Random thoughts, late as the game edition:
ETA: This was a big one I forgot, but are we just awful at running the read option, or have teams just figured out how to defend it. Seems like we are making the wrong read half the time.
A lot of these are repeats, but:
1. Again, we're not very good. Not just talent wise; we don't execute and we look poorly coached. That's somewhat inexplicable to me.
2. I think this has been a perfect storm of bad luck to combine with mistakes by Dan. I just think we have a terrible mix of personalities. If we hadn't had Dak, maybe some of our players would have grown into better leaders, but as it is, the players just don't have it. The lack of talent is on Dan; I don't think it's on Dan that our current players don't have it. Sometimes you don't know how people will respond until they get there. I would have never expected Ross to shrink from the opportunity.
3. Fred Ross has been extremely disappointing. He was a guy that was supposed to help smooth the transition away from Dak and even though he's a good target, his drops are killers.
4. It looks like Mullen has completely screwed the pooch with respect to playing time for Aeres Williams. Even though his stats weren't good, he showed enough to make it clear that he can do things that Shumpert and Holloway can't, and he's good enough that if it's just a matter of making mistakes, he should have been getting the lion's share of touches all year. If Williams has discipline and attitude issues, that's one thing. But if it's just making mistakes while playing hard, he's a big enough upgrade over Holloway and Shumpert that we should have been taking our licks with him all year. That said, I still don't think Williams is that good; but he's our best option right now.
5. People complaining about Fitzgerald are idiots. There are certainly sophomore qbs that are further along than him, but he's pretty solid for us. Also, for all the sophomore qbs that are better than him, I'm not sure how many of them could play behind the shitburger of an Oline he has and not become total basket cases. We'll see if he continues to improve, but QB is the only position on offense I feel like we are pretty set at going forward.
6. Defense actually showed some promise. We're not going to be good this year because of our inability to defend the pass, but Leo Lewis and Simmons and Spencer provide three solid playmakers to build around on defense. If we can put talent around them, I think our defense could be good the next few years.
7. Not much to get optimistic about on offense. Fitzgerald I am actually happy with. Dear I'm hoping can live up to some of teh promist he showed in limited time last year; he doesn't look as explosive to me this year. Mixon looks like he'll be a good playmaker, but not sure he'll have the size to be a primary playmaker in the SEC. Beyond that...
8. Our Oline looks to continue to be a few years away from being serviceable. Senior is incredibly disappointing to me. He seemed serviceable two years ago. Now he seems a little worse than that.
9. We at least looked like we played hard. That's encouraging to see, but also depressing that this team is bad enough that playing hard doesn't guarantee a victory against BYU, and doubly depressing that seeing them play hard and compete is reason for encouragement rather than the baseline of expectations.
10. We really need to have a youth movement. We're not beating anybody but Samford and possibly Kentucky. Beyond that, we don't need to be playing any junior or senior more than half the game unless having a the underclassman play would require that we burn a redshirt or potentially get Fitzgerald killed.
