Manuel commits. The Big Uglies are back.

Luckily if there is a position that you can get great production from lower ranked players out of HS it's the offensive line. Just took a look at Texas, Michigan, OSU and Mizzou , whom won the Joe Moore award for beat offensive line in the country. Texas had 2 well ranked lineman, and filled in the rest with 3 stars. Ohio state same, 2 fairly high 4* , filled in with additional 3 star linemen. Michigan, had mostly 3 stars and mid 4 stars. But mizzou was interesting, they had two 3 stars, a 2 star and two 4 star lineman yet won the Joe Moore award. As you go through even more of the top lineman in the country you'll see a large amount of them are modestly ranked coming out of HS. These poor lineman don't recieve as much love from evaluators as the glam skill positions. Not saying we should not continue to go for J. Seaton types just that lineman, more than any other position, can grow into great players despite what ever rating they get in HS.

 

Im open to another year, not that I have a say. He’s shown that he’s willing to make changes. I was hoping for the OC, so he could be more of the game manager. I hope the OL improvements help, as you suggested.

 

I have to admit that if I was in his shoes and I was, at least in part, hired based on my previous play-calling experience and skill, I wouldn't want to bring in someone else to fight and die for me. I'm optimistic that we have an entirely new defense in place now, meaning he is willing to adapt. I just hope it works and he also figures out a way to immediately end the chaos on ST in some (different) way now, too.

 

OK. We are allowing more discussions but can still send folks on a nice vacation for being a jerk about it or insulting other posters while we enjoy those discussions. Smart-alek suggestions to educate oneself, "double down on your nonsense," "bellyaching" and "power whiner" are a few examples of what we may not want to be doing.

 

Why is it disappointing? I didn’t see a lot of bad things . Did you think the offense cost us games ?

 

And should

 

Agree. I wasn’t to displeased with CBN. Hated the bad calls when we were o. a roll. To be fair, those calls may not have been bad calls, had we had the right personnel (OL), to help see the play all the way through.

 

well, including okie and Texas, we had the 11th (out of 16) scoring offense. That is below average in our conference.

but more so…if he wasn’t calling plays he would be able to stay on top of special teams during games (which had issues that did cost us games), focus on time management issues (which he has struggled with), could speak to and assist defensive staff (he cannot do this while coaching the offense), and generally be on top of the entire team vs just offense.

 

I agree , good points

 

Which is crazy because during the regular season Texas' offense only scored 2 more TD's than we did (43-41) and Ewers threw 2 more TD's (also more INTs) than Mertz(22-20) and he played more games than Mertz. So it's interesting how perception trumps reality. The truth is they just had a better all around team than us, Primarily Defense, which we know can make other facets of the game look better. But in terms of offensive TD's during the regular season UF and Texas where literally 2 TDs apart.

 

^^^ Which is why I think Billy is focused on D. If the D can give up a few less scores and force more 3 and outs, the O will get more possessions to put points on the Board.

 

I think all you said is very valid.

Otoh only two of those offenses set themselves apart from the others, and one, Georgia, was aided by its defense in scoring, which ours produced none of that from turnovers. And the one that was the best had a much worse record. A slight improvement in defense would have made us in the top half of offense. The difference in points per game from 3rd to 11th was 6 points. With a top 2-3 defense we would have been a top 5 team in the SEC.

My analysis is I would rather have 1 less OL coach which goes to defense than have an OC or ST coach, though CBN has shown he seems to need both. A new defensive coach should have those ST responsibilities. RR in the press box reading the defenses should make a huge difference this year. If it's a money problem I would rather go all in on defense coaching than offense coaching. I would prefer CBN stay out of defensive micromanaging.

JMO.

 

Giving up quick tds gets the ball back to the offense quickly and we were pretty successful doing that quite often.