Thoughts…
Heupel: Disappointed in all phases, rightly so. Don’t see how any of the questions needing answering can be done so during that press conference. Tough spot but that’s what you get when you get whooped all over the field in a playoff game.
Halzle: Actually thought his answers to questions were good, what you want to hear, appears he knows what the issues were. But that’s also not encouraging in a way. I just don’t know if he has the ability to fix it. You know what went wrong and there’s no reason it should have. Same issues all season, that’s a problem. Where’s the growth? Where’s the adjustments? Not sure he’s the guy if he can see everything clearly and can’t produce solutions.
Banks: pretty disappointed in his answers. Didn’t just come up “a bit short” as he said. We were never close. Said we didn’t see anything tonight they hadn’t seen on tape. So what, they did exactly what you expected them to do and you just couldn’t or didn’t gamepln well enough to stop it? That’s concerning. Yeah you gotta play to your identity but you also gotta gameplan to disrupt their game and make them play your game. If you’re not as talented, man ain’t gonna work. Gotta scheme better. I thought some guys played well and just made a couple mistakes that were really costly. But also thought as a unit they didn’t play well and there was a lot that Ohio state wanted and got without us making it difficult on them. That’s on Banks. I’m a Banks fan but tonight was really bad and we can’t keep having these putrid “egg” performances in big games (USCjr 22, UF/Mizzou/UGA 23, OSU 24), especially for as good as we were all season, he deserves a lot of blame for the product on the field tonight (as does halzle/elarbee). Defense is supposed to travel. Ours didnt, and hasn’t. Banks needs to take a big step there for us to compete for a championship and for him to be considered for a head coaching gig. One thing that should be a result here is, I think at least, banks will not be taking a head coaching job, at least I wouldn’t give that responsibility to someone who answers those very legitimate questions with such weak answers. Hopefully he can take the next step in his own growth to not come to a game seemingly completely unprepared after given 3 weeks to do so.
Team: Absolutely have to upgrade talent. Top 10-15 ain’t gonna cut it. Need to add some guys that don’t “have potential” but are X factors and immediate contributors to make us better and raise the level of competition on the practice and game field. Need to commit to paying more if necessary to get the “sure thing” type guys. Nico deserves better around him. Protection and run game need to be better. Receivers need to get better. Defense could use to add athleticism at LB and S, and now corner too with no dependable guys behind the starting corners. Don’t know if it can happen before next season but we get younger across the board on offense and those players need to grow up in a hurry. Really hope the transfer portal has more players still to enter, and ones of the quality we desire, and that we go out and get them.