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Overreaction to One Game
Recognizing that it's a little bit silly to overreact to one game, I think there are a few real negatives from Saturday that have changed my outlook for the season.
1. We do not have, or are not going to use, a good option at RB. I like Holloway, but he is a specialist. I was hoping that Lee or WIlliams would step up and be our second Rb and would be better than Shumpert at running the ball. I find it hard to believe that Mullen would be planning to use Lee or Williams in that role and not get them meaningful playing time the week before LSU. So either Mullen really, really, mismanaged substitutions in this game on an epic scale, or Holloway is going to be our second back. That means for us to be good, Shumpert, contrary to how he looked on saturday, will have to be a total package back, doing everything for us and and playing the vast majority of the snaps, with Holloway being used as a specialist. Or, our passing game will have to be good enough that we can rely primarily on it to open things up for our running game. I don't feel good about either of those options working out for us.
2. We are too thin at DT to be really successful in the SEC West. This may sound a little silly since our DL was probably one of our bright spots, but I think we needed Cory Thomas to be good for us this year (and in the future). Again, I can't believe that Mullen would be relying on him this season and not get him experience before LSU. To me, that means we are realying on James, Jones, and Adams to basically carry the load at DT. I'm just not sure 3 high quality DTs is enough in the SEC, especially when at least one of them still gets winded relatively quickly.
All the other stuff I feel fine chalking up to first game jitters and/or game planning. Obviously our DBs didn't look good, but that could have easily been us playing very vanilla (although saying that gives me bad flashbacks to 2012). People keep complaining about Warren, but I didn't think our Oline looked any worse than last year.
The one thing I saw that sort of made me feel better is that Mullen seemed to be in a good mood after the game. I feel like he obviously knows whether they're going to be good or not, and I can't imagine him being that relaxed and comfortable if he didn't think we were in good shape based on what he had seen in practice. That, or he is a well adjusted person that will be happy as long as his wonderful family is healthy and happy and he has enough material wealth to make them comfortable, which I think we can all agree is a terrible quality for an SEC head coach to have.
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The Liberation will not be televised--- when it arrives like lightning in the skies!
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The most funny thing about State fans over reacting to the win negativily, Ole Miss fans did the same with their game but the oposite direction. They seriously think they have a running game and the QB's are going to be really good.
Bottom line is this: We played with a limited playbook and USM gave us all they had. Ole Miss played a gloryfied highschool team and use a lot of their play book.
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RB is still a huge concern for me. Shump is very, very good at some things, but he's not not a natural instictive runner and thus leaves yards on the field.
Seeing Holloway go up the middle gave me terrible flashbacks to the Perk years. BH looked good on some sweeps and would have had a nice swing pass gain if Dak had thrown a decent ball.
I haven't seen enough of Lee or Williams to know if they are any different. Lots of praise for Shump from teammates this offseason so maybe it will look differently Saturday.
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Put it to bed the WIN is over and dead. Saturday can change the narrative. It's LSU week.
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I'm going to laugh when Shump runs for 150 Saturday night.
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There is nothing wrong with Shump. Dude is a baller. He will enter beast mode and get those yards next week. Mark it down.
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Here is my thing about Shump, & I've been one saying that Lee is a more natural runner.
including Saturday night, we've never seen Shump carry the load in a game & I think that's what he is built for.
Shump's style of running is going to look bad when he only gets 3 or 4 carries in a game, but when he gets 20 carries, I believe the beauty of him will shine through.
If Shump gets 20 carries Saturday night, I believe he will have close to 150 yards.
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I agree. Shump is a 20+ carry back. It won't always look flashy or pretty, but I think we will be alright with him. Plus, we didn't show much offensively or defensively. Had a couple of miscues on special teams, but cleaned up our play the second half. Got out healthy, didn't show much on either side of the ball, when Dak did run it was effective, ect. This weekend is when we are going to let our Dak hang out and show the naysayers what we are all about.
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Originally Posted by
archdog
There is nothing wrong with Shump. Dude is a baller. He will enter beast mode and get those yards next week. Mark it down.
This is the best comparison. Shump is just like Beast Mode, the more carries you give him the stronger he seems to get. Shump having 20+ carries on Saturday means we will eat LSU's lunch (or dinner as it were) in the 4th quarter.
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Dak did say in his post game presser that he expected Lee and Williams to see increased playing time this season. Take that for what it is worth. Since I have been negative on the game I will state what I thought was one positive. While he never threw the ball Fitz looked very good in his runs. Made me think it would be fun seeing him run the triple option with Shump and Holloway.
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Fitz looked great on his runs. We're going to be just fine at QB for the forseeable future.
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