Reply to thread

Message: [QUOTE="Cuseregular, post: 1877260, member: 185"] Yep I know man. This is where playing the game like I did my whole life, at the level level I did (on a personal level), helping in the coaching and recruiting world for a while, this all allows insights into the game and seeing things that some might not see. You focus in on individual performers, evaluate the fundementals of what the positions requires and what the physical capacity is of the performers involved is. Despite understanding and thinking I was watching a Final four playoff team led by a Heisman type star, still I've never seen what I did on Saturday (as the statistical numbers and objective indicators obvious suggested and demonstrated) and sitting there near to the end was a gut blow of depressing negativism that was soul sapping realizing how far away we are from the '87-98 level of performance we were treated to here. Not saying I'm off the bandwagon, no not at all, not thinking Babers isn't the guy to best make a return to success happen (think he's just the type needed and if he can't do it might not be able to be done), but to a man at EVERY position defensively they are lacking something crucial fundamentally whether it be size, speed, quickness, smarts or a combination of those attributes. And with their insistence on staying with this Tampa 2 without the players to do it vs. making lemonade out of the availbable lemons and minimizing your weaknesses while maximizing the chance for success by masking the weaknesses the way Shafer had done it with a more attacking type defense, well it's all a prescription for continued defensive failure. Until Saturday I was hoping that what I saw in the spring game (13 Td's) was just because the Offense would be that good, Saturday was the realization that reality showed that much of it was due to a D that is fundamentally lacking. Now the offense will be sufficient to overcome some of this and get some W's, but it is going to take far longer than I had hoped for and take years of a recruiting rebuild and reload on the defensive side of the ball that as I was looking at the sparse crowd I couldn't help thinking that I just don't think he will stick around long enough for it to be accomplished, this is what was going through my head at that horrendous game while watching that historically abysmal defensive performance. If you remember (I think it was you at the tailgate) where I was saying I really had virtually NO IDEA what to expect, and what we saw and found out suggested all the above. Thus the glass half empty posts today. To steal a line from our past AD, gotta live in the truth of what is right in front of my eyes. And listen I have no doubt that a lot of this year will be fun to watch with our peer schools, while watching us get throttled by the others won't be a big deal now as now I feel I know what to expect there putting hope to the side for the foreseeable future, and hey, the rebuild continues on, keep the faith, etc., but man oh man it just seems like this rebuild has and will take forever ad infinitum. So still drinking the Babers Orange Koolade but depressed that to think that now with the available hard objective data that it will take even longer than Babers thinks. It gets tough to keep the faith, still gonna do it, but it's tempered now unfortunately by the available evidence. [/QUOTE]

Verification: What is a Syracuse fan's favorite color?