Elephant in the room…

[kcsu]

I seem to recall that Dale Williams and James Vollono were among the last assistants to be hired. Most of of fans on this board believed the OL was the most important position coach on he staff. Fran had a bunch of assistants lined up to join him, but he apparently didn't have an OL or ST coach in his inner circle.

Remember the Purdue game in the dome 2 years ago? That was Dale Williams. Brohm replaced Williams with Richard Owens to coach the OL at Louisville, and Owens' OLs have been spectacular. Williams did not have an on-field position at Louisville.

Denaburg has never been accurate as a FG kicker. He's great at booming kick offs. You may recall, Andre Szmyt's worst year of placekicking was the one season he also did kick offs. It messed him up.

I was glad to see a back up getting a chance at FG kicking yesterday, but surprised it was Jaydn Oh and not Jackson Kennedy, the transfer from Cornell. Kennedy has college experience and made All-Ivy twice. Oh is just a RS-FR.

Stanford beat us with their FG kicker. We had 3 TDs they only had 2, but they won the game. SU needs a good FG kicker, or we'll end up on the losing end of competitive games. This has to be fixed.

As for the bad snaps, that's on Vollono. STs has been really bad under Vollono. Blocked punt, blocked FGs, botched on sides kick, now they can't make non-pressure FGs in a dome on turf. Note to Fran: never hire the guy again who has to constantly over sell himself for the job. Maybe he should be given a marketing job in the ticket office.

They need to rethink the use of players to help their NFL resume. They put Jack Stonehouse at holder this year (to help his NFL resume), instead of the player with the best hands (was Justin Barron last year). I haven't found any fans who think it's a good idea to have OG on STs coverage either (just because the NFL might like that). He's coming off a lisfranc injury - why the hell over-use him when there are other players would love to get that PT and concentrate on being good at coverage. This is just dumb.

Speaking of OG and his disappearance... in the Stanford game, after the bye, it seemed like he spent a lot of time on the sideline when the offense was in. Why would he not be in on offense for nearly every snap? If you think he disappeared, he wasn't on the field a lot vs Stanford. But then of course they did send him out there to cover on STs...

So far I'm holding judgment on Dale as he has kept Kyle relatively clean and that more than running the ball is and should be his primary objective. Plus, I don't believe he has attempted any card tricks which is always a plus. As to our special teams coach unless he pulls it together asap I think he needs to go.

 

[HRE Otto IV]

I don't like our run scheme and I think we don't have enough balance in our pass vs run calls... that being said Allen is getting 5.42 ypc vs FBS teams this year. His prior two years he had 4.18 and 4.38 ypc. Tucker had 4.52/5.85/4.57 in his three years here.

 

[Norman Dale]

With Erob his tactics don’t make sense to me. He brings 3 knowing we struggle to generate any kind of pressure, and even when you’re dropping 8 back it’s difficult to defend receivers for that long, a good QB will carve it up. The best way to make up for a weak secondary is pressure. I’d like to see us blitz more and not ask our struggling secondary to defend for 4,5,6 seconds while their o line only has 3 to worry about. His unwillingness to change has frustrated me so far. The play before the 4th and 9 against Stanford we bring pressure and Daniels throws a bad ball setting up the 4th and 9. He struggled under pressure all night, so why not do it again? Why sit back, send weak help, and not just have a safety straight over the top shadowing 13 and make Daniels look elsewhere? The frustration with Erob is a lot of his mistakes have been situational and avoidable.

EDIT: Also are tackling has been some of the worst I’ve seen. Only team we consistently wrapped up against was Holy Cross.

We desperately need Wax back. Our linebackers look very slow.

 

[Domedog84]

Yes, some people will fail to see that. Total 203 yards total offense, I will take it

We had solid yardage, the issue was three straight drives that were promising, one even had first and goal from the 7 and we came away with zero points.

 

[DCUNITED13]

Interceptions last few games are troubling. Also, beginning of 1st game as well from McCord. We have tighten up those attempts. Drops at crucial times hurt us as well making us rely on dpectacular completions downfield. We perfect the 8-10 yard completion(with our qb, running back & tight end) on 3rd down, we will win 9-10 games.

 

[IthacaMatt]

Why can't our fans just be happy with what is? The potential for this program is higher than it has been in a long time. Clearly, this team, even with all the influx of talent, is not as good as we all hoped, at least, not yet. There is still a lot of season left.

The whole point is to keep getting better, from week to week. This was Dino's biggest shortcoming, IMO. Even his best teams peaked early and got worse as the season went on. Sure, some of that is injuries to a team that's not so deep. But his teams usually didn't get better.

 

[IthacaMatt]

The team looks unprepared and undisciplined, no matter how many years of experience the HC has or doesn't.

We have cut way down on penalties. We're around 40th in the nation, averaging 6 penalties for 55 yards a game.

We are also 3rd in the nation in passing offense. This team is the best we've had since 2012, and still has a lot of room to get even better.

 

[tipphill]

Elijah Robinson was hyped by the head coach as the best DC in the country. His words, not mine.

Our HC was the position coach for a group at Georgia who was the best in the country.

Nixon -- who I think has actually done a pretty good job -- was an NFL coordinator.

There was a ton of hype. It is not nonsense.

nixon has called a good games no complaints on my part

 

[HRE Otto IV]

We have cut way down on penalties. We're around 40th in the nation, averaging 6 penalties for 55 yards a game.

We are also 3rd in the nation in passing offense. This team is the best we've had since 2012, and still has a lot of room to get even better.

We still need to prove that we are better than 2022. Those first 7 games were well ahead of what we have shown thus far. We have the potential to be the 3rd best team since 2001 but we still have a long way to go.