In no particular order:
1. Elijah Staley's pass looked beautiful. Don't know if he can do anything else, but he looks like a natural throwing a deep ball. I can see why Dan would be enamored with somebody his size, with his athleticism, that can put touch on a ball like that.
2. Myles knows how to play with the ball in his hands. I liked seeing him come in motion and then running the option out of basically a pro set. We're going to have to find more ways to get him and our other receivers touches if we're going to be primarily using Shumpert at RB.
3. Ross seems off to me. Last year, he was just a player that to me was calming. I know he had a drop of a sure long touchdown pass last year, but for the most part, I wasn't worried about him having drops, fumbling the ball, making poor decisions. I really thought he was going to have a special season this year. I don't think the stats back it up at all, but he just seems less sure of himself.
4. We have an embarassment of riches at WR. Out of Bear, Ross, Brown, Myles, Morrow, and Gray, I think you can take just about any combination of two or three players and be as good as our best two or three WR on any team since Moulds left. Outside of Bear and Ross (and maybe Myles if we start using him more), I'd happily RS any of them if it meant we could have them another year when we could use them more.
5. Dear is an intriguing player.
6. Lee is the only RB I saw that looked like he might be the answer running the ball. Shumpert, even when he was breaking good runs, just didn't look like he had a second gear, even playing against an FCS team. Williams looked a little better than Shumpert but looks like going to him would be giving up size without picking up enough in the speed/agility department. Of the three, Lee actually looked the most like he was on a different level from Northwestern St's players. Considering Lee was basically run as fourth string, I'm assuming this is a combination of wishful thinking and Lee running later in the game when people were tired. Not really related to this game, but Holloway has been way better than expected.
7. Offense played as cleanly as you can ask for. Not much more they could have gotten out of this game.
8. On Defense, a lot of people played. About all you can say. I feel like these games are a lot more useful to offenses than to defenses. If you're lucky, maybe the FCS team helps expose an area where your players need better communication or need work as far as alignments go.
9. I think we have enough playmakers on offense that we can be successful. The question is whether we can consistently get the ball to them. Shumpert is going to be our main back, so we're going to have to figure out how to extend our run game with handoffs to slots, screen passes, etc. Something to keep defenses honest so that Dak can be a running threat also. I'm not sure an "extended" running game is really going to be as effective as say a Dak and bowling back would be, so Dak will also really have to step up as a distributor. I think he can do that but it's definitely not what I expected our offense to look like this year.
10. If the offense isn't unstoppable, I'm not sure our D can get the job done. We did a good job against LSU, but I think they basically played into our strength. That said, Bama should play into our defense's strength too. So should Arkansas (and they don't look good regardless). Auburn looks bad right now. Mizzou looks bad. UK is UK and we play them at home. That's 5 games against offenses that either play to our D's strengths, or are just inept, and four of those games are should wins for us.
All in all, we have as easy a road to 4 SEC wins as I can remember seeing since Dan got here, so we still have a very good shot at 8 wins. We should have a puncher's chance against Bama. A&M is still an unknown to me. I'm hoping they are somewhat of a paper tiger like last year, but as of right now I expect a road loss there; that's more of a managing expectations than really thinking A&M turned a corner that quickly. I think people are giving UM way too much credit, but I also think they match up well against us. If nothing changes on our D, they are going to dink and dunk us down the field with the occasional big play deep b/c our safeties are out of position or just don't make a play. Not sure if home field will over come that or not.
