I'm not feeling as negative as others.

[CuseOnly]

Does anyone remember the time when Pugh was out for 5 games and our OL play was pretty bad? Well...we now have Robinson out, his back-up Palmer out and a tackle playing out of position.

One good player out on a good OL means a lot. Watch when Robinson and/or Palmer are back in there. You will see our real starting offensive line.

Also, not having Hunt in there really kills our scheme. When he is not in, their defense can pin their ears back and "T" off on the young QB and the RB's.

 

[Crusty]

Does anyone remember the time when Pugh was out for 5 games and our OL play was pretty bad? Well...we now have Robinson out, his back-up Palmer out and a tackle playing out of position.

One good player out on a good OL means a lot. Watch when Robinson and/or Palmer are back in there. You will see our real starting offensive line.

Also, not having Hunt in there really kills our scheme. When he is not in, their defense can pin their ears back and "T" off on the young QB and the RB's.

Valid points.

 

[CuseOnly]

Valid points.

Yes but I also don't think Adam is half the OL coach Perles was and that is part of the problem.

 

[HtownOrange]

Certainly, we had sort of a perfect storm BUT, Hunt didn't look so great out there against a Div II team anyway. He never got a real drive going. Wilson had the only impressive drive.

The OLine played very poorly - and it was the right side that got blown up time after time.

I understand that we have a high risk D and we live by the blitz and die by the blitz BUT we never seem to adjust to a talented dual threat QB. Nova was 12-20 on 3rd down conversions (we were 5-13). Patterson ran for 115 yards and threw for 199. He ran 34 times out of 60 running plays or 57% of the time. Call me crazy but I think I saw a pattern.

I am getting very concerned about Bullough not our players. His game prep, play calling and in game adjustments have not been stellar. The data points so far are not favorable. I certainly hope I am wrong and that this is not Shafer's Achilles heal.

We were very lucky and it seems the football gods felt they owed us one but they really outplayed us - by a lot. We needed two missed chip shots, a couple of very questionable calls in our favor, trickeration and a last second fortunate play call (I say fortunate because in that situation everything is a gamble on both sides of the ball).

You are of course correct that a win like this is good for a team and can help down the road. Our teams never give up so I never question their heart.

I am a big booster for this staff but the truth IMO is that we were not ready to play and I think that is on the them. They have two weeks to get it sorted out.

This is the Crusty I know and respect! I agree with most of your assessments. I do see improvements being made by the staff when one looks back over last season. s this staff ready to take down FSU? No. However, we know Syracuse is not going to pay the big bucks for OC/DC and other coaches so we have to accept that the HC will bring in guys and develop them. So long as we see improvement over the whole period of their tenure, then things are good. McD and Bullough have a lot to learn and to grow, but they keep the kids focused, moving, motivated, not wavering/trusting in each other; all the things that were destroyed buy the end of P's tenure and GRob overlooked.

We know these kids aren't the 5Stars every team wants but they know they can grit out a win if they stick together and don't fall apart. This kind of game is a character building game. I would have preferred a big win, perhaps a lesser FCS team, but the schedule was to play Nova, the kids did and they pulled out the W.

And I agree that the staff needs better prep and adjustments. You are a good supporter of the staff in general, I understand your frustrations (as well as everyone else's and mine) but losing the starting QB really did screw up any plan they originally had for the game.

Old military maxim: No battle plan ever survived first contact with the enemy. Directly applicable to this game.

 

[OburgCuse]

Does anyone remember the time when Pugh was out for 5 games and our OL play was pretty bad? Well...we now have Robinson out, his back-up Palmer out and a tackle playing out of position.

One good player out on a good OL means a lot. Watch when Robinson and/or Palmer are back in there. You will see our real starting offensive line.

Also, not having Hunt in there really kills our scheme. When he is not in, their defense can pin their ears back and "T" off on the young QB and the RB's.

This definitely was a big part of the offensive dysfunction last night. I know Hunt didn't look good but I feel like he would have got it going and found a rhythm, but when he got tossed McDonald totally scaled back and went super conservative not to lose the game. Obviously the playbook was shortened with Wilson in there, but he also went with run, run on first two downs and the defense saw that and were jumping the run. On the td drive we were fortunate that Wilson was able to make a couple nice throws on 3rd downs to move down the field but then once we got a little bit of lead and in OT McDonald was calling plays not to have Wilson lose it. On the goal line plays I was hoping we'd just do a play action pass to Kendall Moore on first down and would have an easy TD, but obviously didn't want to screw it up and figured we should be able to punch it in from one against FCS team (as we should be able to).

I think this game will serve as a learning moment for McDonald as well because I don't think we were really prepared for Hunt to go out in first half of first game. You prepare for it, but you're never really prepared for it..especially first half of the first game of the year and a Qb with no experience having to go in. This game will help our team be a better team this year.

 

[SWC75]

I think if you replay the game you will see the right side of our OLine got blown up time after time. I am going to replay the whole game before I conclude that was the biggest problem but from what I saw browsing through this morning it looked pretty bad. See what you think.

But on the goal line it was the left side. Bad game overall by the O-line.

 

[tbonezone]

99% of the time that 4th quarter nova kick goes thru.no time left. we dodged a huge bullet. don't kid yourself