BWahlberg said:
Flame away. This might've been the best team in the conference we lost to and they were pumped up by being at their home opener, surprised with new unis/helmets, and on a roll. And yet we took them to the wire.
Yes, errors, yes bad stuff and big concerns. This team will get better, I see a big winning streak starting next week.
I really hope you are right and this team can turn things around like what was done last year.... as much as I want to be semi-positive about what I've seen the past couple of weeks though, I can't be. There are some serious issues right now, and if they don't get fixed soon we'll be in deep shit against the other good teams in conference.
What I see as the two biggest issues right now are our lack of killer instinct and that falls on the coaches... and our safety play. Of course there are other issues too which people have brought up (clock management, etc), but those two just stand out as huge issues in my opinion.
First issue...wtf is it with us taking our foot off the gas when we get a lead? This reminds me so much of what Dan Reeves used to do when he was coach of the Broncos years ago... get a lead, and then try to run out the clock waaay too early, and lose.
We packed it in once again when we got a lead, just like against NAU. Content to try to run out the clock with 8 minutes to go against a very good EWU team... brilliant. I knew it was coming, other people watching knew it was coming, and I'm sure EWU knew exactly what was coming too. Worked well.
Second issue... wow... the safety play reminds me of days with Dennehy's kid back there whiffing on tackles and being out of position. First off, why was Tully running away from the bootleg when the QB was 10 yards past the line of scrimmage already? Second, how many times are we going to hear "got behind the safeties" from announcers this year? Holy shit...it's like every damn long pass play you can count on "got behind the safeties" being said. Where is the safety help for our other DBs? No where... where are the bone jarring hits from our safeties when someone catches a deep ball or something over the middle? Hm...
Have we actually seen our safeties hit someone this year? I mean seriously...that last TD pass if Anderson was back there, their WR would've likely still be wondering what timezone he was in after being hit. Instead not even an attempt to hit the guy..
Other teams have nothing to fear going over the middle on us, or going deep on us. Their WRs aren't going to get hit, they'll just get glared at harshly (maybe) by our safeties after making the catch... We have two of the most un-aggressive safeties I've ever seen in football right now starting for us. Do we really have no one else we can play out there to see if we can get a little of that intimidation factor back?
Shit..put Henderson back there, he seemed to destroy that one DB for EWU and knocked his helmet off blocking. Sad when our WRs are putting on bigger hits on DBs than our safeties are on WRs...
That said....yeah it's frustrating right now. Seeing two leads slip away because of going in a shell is very frustrating. I really hope the ship gets back on the right track soon or we're going to be in trouble against the other quality teams in the Big Sky
