Counting on your offense to consistently out score your opponent is not a good recipe, especially if your opponent is playing ball control and in the few possessions you have, you have to be totally efficient. That doesn’t leave much room for error.
The grave concern I have is that in addition to the poor tackling, angles, and scheme issues, we also looked slow and couldn’t physically get off blocks. That’s a whole other category of worry because that speaks to physical limitations. It’s much harder to overcome actually having physical player deficiencies.
For instance, is Duce a good safety? We all remember Duce’s freshman year where had several picks. He’s a gambler and he gambled correctly a few times that year. BUT, often forgotten in the story of Duce is he was also toasted several times as well. His freshman year didn’t really carry over to sophomore year and we know what happened at LSU. He looks slow and unable to cover. WRs run by him. Can Duce be fixed at this point or does he just have physical limitations? I don’t know. I think he’s good for a clutch play now and then but I worry about his consistency.
Overall, GT will tell us a lot obviously, but I’ll be happy if I see us running with them physically because mistakes can be corrected, athleticism cannot. I’m hoping for the mistakes to be corrected and the “slow” play to have been an offshoot of overthinking, but I’m concerned.
