WMD's Armchair QB: Roadkill Edition

[War Machine Dawg]

Gents, the Roadkill Edition of Armchair QB is up for your enjoyment at FWTCT (http://www.forwhomthecowbelltolls.com/2014/8/31/6090807/wmd-armchair-qb-roadkill-edition-mississippi-state-southern-miss-dan-mull-dak-prescott). You know the drill. Click, read, post. Let's talk Mustard Buzzard beatdown. Go!

[thf24]

Good stuff as usual. The only comment that comes to mind for me is that I was fine with our punt return yardage since they were kicking it so short and covering well, but the handling of those short punts was horrendous. Quit lining up to receive a 45 yard punt when they're only kicking it 30, and above all, get up to it and fair catch it if you're outside the the 10. We looked tentative handling punts all night no matter who was back there, and that's going to lead to disasters vs. SEC teams.

[Bass Chaser]

I agree good stuff.

Really excited to see Jay Hughes with a big game after the torn achilles.

I don't understand why we can't fair catch a punt. I was excited to see Redmon and Cox on KO return but then we bobbled it.

Thought Nick James played more than just the 4th but then again I had a hard time telling 98 from 88.

The sound system is going to have to be redone so it's distributed throughout. We sit in section 20 and I couldn't tell what was playing half the time. We have friends in the Sky Dog section and they thought it sounded great. With the speakers in the top of the south video board I guess the sounds just goes out of the stadium.

[RougeDawg]

Good points.

I agree with the crowd being more quiet when we have the ball. It sounded like we were on defense during a few drives we has the ball.

Yes, those uniforms were awesome. We need to keep those forever, if Nike is going to keep the rights to the helmet logo.

[sandwolf]

Good write up. But regarding the comment about there not being as many explosive plays as you would have liked to see, what do you consider to be an explosive play? We had 5 TD's that came from pass plays of over 20 yards (and 1 of those was a 35 yard pass), and then we had the blocked FG that was returned.....I would consider all of those to be fairly explosive.

[War Machine Dawg]

Good stuff as usual. The only comment that comes to mind for me is that I was fine with our punt return yardage since they were kicking it so short and covering well, but the handling of those short punts was horrendous. Quit lining up to receive a 45 yard punt when they're only kicking it 30, and above all, get up to it and fair catch it if you're outside the the 10. We looked tentative handling punts all night no matter who was back there, and that's going to lead to disasters vs. SEC teams.

Good point. And USM definitely has a damn good punter. Maybe not the strongest leg, but gets great hang time and is very good kicking directionally. But you're dead on about not adjusting the depth of our returner once we saw the strategy. That's part of our shitty ST coaching.

[War Machine Dawg]

I agree good stuff.

Really excited to see Jay Hughes with a big game after the torn achilles.

I don't understand why we can't fair catch a punt. I was excited to see Redmon and Cox on KO return but then we bobbled it.

Thought Nick James played more than just the 4th but then again I had a hard time telling 98 from 88.

The sound system is going to have to be redone so it's distributed throughout. We sit in section 20 and I couldn't tell what was playing half the time. We have friends in the Sky Dog section and they thought it sounded great. With the speakers in the top of the south video board I guess the sounds just goes out of the stadium.

Totally forgot to mention that we're supposed to be putting in a new directional sound system over the 2015 offseason. But we've got to do something short term to fix the issue, because it will be a problem this year.

Yeah, I thought James got in early too, but it was Virges. Don't think it'll be long before NJ overtakes Virges if he keeps it up, though.

[War Machine Dawg]

Good write up. But regarding the comment about there not being as many explosive plays as you would have liked to see, what do you consider to be an explosive play? We had 5 TD's that came from pass plays of over 20 yards (and 1 of those was a 35 yard pass), and then we had the blocked FG that was returned.....I would consider all of those to be fairly explosive.

For me, it's plays of 25+ yards. Like I said, we had some. Just thought we'd have hit a few more than we did. But some of that is the result of playing vanilla and not going play action much. I'm certainly not concerned about it yet. The FG block was awesome, though. Smith started a DL jailbreak, then the ball bounced up perfectly for Hughes to grab it in stride.

[War Machine Dawg]

Something I forgot to add: The USM QB is one tough dude. He took a Kevin Fant quality beating and kept getting up. Hats off to that dude, he'll be a good one for the Buzzards before he leaves.

And as much as I wanted the shutout, I was a little disappointed they didn't score. They needed to put points up for the sake of their program and team morale. But they did move the ball pretty well, all things considered. And their goal line stand, while sucking for us, was a big moment. They've definitely got some things to build off going forward this season. Don't know if that will translate to more wins, but they shouldn't be overly depressed by the shutout, either.

[War Machine Dawg]

Monday morning bump.