Best (least bad?) Group Today

[Nutriaitch]

On 10/9/2022 at 9:21 AM, Herb said:

He only handed the ball off 12 times but kept it for himself for 16 rushing plays. You don't think Emery or Williams might have had more running yards than Daniels put up if he had handed the ball off even 2/3 of the times that he kept it?
 

i'm still in process of the re-watch. And I can emphatically proclaim "NO!!!!! Williams and Emery would NOT have fared better"

A. the Offensive line sucks.  really, really, really bad.  they may be the most bad group i have ever seen in my life. 6 guys available to block 5.
B. so far I haven't seen any obviously bad "reads" from Daniels on the Zone Read.*
C. the blocking is so unorganized, that it is impossible to tell if the play call was an RPO or not. **

* & ** will explain those statements in next post (because I'm a post count attention werkingurl).

Also, the 16 carries is somewhat misleading.
in college football, sacks count as rushing plays (NFL counts them as pass plays)

so the 5 sacks have to come off that number for starters. that bring him to 11.
then you'd have to watch film and see how many times he kept based on the Edge rusher and whether or not he made the proper call. As well as any time the rush got through and he turned it into a positive (or no gain) run.

 

 

[Nutriaitch]

* Zone read

ok first off what we run is mostly zone read and not so much read option like a lot of people on other sites seem to think.
read option is more similar to old school triple option, except run out of shotgun with different options than running from the I or wishbone.  Read option typically goes off reading the nose tackle.

we run zone read. Daniels (or whoever is QB) is looking at the DE or edge rusher on same side of line as the RB.
if RB is on Daniels's left, he's looking to the DE to his left as well, etc.

JD puts ball in chest of the RB and watches the end/edge.  If the edge comes crashing toward the backfield, JD keeps and theoretically should almost always beat him to the corner because he just gave up contain.

If the edge guy "stays home" or shuffles wide, then JD gives and theoretically you know have the numbers advantage across the line and should get a positive play.

our issue Saturday was not being able to stop the edge guy.  He paused looking like he would stay home, so Daniels gave. But Turner whiffed, Emery had to dodge the DT and the edge guys still makes a tackle (that should NEVER happen if read right, but we suck at blocking so it did).

 

[Nutriaitch]

**RPO (Run-Pass Option)

1st things first, the quarterback DOES NOT have to be the guy running for it to be an RPO.  New England runs it with Tom Brady. I know dead people faster than him.

RPO is a similar idea to zone read, except your "tell" is different

RPO plays Daniels still has a read to make. It's just not always a single guy, rather the concept of what D they running on that play.
Again though, JD puts ball in the RB chest and looks to his "read" or "tell".
Based on what he sees, he either gives, to the RB, pulls it back and throws (usually something quick like a slant or hitch), or he can keep it himself.

as a spectator, the way to tell is by the blocking scheme of the O-line.
a lineman can not be more than  yards past the line of scrimmage on a pass play or it's a penalty.
So typically on pass plays you see the OL stand up and usually go backwards while staying engaged with their blocks.
on run plays, there is no such restriction, so you see the lineman trying to drive their blocks forward downfield.

so if we run an RPO correctly, the line starts off in pass block mode (not going downfield) until after the give/keep.
What we did on the 2nd possession (long-ish drive that ended with the Boutte 4th down play) was having 1 or 2 guys doing one thing, and other 3 doing something else.
That makes it really hard to know what the hell the actual call was.

If it was an RPO and Daniels reads pass, it would have been a penalty.
It it was straight zone read, we got guys pass blocking on a run play

that shyte is piss poor. half of them are wrong, no matter how you slice it.
O-Line so far in my re-watch gets the "most bad" group grade.  Even worse than special teams.

[Fishhead]

Yep yep and yep. 

[Fishhead]

I've acknowledged Daniels isn't "good".  HOWEVER.......

WATCH and you'll see he isn't nearly the issue.  This OL with two true freshman tackles easily being the best two players in the unit is subpar to begin with.  Take out Campbell, and then Dellinger (3rd best guy in the unit) and it's abysmal.  

Last week when Emery fumbled, it was because half the line thought the play was going one way, the other half the other way.  At least then you can tell who's right because Emery went left.  But the fact of the matter is, the OL is horrible.  

Charles Turner at C is IMO the biggest issue.  Why?  It's his damn job to communicate the assignments.  Clearly that ain't happening.  Bradford at tackle in place of Campbell CANNOT happen again.  Guard, OK.  Tackle, no way. 

 

And so what you see is, hey, with Campbell and Emory Jones stepping up, we have an OK line.  NO.  We have SEC backups at best at the other positions, and if either of those two go out, we're in trouble...as evidenced by Saturday.

Delly is OK, but has underwhelmed.  Doesn't matter because he's out a while...first possible game back is against friggin Gumps.

But the OL behind the starters is not SEC level, and that's what Kelly and Co were left with.  

I'm starting to question Brad Davis a bit here too.  He's worked with Charles Turner for TWO YEARS and the guy can't get it.  

This. Is. A. REBUILD!

[Fishhead]

And to be sorta on thread topic, it doesn't matter if you wanna say the RBs were least bad.  They wouldn't have done a damn thing behind this OL.  Special Teams, the only reason they're not far and away the worst is because the OL exists...the running game.  Defense sucked in all aspects.  One dude came to play ball, and his name is Greg Brooks. The coaching sucked from top to bottom, IMO.  

[Fishhead]

Therefore, passing game was "least bad" because we produced 24 first downs and 300 yds behind that sieve of an OL

[Nutriaitch]

i don't like, but can tolerate, "physical mistakes" ... a missed tackle, overrunning your assignment, a dropped pass, hell even "not seeing " a WR.

but unforced "mental errors" are just unacceptable with veteran players this deep into a season.

the play Fish is referring to, multiple plays through 2 drives yesterday, etc.
if half line is doing one thing, and half doing something different, then you have multiple guys doing something wrong.  there is literally no other way to define that.

there is a breakdown somewhere. whether coaching, communication, something is extremely wrong.

[Nutriaitch]

timing is still a problem too.

Don't know if it's on JD or Turner, but on the 4th down to Kashon, that ball was snapped too quick. 

Boutte has to be past the tackle before ball is snapped (or at the snap).
Jones comes out of his stance and literally bumped into Boutte who was in motion.

not a huge bump, but we missed the 1st down by like 6 inches.
on a play where the timing got all fudged up from the moment it got snapped.

in fact on last 4 plays of that drive:

1st & 10, Emery gets hit in backfield by entire left side of D-Line
2nd & 10 was the 6 guys to block 5 and somehow 3 come in untouched. Emery somehow gets 2 yards
3rd & 8 is a pass play JD steps up and runs for about 4
4th & 4 our RT bumps our WR off his break and slows play down just enough to fail.

at least 2 and possibly 3 of those failed plays are due to the Line.

[Fishhead]

1 minute ago, Nutriaitch said:

timing is still a problem too.

Don't know if it's on JD or Turner, but on the 4th down to Kashon, that ball was snapped too quick. 

Boutte has to be past the tackle before ball is snapped (or at the snap).
Jones comes out of his stance and literally bumped into Boutte who was in motion.

not a huge bump, but we missed the 1st down by like 6 inches.
on a play where the timing got all fudged up from the moment it got snapped.

in fact on last 4 plays of that drive:

1st & 10, Emery gets hit in backfield by entire left side of D-Line
2nd & 10 was the 6 guys to block 5 and somehow 3 come in untouched. Emery somehow gets 2 yards
3rd & 8 is a pass play JD steps up and runs for about 4
4th & 4 our RT bumps our WR off his break and slows play down just enough to fail.

at least 2 and possibly 3 of those failed plays are due to the Line.

The play where Kayshon fell...it ain't even the first time that's happened this season.  It's happened at least twice that I know of.  

[Herb]

9 hours ago, Fishhead said:

I'm starting to question Brad Davis a bit here too. 

Another "less than popular" opinion regarding assistant coaches, but I think you are correct to question any member of the staff if improvement is not measurable or apparent.

I loved what Davis did for the bowl game, etc., but the OL has struggled for a few seasons now. How many seasons have we entered in say the past 5 years where the biggest concern in most people's minds was how the OL would fare?

I think back to when Trai Turner, La'El Collins, Vadal Alexander and others were road grading for Jeremy Hill an LF7...it is a distant memory and for all of the accolades Orgeron got as being a great recruiter, he couldn't hold Les Miles' water bottle in terms of recruiting.

I posted in a thread a couple of months back questioning whether some of the newly assembled staff were truly SEC worthy. I think we'll see some fine tuning on the staff during this offseason and next, and it is to be expected.

When coaches are hired, there are a million different things they need to get done. Assembling a staff and holding together recruiting classes are some of the things that are at the top of the list. Because of the way the calendar fell for LSU with respect to to Kelly's hiring, those were converging at the same time.

Kelly was getting ripped to shreds in the ND friendly press for daring to leave South Bend for Baton Rouge. A significant part of our fanbase was pissed when Billy Napier wasn't hired instead.

IMHO, there was a conscious emphasis to hire staff with Louisiana connections. That makes 100% sense for both PR and immediate recruiting purposes. Over time, the staff will evolve. Some will be conscious replacements and some will be made out of necessity as coaches make decisions to move to other opportunities.

I was picking on Sloan after this loss and have defended Polian when perhaps I need to re-evaluate him. I'd love to see Davis' squad improve significantly (as well as Sloan's and Polian's) but at the end of the day, I want to see the best people for the job on the staff.

Assuming the recruiting class hold up, we have 3 more prized recruits on the OL next year. I hope they can see that today's OL woes are opportunities for them to shine.

I'm willing to give Davis the benefit of another season or two knowing that nobody can make chicken salad out of chicken didley-poo.

[Nutriaitch]

1 hour ago, Herb said:

Another "less than popular" opinion regarding assistant coaches, but I think you are correct to question any member of the staff if improvement is not measurable or apparent.

I loved what Davis did for the bowl game, etc., but the OL has struggled for a few seasons now. How many seasons have we entered in say the past 5 years where the biggest concern in most people's minds was how the OL would fare?

 

i was willing to give him time because of the situation he was brought in to.

he was hired like an hour before kickoff for the 2021 season. none of those guys were his recruits. 
very little time to grasp the offensive system (did Peetz even have a system?)
etc.

Davis gets this year. And someone who follows recruiting will have to judge him on that aspect.
And then we'll see from there.

[LSUDad]

Kelly left a job, one he could have stayed at until retirement. But he wanted to be here. He put together a staff, had a lot to do, trying to put together a roster. I’ve never seen such a depleted roster ever, in college ball. For sure not at LSU. To leave LSU in such a cluster. Once the season is over, Kelly will do a full evaluation, it’s not where he wants it, but making moves to get it there. Every stop as a Head Coach, he’s built programs. 
A full evaluation will be made, across the board. 
Still games to be played, players to recruit, work to be done! 

[Fishhead]

5 hours ago, Nutriaitch said:

i was willing to give him time because of the situation he was brought in to.

he was hired like an hour before kickoff for the 2021 season. none of those guys were his recruits. 
very little time to grasp the offensive system (did Peetz even have a system?)
etc.

Davis gets this year. And someone who follows recruiting will have to judge him on that aspect.
And then we'll see from there.

Davis can recruit 4 and 5* LA guys.  Not concerned about that. 

The issue is, those are few and far between.  Luckily we had a couple last year and have a couple more this cycle, so we'll see.  He needs to show he can recruit nationally for big time OL guys.

[Herb]

3 hours ago, Fishhead said:

He needs to show he can recruit nationally for big time OL guys.

This.

And if Polian can too, we need to move him into that role 100% of the time and bring in someone to make our special teams a point of pride.

[Nutriaitch]

1 hour ago, Herb said:

This.

And if Polian can too, we need to move him into that role 100% of the time and bring in someone to make our special teams a point of pride.

this one still baffles me. 

some of this is 1 million percent on coaching 

but some of it just head scratching 

a true freshman that’s never been on kick protection missing a block?  coaching

a former walk-on transfer that wasn’t a returner at his previous school make multiple blunders in same game? coaching. 

your best WR muffing 2 punts? ehhh, can’t blame coach

probably your most consistent WR letting a kickoff bounce of his chest? ehhhh, that’s not on coach either. 

2 different starting LB just whiffing on tackles on a punt return? again, can’t really blame coach. 

 

what is it about our special teams this year that has even studs choking now?

[Herb]

34 minutes ago, Nutriaitch said:

probably your most consistent WR letting a kickoff bounce of his chest? ehhhh, that’s not on coach either. 

That was so close to the sideline that I'm surprised he didn't let it go. High probability that it would have bounced out of bounds and they'd have to re-kick from 10 yds back.

[Nutriaitch]

9 minutes ago, Herb said:

That was so close to the sideline that I'm surprised he didn't let it go. High probability that it would have bounced out of bounds and they'd have to re-kick from 10 yds back.

I returned kicks, you never let one of those go because it's a live ball.

had he been a little closer though, you field it with your foot out of bounds, and it still gets called as a kick out of bounds and a penalty on the kicking team.

[Fishhead]

30 minutes ago, Herb said:

That was so close to the sideline that I'm surprised he didn't let it go. High probability that it would have bounced out of bounds and they'd have to re-kick from 10 yds back.

That was my first thought as well,  but yeah, live ball. 

But kicking oob means we get ball at 35, not 10 yds back and re-kick

[Nutriaitch]

25 minutes ago, Fishhead said:

But kicking oob means we get ball at 35, not 10 yds back and re-kick

we get it at the 40 now.