Thoughts on today

#77
#77
Nico ee-ah-MAH-LAY-ah-va said:
8 win floor, potential 9 or even 10 if the interior defense can wake up. Coach Garner is going to get the DL doing wind sprints until they wake up from the offseason.
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Nah. 6 is the floor for this bunch. I predicted 7 and felt 8 would be a solid season. Saw nothing today that makes me change my mind.
 
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#80
#80
If LSU loses tonight then 3 of the top 4 ranked SEC teams lose. Tennessee just moving on up (I know we aren’t jumping some of them). More moving up in the totality of the SEC to where we used to be.
 
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#82
#82
CAVPUT said:
Nah. 6 is the floor for this bunch. I predicted 7 and felt 8 would be a solid season. Saw nothing today that makes me change my mind.
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I dunno man. I say we drop Georgia and until we pull it off in the Swamp I’ll never give us the benefit—but Bama looked pretty shaky. If we can pressure Simpson we may get it done in Tuscaloosa. May drop a stupid one that we shouldn’t but I don’t see less than 8 wins.
 
#84
#84
rocketskates said:
I dunno man. I say we drop Georgia and until we pull it off in the Swamp I’ll never give us the benefit—but Bama looked pretty shaky. If we can pressure Simpson we may get it done in Tuscaloosa. May drop a stupid one that we shouldn’t but I don’t see less than 8 wins.
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I don't see us beating UGA, Bama, UF or OU. Then there's the annual Heupel "stinker" game which give us 5 losses. 7-5 is where I see this bunch finishing. This team is injury prone and just not that tough so all this assumes Aguilar stays upright. We lose him and all bets are off.
 
#86
#86
Pass game needs to be better. JA is ok but not sure he has a big arm and needs to bring it down on short throws. A couple of long throws were under thrown. Might need to know his range and play to that.

Interior D line is a question mark for me. Not a lot of depth and lots of guys seemed to get hurt. Won’t bode well against major SEC talent.

Run game is WOW. 3 backs who can pound it is a huge advantage! OL did exceptionally well imo.

Solid win against a team that might prove to be quite good. I truly like Fran Brown. Seems like a good coach. Their qb is a baller. They’ll like win 8+ this year barring injuries
 
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#87
#87
A lot of good observations, here are mine:
QB: B+ Love his moxy and control of the offense despite being new to the scheme. Comes across as a playmaker and leader which you can't coach. Needs to improve technique under duress and one quick throws. He threw high on a lot of throws resulting in either an incompletion or stealing time from the WR to get upfield. Underthrew a coupld of deep balls that would have been 6 but at least we give our big WRs a chance. Overall, great first game against a quality opponent.

RB: A We have three solid backs with good burst and run tough. Though Thomas created the most plays and had a really nice game. Was not dissapointed with the other guys but, for me, Thomas stood out. I am really pumped for our RB room, game changers!

WR: A- Mostly a solid day for our WRs. Some dropped balls and "potentially" some bad routes but overall created plays, separation and beat their defender. First game and we hope chemistry improves with JA as the season progresses. Maybe its just me but we looked more athletic at WR today than I can remember in a long time. That is a good sign if we can stay healthy!

TE: A If this was just Kitlselam A++++! Kid has hands for days and makes tough catches. Davis was solid but dropped one he needs to bring in. Did not see them as an issue in the running game so I really like what we have here.

OL: A+ Throwing the + in for playing our of position last second and had a great game. Created lanes for the RBs and provided time for JA to get the ball downfield. There were a couple of leaks on deep balls but I did not see any obvious misses save one 2nd half running play where Perry just whiffed. R-Fr so its going to happen.

DL: C You can argue injuries but we did not show the physicality of last years D-Line. We had a stable of guys rotating last year and expected more out of this group. Without blitzing pressure was slow to develop and allowed them to make easy throws under our zone. I'm not concerned yet unless some of the injuries to starters prove to be serious. Overall, we had some great plays but expected more aggressive control at the point of attack.

LB: B+ Call it DE/LB but we were able to get big plays off the edges and out of our LBs. Aggressive, running through ball carriers, and had a nose for the ball. Pleased to see a physical and athletic group out there. A couple of depth issues in coverage we need to clean up. When Syracuse ran the 2-level in routes they were behind our coverage and, with proper depth, we either make a play on the ball or force a deeper option. This can be cleaned up. Game changers with the pick (correct me if it was a DB).

DB: B- OVerall we had some great plays out of this group highlighted by Hood. Physical with the WRs in man and, for the most part, were in position for their zone coverages. We gave up some chunk plays and had some calls that were fair but more than not we did a great job. Excited to get McCoy back and really get nasty in the defensive backfield. Good pursuit angles and aggressive play made this a fun group to watch. People may disagree but don't hate the player for the scheme, we mostly played well.

ST: A- Solid punting, didn't allow an opportunity to return and mostly made good decisions on returns, could have been slightly more aggressive. Very possible coaches told them to just secure the ball. K did his job!

Coaching: B Overall a solid day. We were aggressive in the first half and built a lead. I don't love our 3rd quarter and it tool 'Cuse scoring to wake us up. This is 100% on the coaches. Unless we are turning the ball over we can be aggressive, get after the defense and did so for 3 quarters. There are ebbs and flows to a game but the third quarter cannot happen against an equal or better opponent. I get the conservatism but would also point to last years game against Arkansas where this can bite you in the rear.

Solid win against a solid, hard playing team. It was never really close but it was closer than it should have been. There were easily two more scores for the taking and if we capitalize everybody is over the moon. I would offer, however, that we blew the doors off hapless opponents last year and had some overconfidence going into our SEC schedule. At least we know who we are this afternoon and, for the most part, saw a good football team than can play! We have a good season ahead of us if we can improve every week and play to our potential.

Go. Big. Orange!
 
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#88
#88
barknoxbrawler said:
Angeli is a better QB than you are giving him credit for. Secondary will be better. Shoot, I think everyone will after the first game jitters are out of the way.

Wide receivers for sure need to quit with the drops. And Aguilar has to get a bit better at lowering his passes.
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I agree. Angeli was decisive, threw a few guys open and was pretty impressive overall.
 
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#89
#89
VawlIn said:
QB: Joey is a significant upgrade from Nico. He may not have the upside and raw ability, but the feel for the game and his pocket presence and his ability to throw at different velocities is light years ahead of Nico

RBs have a chance to be the best RB room in the conference

Receivers look better but have to clean up drops

OL was solid

The playcalling was also a little more balanced and less predictable

The defense is a major concern though. Particularly the DL. Syracuse lost their entire OL and shouldn’t have been able to run it down our throats for most of the game. We have to get as healthy as possible and clean up our run fits by the time Georgia comes to town

Colton Hood and Jalen McMurray were very impressive today though and hopefully our secondary can help elevate our defense once we get McCoy back. Boo Carter on the other hand needs to do some deep reflection on what type of player he wants to be and what he wants to get out of the game of football. Two critical 4th downs got converted because of mistakes he made

All in all there were some promising things today both for now and the future, but also some big concerns
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DL questionable??? Smh. Did you see their stats today??? The secondary is where you need to be concerned.
 
#90
#90
our d line needs to recover. We went into the game banged up, and we got more banged up.
 
#92
#92
BigOrangeFanatic said:
The scoreboard didnt reveal how close the game could have been in the 4th quarter.
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Neither did it reveal how lopsided it could have been if a few calls had gone our way.

You're basically saying "Syracuse could have kept it close if they had played a perfect game." Well, they didn't. Neither did Tennessee. It was the first game of the season for both teams.

The final score was representative of the relative strengths of the teams on this day.
 
#94
#94
jsc1973 said:
Neither did it reveal how lopsided it could have been if a few calls had gone our way.

You're basically saying "Syracuse could have kept it close if they had played a perfect game." Well, they didn't. Neither did Tennessee. It was the first game of the season for both teams.

The final score was representative of the relative strengths of the teams on this day.
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There was a point in the 4th quarter where they could have pulled to within a score of us and at that point anything can happen. To act like Syracuse had no chance in the 4th quarter is silly. We played a good to great game offensively and made some plays on defense, but we also couldn't stop their offense a lot of times. Some of it was injuries but not all. The game changed in the third quarter when Heupel tried to revert to last year and we just coast and let the defense win the game. I don't think that's gonna work this year. We will have to keep the foot on the pedal on offense because this defense isnt going to be as good as it was last year.
 
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#95
#95
maryvillenative said:
DL questionable??? Smh. Did you see their stats today??? The secondary is where you need to be concerned.
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I watch the game, not the stat sheet. We got gashed on the ground consistently by an offense with an entirely new line and really offense in general for the most part. Luckily their RB wasn’t very good or we could’ve been in trouble.
 
#97
#97
LegionnaireOfTheMiserable said:
Decent performance today. I saw nothing that made me think much more highly or any less of the team’s prospects than I did yesterday. It was refreshing to see a well thrown deep ball, it has been years since we saw that against anyone with a pulse.
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If you couldn’t see a night and day difference in our offensive approach compared to what it has been you must’ve watched a different game. The patented wide splits are still there from time to time, but we lined up in some formations and attacked areas of the field in ways we haven’t seen before with this staff. Seth Littrell and Landry Jones’s fingerprints were all over that offense today. It completely changes the ceiling for this team. If Joey can play like he did today and our defense and receivers get things cleaned up we can beat any team on our schedule. I think our defense can do it simply because a large chunk of last years team is still here (if Moi, Hobbs, and the other guys that didn’t play or didn’t finish can get right and we get the front 7 playing like it should we’re going to be a problem). Before that the offense we ran last year had us capped at 8-9 wins. We have an actual balanced offense now, and balance isn’t just 250 rushing and 250 passing and 50/50 play calling. It’s the ability to run inside zone, power, counter, insert, duo, and stretch running plays with success and have an effective RPO and true play action game as well as attack every part of the field in the air, and we showed we were capable of doing that today. Most including myself were concerned with a repeat of last year, but with a slightly worse defense and running game. The offense appears to have taken 2.5 steps forward but the defense we saw today has taken a step and a half back, and most expected to see maybe half a step. That has to change or it will be like 2021
 
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#98
#98
LittleVol said:
Then you’re blind and are wasting your life watching something you don’t understand.
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Yeah, I’m as critical of this program as anyone and want excellence across the board, and I’m willing to say we’ll go 10-2 IF Moi and our DL are good to go by Georgia and our defense plays like it should. It doesn’t have to be last year good, but it has to be significantly better than it was today, and our receivers need to work on their hands a lot this next week. We also need every game to be called like today’s was. Balance in every aspect of the playcalling and we ran different tempos with huddles and sugar huddles. The offensive balance I’ve wanted so much since Hooker left is finally starting to show up and it’s ultimately going to be what helps us take that next step down the road once this upcoming class are sophomores and juniors
 
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