Johnson85
09-08-2015, 08:43 AM
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.
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.