sutomcat
No recent Cali or Iggy awards; Mr Irrelevant
- Joined
- Aug 15, 2011
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This is not going to be very long (I hope) because I am pretty disgusted and I don’t want to write a really long post criticizing everyone associated with the program.
This year has been kind of nice. We got really deep into the season without a real dud. I was hoping that maybe, just maybe, we could get through the whole thing without that happening.
I am not sure which unit I am more disappointed in. We were pretty awful in all three.
Not a surprise that our special teams performance was bad again. James Williams is apparently out with the flu. I am not going to rip a walk on pressed into emergency service. Hey, at least he didn’t get a punt blocked. I will say that our best punt (by far) was wiped out by another illegal punt formation. I think you have to have 4 players minimum in the backfield and the refs said we didn’t. Pretty sure the same thing happened during the Rutgers game (twice!). This kind of sustained incompetence makes one question whether the coaching staff belongs here.
I was happy to see Andre finally make a FG. Was disappointed to see us give up a giant PR. A couple missed tackles. We got caught we a walk on trying to make a tackle. Not good. Courtney had a good return on a put worse than anything we have done. Nice.
On to the offense. Thought our game plan was awful. We went super vanilla. Don’t remember one new wrinkle, no trick plays, no anything to confuse the defense, I expected more with 2 weeks to prepare. To be fair, we had a huge issue at RT, where the new starter had a remarkably awful day. Just could not block anyone. An OL needs 5 players playing decently for the offense to be effective. We only had 4. It didn’t help that Servais seemed to make an awful shotgun snap on just about every important play. I think the guy he was assigned to block was beating him regularly, and he was really anxiously to get rid of the ball and make his block. This has been a problem when AS has had a good NT in front of him. I hope whoever is our center next year is better at this.
We had awful problems pass blocking but when we were able to get throws off, it seemed like Garrett made a bad read and threw into double and triple coverage a lot. We were fortunate none were picked off.
UL put a spy on Shrader from the start. He was a LB (22) who had size and speed and this effectively took Garrett out of the game as a running threat. Pretty sure that is why he kept handing the ball off to Sean instead of keeping it for himself. Thought Sean played okay. Didn’t have a ton of holes, was able to get outside a few times but I was impressed with the speed of the UL defense, who recovered quickly when Sean had some daylight.
Looked like we tried to get the ball to Luke. Looked like he dropped a couple passes and probably got himself further into the doghouse. Seems like he caught whatever Aaron Hackett had last year. He seems to be plagued by injuries and screws things up on the rare times he gets targeted. Too bad. A lot of talent is being wasted.
Alford made another stupid penalty on a boneheaded block. Might have been a bad call; still should not give a ref a chance to make a bad call there. Bergeron made a stupid penalty. Sherrod Johnson again had an illegal procedure penalty. Lots of thoughtless, unforced penalties.
So the offense was a disaster, but they at least got some first downs and moved the ball sometimes.
The defense started out the game looking like they did not want to be on the field and UL just embarrassed them. They clearly wanted it more, they showed far more effort and team work and the SU defense looked like they had never seen or prepared to play the Cards. Defenders were running past Cunningham instead of just trying to contain him. Coverages were repeatedly blown. We had a DE just fall down untouched in the red zone that was responsible for outside contain. You name it, our defense screwed it up. For some reason, we had no pass rush. Cunningham is not a great thrower but if you give him unlimited time, his receivers (who are very fast) will get open and he will carve you up like a turkey. We tried to bring out safeties up to take away the run and gamble with our CBs in man and got burned repeatedly. But worst of all, running play after running play after running play, the UL would get tied up for little or no gain, our defenders would use awful technique, help would not arrive and the UL RB would just power his way for another 5 or 10 yards. Sometimes more. Maddening. We were a good tackling team for a long time.
No question the early loss of Mikel played a role here. But it was happening before he was sent off. We are actually lucky Carter wasn’t also sent off (he had a questionable hit late in the first half on a TD play that could have been called targeting). What is the rule here? Do you have to hit the helmet of the player on offense or is the penalties for touring your helmet regardless of where you hit the opponent? Was hoping the announcers would discuss this but they were truly incompetent (the ACCN announcers are the bottom of the barrel, and this was the 2nd team ACCN announcing team). Brutal.
This was the one game I am not going to attend in person this season. The only good thing that happened today is that I did not travel 750 miles to watch that mess in person.
Hope we play better next week.
This year has been kind of nice. We got really deep into the season without a real dud. I was hoping that maybe, just maybe, we could get through the whole thing without that happening.
I am not sure which unit I am more disappointed in. We were pretty awful in all three.
Not a surprise that our special teams performance was bad again. James Williams is apparently out with the flu. I am not going to rip a walk on pressed into emergency service. Hey, at least he didn’t get a punt blocked. I will say that our best punt (by far) was wiped out by another illegal punt formation. I think you have to have 4 players minimum in the backfield and the refs said we didn’t. Pretty sure the same thing happened during the Rutgers game (twice!). This kind of sustained incompetence makes one question whether the coaching staff belongs here.
I was happy to see Andre finally make a FG. Was disappointed to see us give up a giant PR. A couple missed tackles. We got caught we a walk on trying to make a tackle. Not good. Courtney had a good return on a put worse than anything we have done. Nice.
On to the offense. Thought our game plan was awful. We went super vanilla. Don’t remember one new wrinkle, no trick plays, no anything to confuse the defense, I expected more with 2 weeks to prepare. To be fair, we had a huge issue at RT, where the new starter had a remarkably awful day. Just could not block anyone. An OL needs 5 players playing decently for the offense to be effective. We only had 4. It didn’t help that Servais seemed to make an awful shotgun snap on just about every important play. I think the guy he was assigned to block was beating him regularly, and he was really anxiously to get rid of the ball and make his block. This has been a problem when AS has had a good NT in front of him. I hope whoever is our center next year is better at this.
We had awful problems pass blocking but when we were able to get throws off, it seemed like Garrett made a bad read and threw into double and triple coverage a lot. We were fortunate none were picked off.
UL put a spy on Shrader from the start. He was a LB (22) who had size and speed and this effectively took Garrett out of the game as a running threat. Pretty sure that is why he kept handing the ball off to Sean instead of keeping it for himself. Thought Sean played okay. Didn’t have a ton of holes, was able to get outside a few times but I was impressed with the speed of the UL defense, who recovered quickly when Sean had some daylight.
Looked like we tried to get the ball to Luke. Looked like he dropped a couple passes and probably got himself further into the doghouse. Seems like he caught whatever Aaron Hackett had last year. He seems to be plagued by injuries and screws things up on the rare times he gets targeted. Too bad. A lot of talent is being wasted.
Alford made another stupid penalty on a boneheaded block. Might have been a bad call; still should not give a ref a chance to make a bad call there. Bergeron made a stupid penalty. Sherrod Johnson again had an illegal procedure penalty. Lots of thoughtless, unforced penalties.
So the offense was a disaster, but they at least got some first downs and moved the ball sometimes.
The defense started out the game looking like they did not want to be on the field and UL just embarrassed them. They clearly wanted it more, they showed far more effort and team work and the SU defense looked like they had never seen or prepared to play the Cards. Defenders were running past Cunningham instead of just trying to contain him. Coverages were repeatedly blown. We had a DE just fall down untouched in the red zone that was responsible for outside contain. You name it, our defense screwed it up. For some reason, we had no pass rush. Cunningham is not a great thrower but if you give him unlimited time, his receivers (who are very fast) will get open and he will carve you up like a turkey. We tried to bring out safeties up to take away the run and gamble with our CBs in man and got burned repeatedly. But worst of all, running play after running play after running play, the UL would get tied up for little or no gain, our defenders would use awful technique, help would not arrive and the UL RB would just power his way for another 5 or 10 yards. Sometimes more. Maddening. We were a good tackling team for a long time.
No question the early loss of Mikel played a role here. But it was happening before he was sent off. We are actually lucky Carter wasn’t also sent off (he had a questionable hit late in the first half on a TD play that could have been called targeting). What is the rule here? Do you have to hit the helmet of the player on offense or is the penalties for touring your helmet regardless of where you hit the opponent? Was hoping the announcers would discuss this but they were truly incompetent (the ACCN announcers are the bottom of the barrel, and this was the 2nd team ACCN announcing team). Brutal.
This was the one game I am not going to attend in person this season. The only good thing that happened today is that I did not travel 750 miles to watch that mess in person.
Hope we play better next week.
