I read the expert analysis from the regular pretenders about why our Griz are not performing as expected, and just had to bloviate my thoughts on the issue.
The LOS- We were being owned on both the defensive and offensive LOS by both EWU and Sac. State. Anyone who knows sh*t about football understands that games are won by winning the LOS. We lost both games in that area.
Please STOP chirping about how big our O-line is! Size means NOTHING if the lineman has poor footwork, and poor quickness. Any 240 lb. defender can easily school a 320 lb. O-lineman if that lineman lacks those two qualities. And, our O-linemen are slow, with slow feet, and lack any quickness. Do you ever wonder why we never run sweeps, or counter plays, or anything other than zone blocking??? It is because our O-linemen can not MOVE!
Our defensive line is unable to put any pressure on the QB, without blitzing a LB. We have not had the ability to pressure a QB by our D-line in many years, through the Hauck, Stitt, and Delaney regimes.
Our offense- Frankly, our offense looks like a high school offense. No imagination, no trick plays, no creativity of running plays, extremely easy-to-defend passing game.
If you watched the EWU offense, even though we were blitzing on nearly every play, Barierre was able to quickly deliver a pass to an open WR. Yes, we sacked him a few times, but he was still able to torch us for 400 yards of passing offense. Why? Because the EWU coaches know how to coach their O-linemen and running backs to pick-up the blitz. Montana's RBs are terrible blockers (maybe because they are young???).
Both EWU and Cal Poly were able to hit us with quick slant patterns and quick out-patterns, taking about 1 1/2 seconds to make the pass. Our offense never utilizes quick slants, tight-end drags, or regular screen passing plays. WHY??? Every time KB attempted a pass play, it was a slow-developing play which took 3-4 seconds to deliver the pass. Our O-line never gave Kris a pocket to step-up into. He had defenders in his face from virtually moments after he took the snap. Bottom line..... our O-line SUCKS at pass blocking and our RBs are useless in picking-up blitzers!
Kris Brown- The QB position is comprised of several qualities. Kris is excellent in arm strength, and accuracy. As of now, he in NOT good at reading defenses, and often throws into coverage. Kris is also NOT good at looking off his primary receiver to find the open player. Can he achieve that skill? Possibly, with experience. To me, the book is still out on Kris. He is strong in the two most critical areas, arm strength and accuracy. The other skills are teachable. But, do we have a coach with the skills to teach him???
Cam Humphrey would have fared no better against Sac. State. There was zero time to throw, zero running game, and a very poor passing tree because of the ineptness of our offense. A QB has to get some help to excel, and neither Cam, nor Brown is getting any help.
WRs getting open- There is nothing wrong with the speed of our WRs. I do think that their route-running is average at best. However, unlike the EWU WR tree and offense, our offense is not designed to clear areas in the zone by running WRs through areas, thus vacating that area for a secondary receiver. Do you wonder why EWU always seems to have open WRs??? It is partly because they run a very sophisticated NFL-type passing tree, which is designed to clear areas within the defensive secondary for open receivers. We don't do that.
The 3-3-5 Defense- So many of you supported this ridiculous gimmick defense that we run, saying that "it is designed to stop all of the Big Sky spread offenses". Well, how's that workin' out??? EWU sliced-and-diced our vaunted 3-3-5 defense. There is a reason that the top teams in FBS, FCS, and the NFL run either a 3-4 or 3-4 defense. Until we recruit kids who can DICTATE to any opposing offense, like NDSU and SDSU do, then we will always be pretenders among the elite FCS defensive teams. The Bobcats defense is much better than ours. I hear they run a 4-3 base, with some 3-4 thrown in at times.
Recruiting- During Hauck's first tenure here, he was able to get 90% of the top Montana high school players. Now, the Cats are getting 50-60% of the top kids from Montana. Making it worse, is that Hauck and his coaches are doing a poor job of recruiting out-of-state kids, as compared to the Bobcats and EWU. If our out-of-state recruiting doesn't improve, don't expect any big improvement in our quest to Return To Dominance. We have not been an elite Big Sky team for 10 years, and memories of our 20-year dominant run are quickly fading fast. Reality is a hard pill to swallow. But the reality is that Weber, EWU, and even MSU are ahead of us in the dominance game.
Now go ahead, fire away. I'll pop the popcorn.