sutomcat
No recent Cali or Iggy awards; Mr Irrelevant
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- Aug 15, 2011
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Sorry this is so late. Hung out with the crew after the game too late, didn't get home until really late, had the OO Open the next morning (will make a post on that event later tonight), etc. etc.
The tailgate before the game was great. Jeremy and TexanMark held court with our expatriate from Louisiana. The food looked awesome. I loaded up on jambalaya, which was terrific. We had one of our biggest crowds ever for a tailgate...I don't have the numbers but it must have been near 135 people. Props to everyone involved. Our little tailgate from the lot behind the Armory 10 or 12 years ago has grown into a formidable event.
I got ice bucketed before the game after being challenged by Vanessa Fanto, Dan's granddaughter. I swear I could feel him smiling from above as JeremyCuse poured the ice filled water on me. Thanks for everyone who donated money for the ALS cause afterwards. I will pay it forward tonight as another donation. Hope Carlos, Coach Lea and Terrel Hunt get word they have been challenged and accept.
On to the game. Some random observations...
Looks like more spots have been set up to sell beer. Now I don't drink beer but I know a lot of people do and I want them in their seats, so this should help and therefore I approve of this development.
Looks like some work has been done with phone reception in the Dome. AT&T was 5 bars and Verizon was 5 as well. Didn't spend a lot of time using my phone during the game but it appeared that bandwidth and response time were markedly improved.
I liked the new thing with Otto leading the charge of the SU team on the field riding on the back of a motorcycle. Would be better with Otto driving himself but it was amusing nonetheless.
The SUMB looks like it has really been working hard on marching. Saw a couple of new formations (besides the block S and NY State). One was an outline of Otto. Solid.
On the negative side, only 9 sousaphones (tubas) were out there marching on Friday night. It is my sincere hope that there was an epidemic of injuries to the tuba players that caused 4 or 5 of them to have to sit out the home opener. May be half the tuba players were suspended for a game for missing curfew/drunken carousing (we all know how tuba players can be). In any event, I hope we see a lot more tubas for the Maryland game in 19 days. Is it illegal for me to offer to pay students $20 a game to march/play the tuba? Cause I am willing to do it...
As much as I hate the new uniforms the football team has been forced to wear by the devils of Beaverton, I like the new uniforms for the cheerleaders (at least I think they are new). They are orange, look smart and I think their cut is very flattering to the squad.
Props to the university for fitting time into the pre-game activities to have a moment of silence for Dan Johnson. It featured a picture of Dan and Coach Mac smiling together and was well handled.
I think there really were 39 or 40K in attendance. Very surprising and impressive for such a lightly regarded foe on such a tough weekend to draw big crowds to the Dome. Props to everyone who attended, especially the casual fans.
Special props to the SU students, who came out en masse. Might have been the biggest turnout ever for an SU football game...there were students sitting on the north side of the west endzone and students up on the 300 level as well as the normal sections they sit in in the southwest corner of the Dome. Not everyone stayed but at least a ton of them were there for a while. Hope to see them back for Maryland in a couple of weeks.
The crowd was pretty loud too, even towards the end of the game, when we lost 10K or more of the fans.
Yes, I dislike the team wearing blue uniforms. Yes, I dislike the new uniforms. But I understand that maybe the uniforms aren't just for the fans. If the players love them and someday just one player says the reason he came to Syracuse was because of the banging unis, that is cool with me. But of all the awful unis the team has worn during the Gross era, these are the all time worst, at least as far as basic functionality goes. It is exceedingly hard to read the numbers with the bizarre 3 year old crayon font they insist on using for numbers and I struggle to identify most numbers from the upper deck. Even single digit numbers like a 6 or and 8 are really hard to read and even the TV people had problems. The basic purpose for a uniform is to make it easy to identify players. Argue that they are fresh, hip, cool, cutting edge, whatever. I don't think anyone can argue these uniforms make identifying people easily. I will also add that I have never seen players sweat as much as the SU players did in these uniforms on Friday night. It had to be a major problem for them...they looked like they had all been dunked in water all night long.
Enough of that...time to talk some football.
Thought Hunt came out tight and threw the ball poorly. Overthrew a lot of passes, looked really excited and out of control out there. Thought his judgement was okay and I suspect he would have calmed down and thrown the ball better had he not been ejected.
Speaking of the ejection, I am a little torn about it. I don't want to see players punching other players and I agree there needs to be strong penalties when this happens. But if you watch the replay, Terrel did not punch the Nova player hard and I believe it was not done with intend to injure him. He decelerated as his fist came close to the facemask of the Nova player. Still, if you make exceptions, you end up weakening rules in a major way and lose the teeth of an important rule...we have to stop fighting in college football.
So I reluctantly support the call.
Was really impressed with Robertson, who was everything he was said to be before the game and more. Didn't have a big arm, is never going to play on Sundays but he made a number of terrific throws to Nova receivers, who were often well covered, to places only they could catch the ball. And he was terrific at making something out of nothing on the many plays where the SU defense did a good job with coverage or covering gaps in the run game.
I thought our defensive game plan was overall solid and I thought we played well on defense with one exception: we allowed Robertson to get outside the pocket on a regular basis. He is quite ordinary as a QB when confined to the pocket but get him outside the pocket and he becomes really dangerous and efficient. Not sure we tackled him on the open field even one time (maybe on the last play of the game). The number of times it appeared we had him for a big loss where he was just able to escape the grasp of an SU defender, almost always an SU DL, was amazing. For a long period of time in the 2nd half, every time VU needed a first down badly, they went to Robertson on a running play to the outside and every time they did, they got the first down they needed. A good DC makes changes to take that away. Wish it happened in this game.
Thought Crume played really well and was our best lineman by a large margin. Thought Thompson did a consistently nice job, playing almost exclusively inside. He looks to be our best pass rusher by a large margin. Thought Welch did a good job. He gets good pressure and seems to knock down a couple of passes each game. Robinson struggled some at times. Sloan looked really overmatched when he was in. Johnson looked adequate. Wish on passing downs they focused on boxing Robertson in more and not on trying to get sacks, because they played right into Nova's hands.
Thought the LBs were not particularly good. Davis had one of the quietest games I have ever seen from him. He was subbed out some, especially in the 2nd half. Was he hurt? Thought Kirkland played better than Davis did and I have to note that Josh played a big role in sniffing out that QB option play at the end of the game that might have saved the season for this team.
I haven't seen any stats but Lynch must have been in on a ton of tackles. But he was also the guy Nova picked on the most when they needed to pass for a first down and they had great success doing this, from early in the game to the TD they scored at the end of OT that almost saved the game for them. Props to the Nova coaches for noticing this weakness from last season, when Cam was picked on all season by opposing QBs. Cam has to get better at this or he is going to have to sit out passing downs. On the positive side, he made a lot of tackles and many of them were in space, without much support from teammates.
Thought Hodge had a tough day in his first start in the middle. Didn't take good angles a lot, was consistently beaten to the corner by Robertson in key situations, got sucked up and chewed up by the Nova OL too much. He has speed and did make some nice tackles as well. Franklin got a little PT in the middle as well but did not take advantage of it. Hodge to get better at getting away from blocks and getting in on more plays next game.
Thought overall the CBs played well. Looked like Whigham sprained his ankle stepping on Esk's foot but he returned and played pretty well. Reddish was good and Morgan looked good filling in as well. Thought Esk played a little more conservatively than last year, which is not necessarily a bad thing. Usually see more big hits coming from him but he looked okay. Kelly was okay as well at SS. Maybe not quite as aggressive as I would like but he didn't get burned long and made some big tackles, some of them in the open field. Desir filled in at safety and also played well there.
Let's switch to special teams now...
Thought Phillips looked good returning KOs. He has the special ability to make people miss and I think he is going to end up being one of the best returners we have had on the Hill in many years.
Thought that other than the OB kickoff, Cole Murphy did a decent job as the new KO guy. Got good elevation for the most part, put the ball in the corner for the most part.
Thought Riley Dixon had a pretty spectacular day. One perfect pooch punt that was downed by Reddish (I believe) beautifully on the 1 yard line). SU was penalized and the punt had to be re-done but that wasn't Riley's fault. His punts were all really high, excellent hang time and then there was that fake FG near the end of the game that was pretty good too. Livers took a punt all the way for a TD but it wasn't Dixon's fault. He did out kick the coverage some but they real culprit in that return was a series of missed tackles and bad angles SU players took trying to make tackles. When you have several frosh on the unit, like Franklin and Winfield, missed tackles and missed lane assignments are going to happen. Just hope they don't again very often.
Was a little surprised to see Desir back returning punts (Brisley eventually got at least one chance to return one). Will be interesting to see what happens here the rest of the season.
The long snaps from Rodgers were consistently excellent. Dixon also did a nice job holding on the FG and PAT attempts. Overall, except for the TD punt return allowed, special teams did a good job.
That brings us to the offense. I was really mad at George McDonald during the game for what I thought was a very uninspired game plan; a very conservative set of play calls with little in the way of deception or setup for future calls. But to be fair to him, there were a number of extenuating circumstances.
2 of our 3 'starters' at OG were hurt at did not play. No question Palmer and Robinson were missed, especially on running plays. Lasker played the whole game at OG, did not look comfortable there at all, looked confused a lot and missed his assignment with disturbing regularity. But he isn't an OG and only had a couple of days to prepare to play there. So that is understandable and I am not really concerned about it (though I will if he is still starting at OG for the CMU game and again plays like he played Friday night).
Miller had his first start at C. The good news is that he was consistently excellent snapping from the shotgun. The bad news is that he was often abused/overwhelmed by at DT after snapping the ball. He really struggled to hold his own and was often a weak link for the unit, especially in key short yardage situations. It was his first start and there is reason to think he will get better. Macky had similar problems early in his career.
Even the veteran OTs, Foy and Hickey had less than stellar days. Foy lined up wrong at least once to cause SU to get a penalty and was called for holding as well. And he was blown up on a number of plays by an undersized VU player. Not good. Even Hickey was called for holding once and Sean struggled to hold his own with an undersized but quick VU player. It is my guess he will fare better against players more his size. I hope so.
The other thing that of course affected the game plan and what GM was able to do was the shocking ejection of Hunt. This wouldn't have been nearly as bad had Wilson been the clear #2 QB from the start of spring ball but he wasn't. He didn't emerge as the #2 QB until late in training camp. That means he had really limited reps in practice, considerable less than Long and Kimble did, and that leads to a limited knowledge of the playbook. So it makes a lot of sense that GM called the bubble screens and running plays that serve as the foundation of the SU offense the vast majority of the time Wilson was in.
It is unfortunate that those plays were exactly what Nova was expecting SU to run with Wilson in. They have a good staff, they knew GM was likely going to be uncomfortable passing the ball down field much and did everything they could to take away the run and the screens. This worked great for them almost the entire time Wilson was in. The ironic thing is that Wilson is better suited to throwing the ball down field than he is to running option plays and handing off to an RB. He throws the ball deep ball on the team and might throw medium length route throws better than Hunt as well. But GM didn't want to risk doing that much and the few times he tried to throw down field, Wilson threw the ball pretty poorly.
At RB, thought Gulley did okay, but he ran a little too much east - west for my liking. Looked like he got banged up some and missed some time because of it but is okay.
We used AAM a lot in third down situations, which shocked me. I just don't see him as a good receiver or a player quick enough to beat many D1 players one on one in the open field. Maybe I am under estimating him. But I didn't see it again on Friday night either. To me, he is a good option when the other team is using a lineup overloaded with defensive backs. Which of course Nova was doing with their 3-3-5 defensive set. I would use him more in running situations, primarily short yardage situations.
Thought McFarlane looked dangerous out there, as he always seems to. I think he is the best back we have right now but would love to be proven wrong. Morris did not have a good day but it seemed like everytime he got the ball someone would miss a block and he would be stuck with nowhere to go shortly after getting the handoff. So I will cut him some slack for now. Do I like seeing 4 players split time at RB? No, I think that is too many for everyone to get their rhythm and play at their best. I hope GM has the strength to play the best players instead of playing everyone and trying to keep them all happy.
Thought Broyld was our best WR by far in the first half. Don't know why we stopped going to him in the 2nd, though the loss of Hunt surely played a role in this. Looked like Wilson really preferred to pass the ball to West instead. I was tough on West last season, want to point out that I thought Jerrod played well, was physical and tough out there and fearless as well. That was the best I have ever seen him play.
Flemming made a nice catch on one play. Missed a block badly on another. I suppose the best news here is that he did not get hurt.
Looked like the staff tried to go to Estime a few times early without success. He was covered tightly over the middle and covered tightly on a fly pattern to the corner of the end zone as well. Not good when the player designated as your top play maker struggles to get open against an FCS opponent. He didn't get many touches Friday and surely a big part of this was, like Broyld, because Austin Wilson was playing QB instead of Hunt. Still, I find it really disappointing that GM was unable to get the ball in Estime's hands more. I don't think Broyld or Estime even touched a ball in the second half. GM has to do better here with his top play makers in the future.
One bit of good news was the play of Ben Lewis, who got a lot of playing time and was able to get open and make plays when the ball came his way. I think a big reason he played so much was because he was a lot bigger than many of the VU backs and had a major mismatch with them. Another reason might be because he is a better blocker than some of the other WRs, a skill that is really important when around 35% of the plays being called are bubble screens.
I hope this was a wake up call for the team and for the coordinators. I hope the injured players get well soon. I hope the offense is more diversified and that the defense shows it is capable of throwing out some 3 and outs on a regular basis.
Improvement is really needed for all our major units. I think the team is capable of playing a lot better and the coaches are capable of coaching a lot better. We will find out soon.
The tailgate before the game was great. Jeremy and TexanMark held court with our expatriate from Louisiana. The food looked awesome. I loaded up on jambalaya, which was terrific. We had one of our biggest crowds ever for a tailgate...I don't have the numbers but it must have been near 135 people. Props to everyone involved. Our little tailgate from the lot behind the Armory 10 or 12 years ago has grown into a formidable event.
I got ice bucketed before the game after being challenged by Vanessa Fanto, Dan's granddaughter. I swear I could feel him smiling from above as JeremyCuse poured the ice filled water on me. Thanks for everyone who donated money for the ALS cause afterwards. I will pay it forward tonight as another donation. Hope Carlos, Coach Lea and Terrel Hunt get word they have been challenged and accept.
On to the game. Some random observations...
Looks like more spots have been set up to sell beer. Now I don't drink beer but I know a lot of people do and I want them in their seats, so this should help and therefore I approve of this development.
Looks like some work has been done with phone reception in the Dome. AT&T was 5 bars and Verizon was 5 as well. Didn't spend a lot of time using my phone during the game but it appeared that bandwidth and response time were markedly improved.
I liked the new thing with Otto leading the charge of the SU team on the field riding on the back of a motorcycle. Would be better with Otto driving himself but it was amusing nonetheless.
The SUMB looks like it has really been working hard on marching. Saw a couple of new formations (besides the block S and NY State). One was an outline of Otto. Solid.
On the negative side, only 9 sousaphones (tubas) were out there marching on Friday night. It is my sincere hope that there was an epidemic of injuries to the tuba players that caused 4 or 5 of them to have to sit out the home opener. May be half the tuba players were suspended for a game for missing curfew/drunken carousing (we all know how tuba players can be). In any event, I hope we see a lot more tubas for the Maryland game in 19 days. Is it illegal for me to offer to pay students $20 a game to march/play the tuba? Cause I am willing to do it...
As much as I hate the new uniforms the football team has been forced to wear by the devils of Beaverton, I like the new uniforms for the cheerleaders (at least I think they are new). They are orange, look smart and I think their cut is very flattering to the squad.
Props to the university for fitting time into the pre-game activities to have a moment of silence for Dan Johnson. It featured a picture of Dan and Coach Mac smiling together and was well handled.
I think there really were 39 or 40K in attendance. Very surprising and impressive for such a lightly regarded foe on such a tough weekend to draw big crowds to the Dome. Props to everyone who attended, especially the casual fans.
Special props to the SU students, who came out en masse. Might have been the biggest turnout ever for an SU football game...there were students sitting on the north side of the west endzone and students up on the 300 level as well as the normal sections they sit in in the southwest corner of the Dome. Not everyone stayed but at least a ton of them were there for a while. Hope to see them back for Maryland in a couple of weeks.
The crowd was pretty loud too, even towards the end of the game, when we lost 10K or more of the fans.
Yes, I dislike the team wearing blue uniforms. Yes, I dislike the new uniforms. But I understand that maybe the uniforms aren't just for the fans. If the players love them and someday just one player says the reason he came to Syracuse was because of the banging unis, that is cool with me. But of all the awful unis the team has worn during the Gross era, these are the all time worst, at least as far as basic functionality goes. It is exceedingly hard to read the numbers with the bizarre 3 year old crayon font they insist on using for numbers and I struggle to identify most numbers from the upper deck. Even single digit numbers like a 6 or and 8 are really hard to read and even the TV people had problems. The basic purpose for a uniform is to make it easy to identify players. Argue that they are fresh, hip, cool, cutting edge, whatever. I don't think anyone can argue these uniforms make identifying people easily. I will also add that I have never seen players sweat as much as the SU players did in these uniforms on Friday night. It had to be a major problem for them...they looked like they had all been dunked in water all night long.
Enough of that...time to talk some football.
Thought Hunt came out tight and threw the ball poorly. Overthrew a lot of passes, looked really excited and out of control out there. Thought his judgement was okay and I suspect he would have calmed down and thrown the ball better had he not been ejected.
Speaking of the ejection, I am a little torn about it. I don't want to see players punching other players and I agree there needs to be strong penalties when this happens. But if you watch the replay, Terrel did not punch the Nova player hard and I believe it was not done with intend to injure him. He decelerated as his fist came close to the facemask of the Nova player. Still, if you make exceptions, you end up weakening rules in a major way and lose the teeth of an important rule...we have to stop fighting in college football.
So I reluctantly support the call.
Was really impressed with Robertson, who was everything he was said to be before the game and more. Didn't have a big arm, is never going to play on Sundays but he made a number of terrific throws to Nova receivers, who were often well covered, to places only they could catch the ball. And he was terrific at making something out of nothing on the many plays where the SU defense did a good job with coverage or covering gaps in the run game.
I thought our defensive game plan was overall solid and I thought we played well on defense with one exception: we allowed Robertson to get outside the pocket on a regular basis. He is quite ordinary as a QB when confined to the pocket but get him outside the pocket and he becomes really dangerous and efficient. Not sure we tackled him on the open field even one time (maybe on the last play of the game). The number of times it appeared we had him for a big loss where he was just able to escape the grasp of an SU defender, almost always an SU DL, was amazing. For a long period of time in the 2nd half, every time VU needed a first down badly, they went to Robertson on a running play to the outside and every time they did, they got the first down they needed. A good DC makes changes to take that away. Wish it happened in this game.
Thought Crume played really well and was our best lineman by a large margin. Thought Thompson did a consistently nice job, playing almost exclusively inside. He looks to be our best pass rusher by a large margin. Thought Welch did a good job. He gets good pressure and seems to knock down a couple of passes each game. Robinson struggled some at times. Sloan looked really overmatched when he was in. Johnson looked adequate. Wish on passing downs they focused on boxing Robertson in more and not on trying to get sacks, because they played right into Nova's hands.
Thought the LBs were not particularly good. Davis had one of the quietest games I have ever seen from him. He was subbed out some, especially in the 2nd half. Was he hurt? Thought Kirkland played better than Davis did and I have to note that Josh played a big role in sniffing out that QB option play at the end of the game that might have saved the season for this team.
I haven't seen any stats but Lynch must have been in on a ton of tackles. But he was also the guy Nova picked on the most when they needed to pass for a first down and they had great success doing this, from early in the game to the TD they scored at the end of OT that almost saved the game for them. Props to the Nova coaches for noticing this weakness from last season, when Cam was picked on all season by opposing QBs. Cam has to get better at this or he is going to have to sit out passing downs. On the positive side, he made a lot of tackles and many of them were in space, without much support from teammates.
Thought Hodge had a tough day in his first start in the middle. Didn't take good angles a lot, was consistently beaten to the corner by Robertson in key situations, got sucked up and chewed up by the Nova OL too much. He has speed and did make some nice tackles as well. Franklin got a little PT in the middle as well but did not take advantage of it. Hodge to get better at getting away from blocks and getting in on more plays next game.
Thought overall the CBs played well. Looked like Whigham sprained his ankle stepping on Esk's foot but he returned and played pretty well. Reddish was good and Morgan looked good filling in as well. Thought Esk played a little more conservatively than last year, which is not necessarily a bad thing. Usually see more big hits coming from him but he looked okay. Kelly was okay as well at SS. Maybe not quite as aggressive as I would like but he didn't get burned long and made some big tackles, some of them in the open field. Desir filled in at safety and also played well there.
Let's switch to special teams now...
Thought Phillips looked good returning KOs. He has the special ability to make people miss and I think he is going to end up being one of the best returners we have had on the Hill in many years.
Thought that other than the OB kickoff, Cole Murphy did a decent job as the new KO guy. Got good elevation for the most part, put the ball in the corner for the most part.
Thought Riley Dixon had a pretty spectacular day. One perfect pooch punt that was downed by Reddish (I believe) beautifully on the 1 yard line). SU was penalized and the punt had to be re-done but that wasn't Riley's fault. His punts were all really high, excellent hang time and then there was that fake FG near the end of the game that was pretty good too. Livers took a punt all the way for a TD but it wasn't Dixon's fault. He did out kick the coverage some but they real culprit in that return was a series of missed tackles and bad angles SU players took trying to make tackles. When you have several frosh on the unit, like Franklin and Winfield, missed tackles and missed lane assignments are going to happen. Just hope they don't again very often.
Was a little surprised to see Desir back returning punts (Brisley eventually got at least one chance to return one). Will be interesting to see what happens here the rest of the season.
The long snaps from Rodgers were consistently excellent. Dixon also did a nice job holding on the FG and PAT attempts. Overall, except for the TD punt return allowed, special teams did a good job.
That brings us to the offense. I was really mad at George McDonald during the game for what I thought was a very uninspired game plan; a very conservative set of play calls with little in the way of deception or setup for future calls. But to be fair to him, there were a number of extenuating circumstances.
2 of our 3 'starters' at OG were hurt at did not play. No question Palmer and Robinson were missed, especially on running plays. Lasker played the whole game at OG, did not look comfortable there at all, looked confused a lot and missed his assignment with disturbing regularity. But he isn't an OG and only had a couple of days to prepare to play there. So that is understandable and I am not really concerned about it (though I will if he is still starting at OG for the CMU game and again plays like he played Friday night).
Miller had his first start at C. The good news is that he was consistently excellent snapping from the shotgun. The bad news is that he was often abused/overwhelmed by at DT after snapping the ball. He really struggled to hold his own and was often a weak link for the unit, especially in key short yardage situations. It was his first start and there is reason to think he will get better. Macky had similar problems early in his career.
Even the veteran OTs, Foy and Hickey had less than stellar days. Foy lined up wrong at least once to cause SU to get a penalty and was called for holding as well. And he was blown up on a number of plays by an undersized VU player. Not good. Even Hickey was called for holding once and Sean struggled to hold his own with an undersized but quick VU player. It is my guess he will fare better against players more his size. I hope so.
The other thing that of course affected the game plan and what GM was able to do was the shocking ejection of Hunt. This wouldn't have been nearly as bad had Wilson been the clear #2 QB from the start of spring ball but he wasn't. He didn't emerge as the #2 QB until late in training camp. That means he had really limited reps in practice, considerable less than Long and Kimble did, and that leads to a limited knowledge of the playbook. So it makes a lot of sense that GM called the bubble screens and running plays that serve as the foundation of the SU offense the vast majority of the time Wilson was in.
It is unfortunate that those plays were exactly what Nova was expecting SU to run with Wilson in. They have a good staff, they knew GM was likely going to be uncomfortable passing the ball down field much and did everything they could to take away the run and the screens. This worked great for them almost the entire time Wilson was in. The ironic thing is that Wilson is better suited to throwing the ball down field than he is to running option plays and handing off to an RB. He throws the ball deep ball on the team and might throw medium length route throws better than Hunt as well. But GM didn't want to risk doing that much and the few times he tried to throw down field, Wilson threw the ball pretty poorly.
At RB, thought Gulley did okay, but he ran a little too much east - west for my liking. Looked like he got banged up some and missed some time because of it but is okay.
We used AAM a lot in third down situations, which shocked me. I just don't see him as a good receiver or a player quick enough to beat many D1 players one on one in the open field. Maybe I am under estimating him. But I didn't see it again on Friday night either. To me, he is a good option when the other team is using a lineup overloaded with defensive backs. Which of course Nova was doing with their 3-3-5 defensive set. I would use him more in running situations, primarily short yardage situations.
Thought McFarlane looked dangerous out there, as he always seems to. I think he is the best back we have right now but would love to be proven wrong. Morris did not have a good day but it seemed like everytime he got the ball someone would miss a block and he would be stuck with nowhere to go shortly after getting the handoff. So I will cut him some slack for now. Do I like seeing 4 players split time at RB? No, I think that is too many for everyone to get their rhythm and play at their best. I hope GM has the strength to play the best players instead of playing everyone and trying to keep them all happy.
Thought Broyld was our best WR by far in the first half. Don't know why we stopped going to him in the 2nd, though the loss of Hunt surely played a role in this. Looked like Wilson really preferred to pass the ball to West instead. I was tough on West last season, want to point out that I thought Jerrod played well, was physical and tough out there and fearless as well. That was the best I have ever seen him play.
Flemming made a nice catch on one play. Missed a block badly on another. I suppose the best news here is that he did not get hurt.
Looked like the staff tried to go to Estime a few times early without success. He was covered tightly over the middle and covered tightly on a fly pattern to the corner of the end zone as well. Not good when the player designated as your top play maker struggles to get open against an FCS opponent. He didn't get many touches Friday and surely a big part of this was, like Broyld, because Austin Wilson was playing QB instead of Hunt. Still, I find it really disappointing that GM was unable to get the ball in Estime's hands more. I don't think Broyld or Estime even touched a ball in the second half. GM has to do better here with his top play makers in the future.
One bit of good news was the play of Ben Lewis, who got a lot of playing time and was able to get open and make plays when the ball came his way. I think a big reason he played so much was because he was a lot bigger than many of the VU backs and had a major mismatch with them. Another reason might be because he is a better blocker than some of the other WRs, a skill that is really important when around 35% of the plays being called are bubble screens.
I hope this was a wake up call for the team and for the coordinators. I hope the injured players get well soon. I hope the offense is more diversified and that the defense shows it is capable of throwing out some 3 and outs on a regular basis.
Improvement is really needed for all our major units. I think the team is capable of playing a lot better and the coaches are capable of coaching a lot better. We will find out soon.
