PFF Salt in the Tutorgate wound

[Todd4State]

Marcus Murphy on Saturday- no catches allowed in his zone on Saturday and one TD on one INT.

He should/probably would be our starting safety right now at one of what has been our most glaring issues on defense all year long.

[msbulldog]

Yep he's had a tough year.

[Bdawg]

He did miss a tackle that on the RB that took it to the house but i still agree. We are missing him in our backfield.

[MetEdDawg]

I will continue to say that although moorhead has a lot he needed to fix and change this year, that having Autry, Gay, Murphy, Whop, and Kwatrivious would have changed this team completely.

I think we beat both Kansas State and Tennessee. Again, doesn't negate the arguments of us needing to be tougher or more physical or more prepared. But our season and outlook is completely different with those 5 guys. 3 of those are starters and the other 2 would have logged helpful minutes, especially special K on the OL with all the injuries.

[Interpolation_Dawg_EX]

Word is we were trying to redshirt Murphy this year due to all his life circumstances, but the tutorgate ended any hope of that.

Side note, how does the fact that we're under probation and depth at the QB and RB is going to be young affect what we do with Moorhead and who could replace him if he were to leave?

[HoopsDawg]

I will continue to say that although moorhead has a lot he needed to fix and change this year, that having Autry, Gay, Murphy, Whop, and Kwatrivious would have changed this team completely.

I think we beat both Kansas State and Tennessee. Again, doesn't negate the arguments of us needing to be tougher or more physical or more prepared. But our season and outlook is completely different with those 5 guys. 3 of those are starters and the other 2 would have logged helpful minutes, especially special K on the OL with all the injuries.

Everyone was available vs Tennessee.

[Lord McBuckethead]

I will continue to say that although moorhead has a lot he needed to fix and change this year, that having Autry, Gay, Murphy, Whop, and Kwatrivious would have changed this team completely.

I think we beat both Kansas State and Tennessee. Again, doesn't negate the arguments of us needing to be tougher or more physical or more prepared. But our season and outlook is completely different with those 5 guys. 3 of those are starters and the other 2 would have logged helpful minutes, especially special K on the OL with all the injuries.

easy to look unprepared, when not having these guys requires you to play people not ready for the situation.

[Lord McBuckethead]

Everyone was available vs Tennessee.

Yeah, but guys jumping in and out of the lineup all season also has great issues for the unit's function. Obviously people can understand that.

[Liverpooldawg]

Everyone was available vs Tennessee.

It's still not the same thing as having them for every game. They have a term for it in soccer: being match fit. That includes mental as well as physical fitness to function at your top level with the team. You do that by playing. That's hard to do when you only play 4 games scattered over the whole season.

[defiantdog]

It's still not the same thing as having them for every game. They have a term for it in soccer: being match fit. That includes mental as well as physical fitness to function at your top level with the team. You do that by playing. That's hard to do when you only play 4 games scattered over the whole season.

Exactly..... it also doesn?t help when these guys aren?t practicing with the 1?s until the week they play.

[Really Clark?]

And the suspended players had exactly what to do with us only scoring 10 vs Tenn? KST was held to 24 points by the defense (7 was on our “special” special teams). Or the fact at KST got an INT at midfield which lead to 3 points and a fumble recovery at our 30 that lead to 7 points. They also gifted us turnovers that lead to points.

[shoeless joe]

Just further proves that it was a selfish move on the part of the players. They put their own academic laziness above the university and the team.

But in no way shape or form does that absolve jomo from the horrible job he has done as our head coach.

[msudawg1200]

At least all should be good for the Egg Bowl

[shrimp]

Word is we were trying to redshirt Murphy this year due to all his life circumstances, but the tutorgate ended any hope of that.

Side note, how does the fact that we're under probation and depth at the QB and RB is going to be young affect what we do with Moorhead and who could replace him if he were to leave?

Is he still not eligible to redshirt if he only plays 4 games?

[Tbonewannabe]

It's still not the same thing as having them for every game. They have a term for it in soccer: being match fit. That includes mental as well as physical fitness to function at your top level with the team. You do that by playing. That's hard to do when you only play 4 games scattered over the whole season.

I would agree but the way our entire program looked coming off a bye week was horrific. It would have taken a player leader like Dak to overcome the lack of energy and focus from the coaching staff that week. There isn't a handful of games that I have ever seen that level of not give a shit from the head coach down to the water boy. I am not sure if it was as evident on TV as it was at the game.

[Really Clark?]

Is he still not eligible to redshirt if he only plays 4 games?

No. You can?t redshirt through a suspension

[Tbonewannabe]

Is he still not eligible to redshirt if he only plays 4 games?

I believe it was said that the player loses 8 playable games so if they redshirted then they would still have 8 games to sit out.

[Liverpooldawg]

I believe it was said that the player loses 8 playable games so if they redshirted then they would still have 8 games to sit out.

This is correct. They lose eight games of eligibility. They can not redshirt the suspension away.

[confucius say]

This is correct. They lose eight games of eligibility. They can not redshirt the suspension away.

And apparently we had to designate the 8 games prior to the season. Had not heard that until last week.

We got a waiver to change autry from playing vs ark to playing against usm due to injuries the week of the usm game.

[Bdawg]

I would agree but the way our entire program looked coming off a bye week was horrific. It would have taken a player leader like Dak to overcome the lack of energy and focus from the coaching staff that week. There isn't a handful of games that I have ever seen that level of not give a shit from the head coach down to the water boy. I am not sure if it was as evident on TV as it was at the game.

It was.

[trojandawg]

I will continue to say that although moorhead has a lot he needed to fix and change this year, that having Autry, Gay, Murphy, Whop, and Kwatrivious would have changed this team completely.

I think we beat both Kansas State and Tennessee. Again, doesn't negate the arguments of us needing to be tougher or more physical or more prepared. But our season and outlook is completely different with those 5 guys. 3 of those are starters and the other 2 would have logged helpful minutes, especially special K on the OL with all the injuries.

Lol completely different? What. A. Joke.

[Todd4State]

And the suspended players had exactly what to do with us only scoring 10 vs Tenn? KST was held to 24 points by the defense (7 was on our ?special? special teams). Or the fact at KST got an INT at midfield which lead to 3 points and a fumble recovery at our 30 that lead to 7 points. They also gifted us turnovers that lead to points.

Hindsight (maybe- we'll see) shows us that Stevens was clearly not 100% for either K-State or Tennessee. That's another subject. And I say that absolutely expecting him to look horrible against Bama. If he isn't hurt against them.

That said- Joe should not have played Stevens hurt. That was irresponsible and not a good decision in any way shape or form. I could tell from watching warm ups that Stevens was off- I would imagine that he looked just as bad in practice that week. Which again is another subject.

I do think that our season is better with a healthy Stevens and the Tutor Gate starters for sure. No question in my mind about that. And no- I don't think Joe is the guy nor do I want him to stay after this year. But if we are being objective there have been some things that have been critically bad for us that is out of the control of Joe. Unfortunately for Joe I can't look past the things that are his fault to give him a complete pass. With better discipline and S&C we also probably have two more wins anyway. And yet another year of underachieving.

[Todd4State]

Lol completely different? What. A. Joke.

Why is it a joke? Defensively with the Tutor Gate players goes from 30 PPG to 19 PPG. And yes- the competition is worse- but even if you go +/- 7-10 PPG to account for the competition that's still pretty significant. I don't think anyone can argue that we're better with them playing. And I should mention that two of Arkansas's scores were in garbage time since some of our fans don't count garbage time for the offense- in fairness it shouldn't count against the defense either.

[MetEdDawg]

Lol completely different? What. A. Joke.

You must not watch football. Our most experienced DT, our best LB, and what seems to be potentially our best safety have played in 33% of our games and none of them in consecutive weeks. You don't think that completely changes the complexion of a team from a leadership and field experience/talent perspective?

Add to that Special K was going to rotate in this year on OL and we could have used that when we had multiple OL down in multiple games this year. And Whop could have solidified our WR rotation.

I get the Joe hate, but I don't understand how people don't see this. I really don't. If you don't think those 3 defensive guys being present for K State wouldn't have made a difference then you just can't think for yourself. It's shocking people like yourself and others don't think them playing every game wouldn't have made a difference on this season.

[Cooterpoot]

A win over a god awful AR sure has changed some tunes here.

[MetEdDawg]

A win over a god awful AR sure has changed some tunes here.

Nope. There are just still some of us objective people that can say we are still off the Moorhead train, yet still recognize this season would look different with those 5 guys on this team full time and playing every Saturday. This is where myself and a few others are. People that can actually look objectively at things like this and make an informed, non-emotional observation and still think we need to make a change.

I would say I'm shocked this is such a hard concept given the black and white approach our fan base has to literally everything, but I'm really not.

[basedog]

A win over a god awful AR sure has changed some tunes here.

Maybe a little but winning is important, let's see how this plays out.

[Cooterpoot]

Murphy wasn’t the starter coming out of camp. Now some of that was due to the bad stuff going on with him and that’s understandable but Moorhead leaving a hurt QB in and starting him were terrible decisions. Being a complete shit show at TN was on him and this staff too. AR and those three potential starters don’t change that. Moorhead will be back and there’s going to be a ton of change in the staff. But he’s not going to agree to certain changes IMO and that’s going to create a problem. We’ll see. Beating AR doesn’t change my opinion that he’s in over his head and his offense isn’t a good fit for our program.

[TrapGame]

A win over a god awful AR sure has changed some tunes here.

Since the moment the game clock hit all zeroes. We won. It gets us closer to making a bowl. As I've posted ad nauseum, we ran the same plays vs Arkansas that we did against LSU/AU/A&M/UT but the difference is Arkansas has the slowest defense in the conference.

[HailStateSZN19]

Murphy wasn’t the starter coming out of camp. Now some of that was due to the bad stuff going on with him and that’s understandable but Moorhead leaving a hurt QB in and starting him were terrible decisions. Being a complete shit show at TN was on him and this staff too. AR and those three potential starters don’t change that. Moorhead will be back and there’s going to be a ton of change in the staff. But he’s not going to agree to certain changes IMO and that’s going to create a problem. We’ll see. Beating AR doesn’t change my opinion that he’s in over his head and his offense isn’t a good fit for our program.

What staff changes do you see as almost a certainty and are there any assistants looking to move on their own? And I would assume one of the changes he wouldn't agree to that you're insinuating would have to be hiring a legit OC to handle game day play calling, would that be correct? Because that would be one of the ones I would demand he do so that he can focus on other things on game day and become a "CEO" type coach.

[trojandawg]

the completely different is the issue i have with it. it's doesn't make our defense completely different. there are a bunch of other players on that defense than the 3 missing. The problem with the defense is the players we lost last year not the suspended players.

[TrapGame]

Murphy wasn’t the starter coming out of camp. Now some of that was due to the bad stuff going on with him and that’s understandable but Moorhead leaving a hurt QB in and starting him were terrible decisions. Being a complete shit show at TN was on him and this staff too. AR and those three potential starters don’t change that. Moorhead will be back and there’s going to be a ton of change in the staff. But he’s not going to agree to certain changes IMO and that’s going to create a problem. We’ll see. Beating AR doesn’t change my opinion that he’s in over his head and his offense isn’t a good fit for our program.

The culture is being changed from pit bulls to labradoodles. That's Moorhead. He's a soft coach that runs a soft program.

[trojandawg]

i actually watch a lot of football and played a lot on defense. I understand a lot about leadership and missing players. Those three players are not causing us to be terrible on defense almost every week. a lot of the problems lie at what we lost in graduation and the draft. Arkansas is the worst team in the SEC in several decades. Same players played against Tennessee who also isn't great on offense. The three missing players are not the reason we are blowing coverages all over the field, not being in alignment. We have veteran linebackers. we have veterans at defensive end. Those guys have been non existent. They have played down all year. A lot of it is their attitude this year and their strength and conditioning to be ready to play. We don't have a very high football IQ on defense right now. Our pursuit to the football is terrible even with those three guys in the game. as i've mentioned, we have lose guys in coverage constantly. that's not knowing the responsibilities they have and trusting their team mate to cover who they are susposed to cover. I see our DE's getting blown off the ball or running themselves out of the play. Same things with our veteran linebackers. We took a huge step back in the coaching with our DLine and Linebackers this year. It's a lot of things rolled in to this. It's youth from graduation and the draft, a lack of leadership and alpha dogs that didn't step up, lack of talent in some areas on the defense, lack of conditioning/strength, lack of discipline, lack of attitude, and lack of fundamentals (tackling, angles, gap control, coverage).

So no, it's not just on the suspensions. That only plays a small part of what's wrong with the defense this year. I'm giving shoop a pass on the injuries, suspensions, and youth. The rest I am not. We made two poor coaching hires on the defense. linebackers took a step back. defensive ends took a step back. our conditioning and discipline is terrible. our tackling has been terrible. that's on Shoop and Moorhead. Teams all over the country are playing with youth but they tackle better than we do and are disciplined in their gap control, pursuit and coverage.

[Really Clark?]

I was glad for the win. And in dominate fashion. I always want to win and it made my Sat a little nicer. Mainly having a great fall festival at church with the largest youth turnout we ever had made it a great day, fun and great fellowship.

That said, ARK was not only bad but they quit from the first drive. Three straight games of giving up 51, 48, and 54 points (47 scored by our offense). But in our other 12 SEC games the last 2 seasons we are averaging 17.17 points per game. ARK the last 2 years accounts for 32.68% of our SEC offensive points scored the last two years. For reference in our 16 SEC games in 2016-2017, when you throw out our highest 2 games, we averaged 22.86 offensive points per game and 23.8% of our total offensive scoring came from the two highest game’s. (I believe I have accounted for all of the defensive and return scores to just count offensive and kicking points) We have really inflated our scoring against ARK the last two years. Again, nothing bad about winning and I am ecstatic about it, just think ARK is so bad that it has inflated the perception some.

[MetEdDawg]

the completely different is the issue i have with it. it's doesn't make our defense completely different. there are a bunch of other players on that defense than the 3 missing. The problem with the defense is the players we lost last year not the suspended players.

This is incorrect. The answer is BOTH!

How do you not see this. It's not one or the other. I just don't understand how you think having Willie Gay on the field for every game is a net zero gain for us. Makes no damn sense. Same for Autry. And same for Murphy. All the shit Leo gets and you are saying him playing less and Gay playing more doesn't change things?? Baffles me you can believe that.

I'll continue to say it. Moorhead right now needs to go. But anyone saying Gay and Autry and Murphy being available for 12 games instead of 4 non consecutive games doesn't help us out is an idiot. Would we still have issues? Yes. Is there a decent likelihood we have at least 1 more win on the record? Yes. Wouldn't mean problems don't exist.

It's ok to admit tutor gate affected the team negatively, that we would be better with them, but still also think Moorhead needs to go. Too many on this board thinks saying tutor gate affected us means you support Moorhead. It doesn't. It just means you support common sense and rational thinking.

[trojandawg]

i didn't say it wouldn't help us out. I'm taking an issue with saying that it makes us completely different like it sounds like you saying that it makes a much better defense. It only slightly bumps how good we are. and you are correct its everything. It's not just the suspensions that make us bad on defense. that's the problem i have with your original post is blaming the woes of the defense solely on the suspensions. having those 3 guys back every game would not suddenly turn our defense back in to a top 25 defense again. the issue is bigger than 3 players.

[BB30]

You must not watch football. Our most experienced DT, our best LB, and what seems to be potentially our best safety have played in 33% of our games and none of them in consecutive weeks. You don't think that completely changes the complexion of a team from a leadership and field experience/talent perspective?

Add to that Special K was going to rotate in this year on OL and we could have used that when we had multiple OL down in multiple games this year. And Whop could have solidified our WR rotation.

I get the Joe hate, but I don't understand how people don't see this. I really don't. If you don't think those 3 defensive guys being present for K State wouldn't have made a difference then you just can't think for yourself. It's shocking people like yourself and others don't think them playing every game wouldn't have made a difference on this season.

Because they are terrified that if they admit that it was a problem then Joe will somehow be absolved from any criticism which isn't factual.

I think most people should be able to admit it was a pretty big deal losing what we lost along with all of the injuries especially in our secondary and still get on JOMO for his coaching issues.

[BB30]

i didn't say it wouldn't help us out. I'm taking an issue with saying that it makes us completely different like it sounds like you saying that it makes a much better defense. It only slightly bumps how good we are. and you are correct its everything. It's not just the suspensions that make us bad on defense. that's the problem i have with your original post is blaming the woes of the defense solely on the suspensions. having those 3 guys back every game would not suddenly turn our defense back in to a top 25 defense again. the issue is bigger than 3 players.

Counting suspensions and injuries it absolutely would make our defense quite a bit better. Missing what would be 5 starters on an already depleted defense from last year is a lot to overcome. Experience is everything, hell, in the A and M game we had 3 freshman in the secondary at times if I am not mistaken and it's not like we are running 5* freshman corners out there. Most of our young guys in the secondary are talented but they aren't elite freshmen.

You lose:
Simmons
Sweat
Abram

Then you lose 3 more starters to suspension and a couple to injury and that is just too much for a defense to overcome. Too much youth on the field. We have been rotating freshmen all over the place. It was a tough hand of cards to deal with.

[Tbonewannabe]

Counting suspensions and injuries it absolutely would make our defense quite a bit better. Missing what would be 5 starters on an already depleted defense from last year is a lot to overcome. Experience is everything, hell, in the A and M game we had 3 freshman in the secondary at times if I am not mistaken and it's not like we are running 5* freshman corners out there. Most of our young guys in the secondary are talented but they aren't elite freshmen.

You lose:
Simmons
Sweat
Abram

Then you lose 3 more starters to suspension and a couple to injury and that is just too much for a defense to overcome. Too much youth on the field. We have been rotating freshmen all over the place. It was a tough hand of cards to deal with.

I think if we weren't so out of shape and the effort was there 100% of the time then a lot of people wouldn't complain about it as much. I think if we didn't look as bad as we do then more people would give him a pass for this season due to suspensions and injuries. It is one thing to have freshmen not have a year in the system and look soft and not quite ready, it is another thing to have your possible All SEC LB look soft and out of shape.

[Jack Lambert]

His next game will be Ole Miss and they can't throw worth a crap.

[Jack Lambert]

I think if we weren't so out of shape and the effort was there 100% of the time then a lot of people wouldn't complain about it as much. I think if we didn't look as bad as we do then more people would give him a pass for this season due to suspensions and injuries. It is one thing to have freshmen not have a year in the system and look soft and not quite ready, it is another thing to have your possible All SEC LB look soft and out of shape.

I am not disagreeing but the football player has some responsibility him self. This is SEC football. It' a whole different level. That alone should motivate you to stay later and work harder. Hill is in the same S&C program but he is a beast. Ask your self why?

[R2Dawg]

I am not disagreeing but the football player has some responsibility him self. This is SEC football. It' a whole different level. That alone should motivate you to stay later and work harder. Hill is in the same S&C program but he is a beast. Ask your self why?

I agree but Hill is an exception though. He can in as a true frosh and looked like he had been a D1 player for 3 years. In general, we have looked slow and out of shape on D. The one player that has digressed in last 3 years most in that area is Errol Thompson. He runs like a DL now.

[trojandawg]

i would also add it's the job of the coaching staff to motivate those who aren't self motivated like Kylin to get 150% out of them. They only think they are giving 100% and everything they got. The coach has to push the limits.

[Tbonewannabe]

I am not disagreeing but the football player has some responsibility him self. This is SEC football. It' a whole different level. That alone should motivate you to stay later and work harder. Hill is in the same S&C program but he is a beast. Ask your self why?

If you figure out how to give everyone self motivation, make yourself a Billion dollars. Most people whether they have the ability or not struggle with maximizing their potential. Even NFL players struggle with that at times and they are at the top of the pyramid.

I think our biggest problem was Moorhead either gave the S&C coach too much leeway or just didn't give any oversight. I don't know how much input a normal Head Coach has but Moorhead definitely has some issues here.