers with a size to my liking though. I'd just really like to see the whole position slimmed down and speeded up in general. I mean, I realize White and Slaton are going to be faster than most people on every field they step on, but they made us look ridiculously slow at times I thought. I'm really wanting some guys with a little more quickness to get off or get around blocks and make some more plays.
In the end, credit to West Virginia, they didn't do anything special, they just ran their offense as well as they could for 60 minutes and we didn't come in ready for it and didn't make the adjustments to turn things around. They've got a good offense. I think they've got defensive issues that would prevent them from consistently competing on the highest level, but for the night, they were able to score enough to hide them.
Crappy way to end a season though, the defense we've depended on so much for the last 4 years totally crapping the bed on us, leaves a bad taste for the next 8 months. Hopefully that'll be a touch of the old motivation to the one's coming back. And that is my attempt at ending on a positive note.
Also, check everyone Dawg related, Ian, Doug, Paul, Kyle, Hamp, Realist, LD, they've all got things to say that fall somewhere in or near the realm of how I feel. Anyway, let's end this.
What's funny about this team or this program at this point is that, even at 28-0, I felt like we were still going to win. I knew if we ever stopped turning the ball over, they would not stop us on offense. I thought anything on the level of a 7 to 14 point deficit at halftime was imminently winnable, especially if we could make some defensive adjustments. That's what this team does to you, you just don't ever really believe they can lose until it's actually over. I really thought we were going to win, right up to the punt. And credit to the guys, especially the offense, they didn't give up at 28-0 and that at least says something.
Now as far as my man Blue, without a doubt Blue is a linebacker in the NFL, much like Davis has become. I love Blue, but he's always been a little cringeworthy for me, it just normally centers around his coverage skills, where I found him deficient even to TD. That's why my favorite defensive backfield was in '03 with TD playing with Sean Jones because it cut TD free to do his bonecrusher thing while you knew Sean John would actually be playing the position like a real safety. Of course, what a lot of people don't know or remember is that we tried to for two years to make TD a linebacker but we just kept running out of safeties and had to keep putting him back there. But he definitely displayed a varied ability to either go blowing by the play or have the play go blowing by him (i.e. Slaton's game winning run where he went by Blue one on one without even having to put a real move on him) last night that was particularly ill timed.
Now for Richt, I love him, but some of his game management, time management and strategic decisions make us look like a monkey trying to get to frisky with a football out there.
This may go more with Martinez too, but whatever offense we were practicing against the last 3 weeks, it couldn't have been there's. As Paul pointed out, the scheme was ridiculous, the lack of substitutions outside of the front 4 was ridiculous, the inability to adjust was bad, and the fact that we kept trotting poor Marcus Howard out there at DE to get tossed like a rag doll boggles the mind.
But Richt "coached" us from a 4th and 1 back to a 4th and 3 by giving them 5 minutes to think about and finally review Pope's catch/fumble when he took a timeout for no apparent reason.
He failed to use our 2 timeouts before the fake punt, so assuming that we'd been intelligent enough to actually put a formation out there to make them punt, we'd have had roughly 2:30 to 3 minutes instead of a minute and a half on the clock.
And the formation on the punt was just complete ineptitude. What's your scenarios there?
Line up normal and force the punt, forgoing a return, either they kick it in the end zone or Flowers fair catches around the 10. Either way, you've already proven multiple times you can drive 80 or 90 yards.
Or line up like a bunch of jackasses to try to set up a super special return, leaving the possibility of a successful fake wide open and leaving your best outcome as being a return to maybe the 30, I mean, they're punting from the 45, you're not going to get that much of a return regardless. It's nowhere near worth the risk.
And the worst part is, his explanation for decisions like that are so against facts, common sense, logic, and events in the game up to that point that it just boggles the mind. 5 years into it and he still struggles with clock management or balancing the risk/reward of losing the game on a fake punt with possibility of an extra 10 yards on a punt return.
So those are my complaints.
On the upside, the offense, when holding onto the ball looked good. TB and Lump had good games. I think all indications would be that they'll be battling for the starting spot next year and probably sharing 90% of the carries between them, and that's as it should be. AJ Bryant finally had something good happen to him, which will hopefully roll into next year. Massaquoi continues to play at a whole different level. So yeah, there's some good.
As far as our linebackers, I've always been skeptical of our scheme over the last few years where all of our linebackers are behemoth man-beasts, finally culminating this year where outside of Jarvis Jackson, the average size of our linebackers has got to be like 6-4 and 240. It's just getting outlandish, and signing Marcus Washington last year just plays into that since I'm pretty sure he weighed 270 by the end of the year. This year's class seems to contain more linebackers with a size to my liking though. I'd just really like to see the whole position slimmed down and speeded up in general. I mean, I realize White and Slaton are going to be faster than most people on every field they step on, but they made us look ridiculously slow at times I thought. I'm really wanting some guys with a little more quickness to get off or get around blocks and make some more plays.
In the end, credit to West Virginia, they didn't do anything special, they just ran their offense as well as they could for 60 minutes and we didn't come in ready for it and didn't make the adjustments to turn things around. They've got a good offense. I think they've got defensive issues that would prevent them from consistently competing on the highest level, but for the night, they were able to score enough to hide them.
Crappy way to end a season though, the defense we've depended on so much for the last 4 years totally crapping the bed on us, leaves a bad taste for the next 8 months. Hopefully that'll be a touch of the old motivation to the one's coming back. And that is my attempt at ending on a positive note.
posted by The Drizzle at 1:41 AM
3 Comments:
As tough as you're taking the UGA loss, just imagine if you were subjected to watching your DBs try to tackle the dude from John Elway's Quarterback on each and every OSU pass play. Do you remember how fast that guy was?
Indeed I do. Truthfully, there was plenty of ire and angst both to be passed around Monday night.
We should've Cannonballed it...Cannonball coming...
Post a Comment
<< Home