I said at the beginning of the season 9 wins should be the goal and hope things break right to get to 10. I still think 9 is attainable. UNLV is a good team and a good win. They went toe to toe with Boise last night and lost in the last minute, otherwise they’re in the driver seat for the G5 bid. GT was a good win, especially coming off FSU W at the time and Haynes playing. NC ST solid win. All the final scores looked close but GT and NC St were never in doubt. UNLV we dominated other than ST’s. White got another blocked kick the other night btw. I’m still not sure what happened on Thursday. I know it begins with not having a run game, but Kyle imploded. A lot is on his shoulders and how we finish the season. Plus, if OG is going to call it a year coming off a concussion and the team goals out of reach.
9 wins is a statement Fran can work with. 8 is nothing exciting. Anything less is a huge let down. Anything less than a major bowl is pointless. Sun, Gator, Duke’s Mayo, Pop-Tart, maybe Pinstripe are only bowls worth playing otherwise there will be massive opt outs, and there probably still will be even if they make one of those bowls. It would be nice to make a major bowl game though.
A couple questions.
1. How can Fran sell this season? It was no secret he sold this season as a chance to make playoffs with a manageable schedule. He won’t have that next year with an absolutely loaded schedule. Sure you can sell playing Tenn, ND, Clem, Miami, etc, but to do that i think you have to come off a good season (To these kids a good season isn’t 7 or 8 wins).
2. I assume Fran is going to clear out some space on the back end of the roster. He has a full year to evaluate and he already has 27(?) HS commits. He’s desperately going to need help in the portal. Luckily he’ll have 105 scholarships for next years roster. We have to hope to close out this years recruiting and portal class like last year because right now it’s a decent class, but lacking star power. QB will be a major question. So will OL/DL.
3. Let’s play what if. Say we only win 7 or even 8 this year. Next years win total will be set under 6. All a sudden Fran could be entering year 3 with 2 seasons as same as before. Eventually you have to show results or else we won’t be able to get the quality of athlete to succeed like he wants and of course the fan base.
4. I like how Fran is trying to implement a culture, but I just don’t see it yet. I think he is on to something when he said we are a losing program. It’s evident from the fan base all the way to the roster. The good thing is we’ve gritted out 3 good wins this year, but we also lost 2 games coming off a bye, 1 to the worst program in the conference. It was also the way we lost coming off the bye. Everyone knew the only person on Stanford that could hurt us was Ayomanor. It didnt seem like we game planned for him and ST’s lost us a game that will really hurt at the end of the season. Same thing Thursday. What was our game plan? I also don’t know this and i’d be curious to know if everyone does, but how involved is Fran with game planning and in-game adjustments? He seems to be brutally honest and from what i hear it doesn’t sound like he’s that involved. We go up against some great coaches/coordinators. Typically, our coordinators are young and relatively inexperienced. Narduzzi/Bates ate Nixon and McCords lunch. We can’t run the ball and our passing game had no answer for Pitt’s blitzing packages, which goes against our positive stats vs the blitz coming into the game. That’s a season changing loss. How will we answer?
5. What do we practice? It seems like Fran likes to bang. I’ve never seen teams in season with full pads as often as this team. But what’s the purpose? Tackling hasn’t improved, if anything it has regressed. We aren’t physical. OL doesn’t open holes and gets no push. Defensive line isn’t great either. What are we working on?
6. Burning of redshirts. Everyone knows the names from the participation report. Some are head scratchers since they never play in games. Also, it’s time to unleash Ross. He looked the part in preseason and looked the part (from the 2nd half highlights of him that i saw). He could be that deep threat we miss from when Zeed left. Let him loose. I’ll only mention 1, but why did KJE burn a RS? Makes no sense.
Moral of the story is it’s important we close the season strong. Every game is winnable. All are losable, minus UConn. We haven’t come close to a ceiling game. Odds are at least every team has 1 or 2 throughout the season. Were due. Also, building so that were consistently good would be better than flashing and splashing.
