Few pretty run of the mill observations from the offense against WKU:
- Tiny is really good. All the o-lineman had really good moments, but I think he's our most consistently dominant blocker for sure. Need to let him lead the way. I thought the o-line played pretty poorly in the second quarter, but they bounced back (the whole team did) in the second half.
- Neal is really slippery. I know a lot of people are frustrated about him bouncing too many runs outside. I think that's somewhat true, but I also think he actually has an ability to turn some of those into huge gains for us. He is doing a much better job of taking what the defense is giving him. He's seeing the field a lot better than he was last year. He's so strong and fast. Lane compliments him perfectly and gives the offense some nastiness. Individually, we don't have an elite running back on the roster. But those two guys combined could be really special.
- I think Worley could be really good. He obviously didn't show much of that on Saturday and I don't know if he'll ever get there. But he had one throw in the third quarter that I keep thinking about to Josh Smith that was just perfect. It was a simple slant route on 3rd down to keep the chains moving. Really clutch moment in the game. That's really hard to defend when the ball is thrown that well. He doesn't have to be Johnny Football, but if he can make more throws like that we might have something.
- Receivers were pretty disappointing, but that was to be expected I guess. I like Johnathon Johnson and Josh Smith, and obviously Marquez a lot. Croom was disappointing on that one play, but I bet he'll bounce back. He had some pretty good blocks though. Pig is explosive as hell and probably needs 10-15 touches a game at least.
- Brendan Downs seemed solid at tight end. Looked like he's not scared to put his nose in there and block, but besides that, I couldn't really tell.
- I don't know what we're going to do at Oregon. I think our team is going to have the mentality that we can go in there and win, which is good. It will be really interesting to see how we hold up when bad things start to happen, because they inevitably will. We responded really well to adversity against WKU, but we still had a 2 touchdown lead and the luxury of halftime at the perfect moment. That being said, I think we keep it close for much longer than most people expect, and maybe even have a chance to win it in the end. Butch Jones seems like a good coach, and good coaches tend to figure out ways to hang around in games that they're not supposed to. It's not unheard of. This team doesn't seem like it's going to shoot themselves in the foot. If that's really going to be a lingering characteristic of Team 117, then we'll need to see it again this week.
