Originally Posted by
Johnson85
1. Can't say enough about Holloway's improvement. He's making a lot of people (including me) look stupid for their "he's a track guy playing football" comments. He has learned how to run the ball. Even saw him with a good block in pass protection. There's still a limit as to what you can do with a back his size, but he is a solid back-up RB that gives you a home runt threat, not just a gimmick/specialist player to give the ball to two or three times a game.
2. Nothing more to say about Shumpert. He's a good bulldog and does a lot of things well that will keep him on the field. He got 5 carries, which is probably the minimum you can give your primary back without D's basically selling out to stop anybody but him.
3. Malik Dear looks like a JRob clone. Wish we could get him closer to 10 touches a game. I'd like to see him used in the option the way Myles is. Or ideally, I'd like to see him replace SHumpert on teh same play. Surely if we had the option of handing off to Dear one way, or Myles the otherway, or Dak keep it on the read people would have to respect all three options and we could get some running yards.
4. I've always said that Russell didn't have a chance to succeed b/c he didn't have the receivers, not because Mullen was that incapable of calling plays for a pocket passer. We're basically getting to see that offense now, except with D's having to respect Dak's ability to scramble a little more. Clearly the O would have been better with 4 legit WR threats. I'm not sure if it would have resulted in a lot more wins. Just not sure you can pass your way down the field in the SEC like that and put up points without somebody to run the ball for 3 yards when you need it. Sumlin has always had more of a run threat than we showed yesterday. And back in the day when Florida was a fun and gun offense, they still tried to establish the run.
5. I am not expecting anything from A. Williams and D. Lee, ever. They are either not good, in which case their off the field and practice effort and attitude doesn't really matter. Or, they are good, and they see their head coach essentially choose to not have a running threat rather than play them. If the opportunity to be the primary ball carrier for a team that would be compete for the SEC championship couldn't get them motivated for practice, the weight room, the film room, and/or the playbook or whatever it is keeping them off the field, I'm just not expecting them to ever be motivated enough. Maybe they will mature, but shit, if sitting on the bench right now doesn't get them motivated to get their head straight, I'm certainly not going to expect it to happen. My assumption is that our back of the future is redshirting, is Malik Dear, or is playing JUCO right now.
6. I don't know if I've ever seen a less convincing defensive effort holding another team to single digits. It's hard to argue with the results, but Auburn kept the ball a long time and ate up a bunch of yards. I can believe that Manny's D will result in fewer points than average versus yards gained. I can believe that Manny's approach will result in better than average defensive results in the red zone. But I have to think that Saturday was something of an outlier and that many trips into the red zone and that many rushing yards will not usually result in less than 17 points, much less less than 10 points. The only question is would Manny have adjusted and done something different if they had put points on the board earlier. Was it just a calculated risk knowing that them running the ball downfield would burn time they didn't have to lose? I think we'll find out about our D next week.
7. Sort of a repeat of #4, I'm not sold on our offense yet. I know per possession, we did ok Saturday. And if you look points scored v. LSU after our O woke up, it looks ok. And our O v. USM was not really the problem as much as it was turnovers and special team mistakes. But we've played three teams with a pulse (a little more than a quarter of our schedule) and averaged 23.3 points per game, and we've averaged 18 points per game against the two SEC D's we've played (exactly a quarter of our SEC schedule). Certainly that's a small enough sample that it's not crazy to think those games are just outliers and the fact that we struggled on the road the opening game of the season, that we struggled against a good LSU D that matched up well against us, and that we had trouble getting the ball back on the road against a team that's got a good OC even if they are a little in disarray don't mean that we are going to struggle to score points all season. But we're getting to the point in the season where if you haven't put together an effort by the O, D, and special teams that allows points to be put on the board, it's reasonable to assume a low scoring team is just who you are.
8. Pretty obviously, I'm still not sure what we have with this team. I know we're at least a decent if not good team and that unlike many years, a decent team in the SEC West could get to 8 wins rather than the usual 6. I know we could be good if we had a few key young players get playing time and improve. Really just need the young players playing right now to improve and either for somebody to step up at RB, or us to really start clicking as a pass happy team. If we adjust our D for A&M and slow them down enough to win, that will mean we are a pretty good, if not very good team, right now, and pretty good will be good enough to have a chance to win every remaining game on our schedule even without a lot of improvement. If we get past A&M and then get a lot of improvement out of our young guys before we get to the last four games of the schedule, we could really have a year where we got luck with our scheduling and peaked at the right time. Right now my expectations are that Saturday determines whether we are an 8-4 team or a 9-3 team. I think that's pretty "low" expectations based on what we've seen so far. If we are not good we will lose against Bama and UM, but still should be favored against Ark (whose play matches up well for us), Mizzou (who can't score), and UK (who is improved but has to come to starkville), so it wouldn't take any crazy improvement for us to finish with only two more losses after A&M.
ETA:
9. Re-reading 1-8, that sounds pretty negative, but I'm obviously pretty happy with the program Mullen has put together. An 8-4 year this year woudl be a little bitter sweet just because the West looks so weak compared to normal, but we very likely are going to win 8 games in an odd number year, which is difficult for us to do. Moreover, we look to be in good shape for the next couple of years, not just based on reports from practice, but from actual on field results. We have two good options at QB. We still have good options at receiver with two years of eligiblity left. We have Elgton Jenkins at OT and Martinas Rankin at OT for two more years. We have Calhoun coming up and then Clayborne, so we don't have a ton of holes to fill on the Oline. On D, we are looking like LB U. Our young safeties should continue to get better. We'll take a step back at CB and really need some DTs, but have some good young players there. We should take a small step backwards next year with Dak, Chris Jones, and Bear leaving, even if the schedule is easier, but we should be in good position to step right back up the next year. Really is amazing the consistency that Mullen has apparently instilled in the program.
