..but it gets more difficult every day.
I don't think the ship is in as quite as bad trouble as it appears...although we are takin' on water fast, the iceberg is straight ahead, and an enemy sub is loading torpedoes.
In reality we should be 2-3 and except for a few plays we would be. The problem is that we should have competitive in the other games.
Part of our problem is systemic. Snyder's philosophy appears to be to put the best athletes on the field and win with the talent. Read Ohio State. The problem with this philosophy is that we are a year or two from having the talent with the experience to play that type of game. The system will eventually work. Getting there is painful, and the failure during building disenfranchises the fan base and will eventually hurt recruiting. Won't do donations a lot of good either.
Our offensive game plan seems to get a lot better when we get behind. We start taking more risks and they pay off. We have a good amount of talent on offense and they will have to carry the load this season. But they need to take control of the game and not play from behind. We seem to be a run first then pass team. Thinking that the run will set up the pass but what happens is that we get behind and suddenly the advantage of running first is minimized. By the time we open things up the defense is not only behind, they are winded.
Instead of a run-pass philosophy. We probably need to use the short routes to set up the run, then run to set up play action, then play action to go deep. At that point you can run anything. Eat clock on the ground or pile up the points.
Defensively we are not just short of bodies, we are short of playmakers. We're playing baseball without a base stealer and a clean up hitter. We have a team of A. C. Greens and no Magic, Kareem, and Worthy. It's not that the players we have don't play smart or hard, they are in there too much and have to do things they have never done. Add to that week start our offense has and these guys are on there heels from the get-go and the offense is sticking them in a hole.
I think we suffer some from young position coaches. Now these are the guys that bring in the great talent. But the younger the instructor, regardless of discipline--sports, writing, carpentry, surgery, taxidermy, whatever--the greater the emphasis on emotion and less on technique. Good news here is that if they are smart they are learning from their mistakes. Randy Sanders was doing a huge amount of things wrong at Tennessee, now he's at UK and a genius. He learned from his mistakes.
A lot is made of specific plays, either the call or to indict the player. Our guys don't make any more mistakes than any other player with similar experience. They just stick out when you lose. Particularly on offense. Every center makes some bad snaps, every WR busts on read and goes the wrong way. It happens, every game, every where, every level. When someone makes a mistake the coaches shouldn't bench them and the fans need not freak out and call for their head.
We had over 400 yards of offense. The O played well enough to win. We gave up over 450 yards on defense. Now the Offense didn't help the defense with field position or spotting the D some points. This is a systemic problem not an execution problem. IMO
IMO Mark needs to take a page from John Wooden's book and play the game based on the team he has. He can play the game he wants when Lew gets in school. The offense has to be more productive early. Let the D play with a lead. Run the ball when the other team is on their heels. Steve Spurrier's teams all had great running stats. They all came in the second half, when the Gators had a lead.
I'm not so sure anyone needs fired, but most everyone needs to do things a little differently.
We will no doubt win some games we shouldn't...but this year is gonna be a long season.