A few things Leach needs to do to be successful

Arnett literally left Syracuse after 2 weeks. He got no problem leaving if the right opportunity comes.

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Originally Posted by Homedawg

Yep. Started w candy who tried to zone us. Didn't work and they mixed the rest of the game. With that said, running it vs Missouri is the best thing we've done to help everything IMO.

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The biggest adjustment for us was with the offensive line. They were confused most of the year and I think our running backs took a big step forward against Missouri.

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Originally Posted by R2Dawg

To keep doing what you did 30 years ago is a recipe for failure in any field. He has never been in SEC. If he don't adapt a little he will not ultimately raise the bar any at MSU and likely lowers it.

As far as running the ball, MSU has known how to run the ball for decades. We don't have to learn the air raid to run the ball. He could have run the ball early in the year. j Actually would make sense to run it more if the excuse is we didn't have the players or had not learned the new O but we didn't do that. He had the SEC leading rusher on his team and we threw the ball all the the time.

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So far he has done everything that he has done at other stops and it has worked well there. I'm going to continue to side with him until it actually doesn't work after three years. He has earned that right from me as a fan because of his track record. Results don't always happen immediately. Especially when a coach picks up a team that is built completely the opposite of what Leach wants to do.

Read his book. And if you have read it again because you clearly don't understand the method behind his madness. He teaches his team the plays and forces them to master them. That only comes with reps. That also means that short term the results may not be pretty. It's a process approach but once the plays are mastered it looks a lot more like what we saw against Missouri.

We weren't running the ball because our offensive line was struggling badly. That's why our YPC pre-Missouri was abysmal. And Kylin wasn't helping us because he was tapping out after every carry. Not sure how much our line would have blocked for him after Kentucky anyway after the way he allegedly acted after the game. I think we're doing the right thing by not trying for another 6-7 type season so that we can have a potential 9-10 win season two-three years from now and then build from there.

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Originally Posted by Todd4State

The biggest adjustment for us was with the offensive line. They were confused most of the year and I think our running backs took a big step forward against Missouri.



So far he has done everything that he has done at other stops and it has worked well there. I'm going to continue to side with him until it actually doesn't work after three years. He has earned that right from me as a fan because of his track record. Results don't always happen immediately. Especially when a coach picks up a team that is built completely the opposite of what Leach wants to do.

Read his book. And if you have read it again because you clearly don't understand the method behind his madness. He teaches his team the plays and forces them to master them. That only comes with reps. That also means that short term the results may not be pretty. It's a process approach but once the plays are mastered it looks a lot more like what we saw against Missouri.

We weren't running the ball because our offensive line was struggling badly. That's why our YPC pre-Missouri was abysmal. And Kylin wasn't helping us because he was tapping out after every carry. Not sure how much our line would have blocked for him after Kentucky anyway after the way he allegedly acted after the game. I think we're doing the right thing by not trying for another 6-7 type season so that we can have a potential 9-10 win season two-three years from now and then build from there.

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I've said on many threads, I am willing to give Leach time but he didn't have to nuke our potential this year in my opinion. His very isolated success this year was by no means turning any corner as many have claimed.

Every coach preaches and practices repetition for execution excellence. Mullen, Saban, etc. That is nothing new, Leach didn't invent that. At the same time, any team that plays a perfect game is going to win. The key is not playing a perfect execution game and still winning because too many variables will ever let the stars line up too many times.

Well running the ball takes practice too and Leach obviously wasn't willing to invest in that pretty much all year and his track record says he is not going to invest much in running but my conviction is he has to in order to bring MSU to another level. I'm concerned we can't even maintain Moorhead win level after this year but as I said, we'll see what develops next year.

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Originally Posted by R2Dawg

Here we go again. Same thing after a half of UGA and the OleMiss game. We think we have solved something. Until we do it for a bunch of games in a row, we ain't proved nothing. Like Olemiss, I'm not convinced Mizzou is really any good.

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This is certainly true, but, with a bunch of FR & all first year players in this offense, it's not surprising that we're fairly inconsistent. That being said, the offense has been competent for 3 of the last 4 games. So it's coming

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Originally Posted by R2Dawg

1. Recruit like MSU has in the past at minimum. Get top Mississippi kids especially on D. Get the top JUCO players. Go get some key transfers in the portal.

2. Keep Arnett for several years at least to get the D re-established as one of best in SEC to help #1. He isn't going to stay forever but at least get some momentum.

3. Mix the run with the air raid. We saw what that can do vs Mizzou. We must be able to run the ball - get a short first down, run some clock with a lead, open up the passing game, keep D guessing (not jumping passing crossing routes or long screens).

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I think everyone is pretty much in agreement with this. The 75-80% pass Air Raid is not going to work in the SEC. Getting the run game to 35-40% is key to making it work.

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Originally Posted by Homedawg

Yep. Started w candy who tried to zone us. Didn't work and they mixed the rest of the game. With that said, running it vs Missouri is the best thing we've done to help everything IMO.

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Originally Posted by R2Dawg

To keep doing what you did 30 years ago is a recipe for failure in any field. He has never been in SEC. If he don't adapt a little he will not ultimately raise the bar any at MSU and likely lowers it.

As far as running the ball, MSU has known how to run the ball for decades. We don't have to learn the air raid to run the ball. He could have run the ball early in the year. j Actually would make sense to run it more if the excuse is we didn't have the players or had not learned the new O but we didn't do that. He had the SEC leading rusher on his team and we threw the ball all the the time.

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Originally Posted by R2Dawg

I've said on many threads, I am willing to give Leach time but he didn't have to nuke our potential this year in my opinion. His very isolated success this year was by no means turning any corner as many have claimed.

Every coach preaches and practices repetition for execution excellence. Mullen, Saban, etc. That is nothing new, Leach didn't invent that. At the same time, any team that plays a perfect game is going to win. The key is not playing a perfect execution game and still winning because too many variables will ever let the stars line up too many times.

Well running the ball takes practice too and Leach obviously wasn't willing to invest in that pretty much all year and his track record says he is not going to invest much in running but my conviction is he has to in order to bring MSU to another level. I'm concerned we can't even maintain Moorhead win level after this year but as I said, we'll see what develops next year.

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You're acting like he took over MSU 2018 instead of a 6-7 team with major culture issues. We won the same amount of SEC games that we won last year and would have been 6-6 with our OOC schedule so we're already at Moorhead level.

If you don't start to rebuild now then when do you rebuild? Leach didn't tell Kylin to puss out. Our players were given a choice to follow the program and some didn't want to do it for a variety of reasons. A big reason why Dan was successful was because he built the right culture here.

I never said that Leach "invented" high rep practices. My point is by adding extraneous plays that our players have to learn it takes away from the core plays of the offense which they have to master first. If they don't master it and we start adding things it hurts us in the long run and it probably wouldn't have worked anyway since the line struggled with both pass pro and running the ball. Except for game ten. And I'm not going to argue with Leach on how he is doing it when he is doing it the same way that has worked other places multiple times. Odds are based on history we will see a jump next year on offense. Let's see if it happens. We averaged 27 points per game our last four games bringing our totals up to 20.7 PPG on the season. In 2009 Dan averaged 22 PPG in SEC games.

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Originally Posted by Coach34

I think everyone is pretty much in agreement with this. The 75-80% pass Air Raid is not going to work in the SEC. Getting the run game to 35-40% is key to making it work.

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Yep but IMO he should have started with a more conventional offense with what we had and then slowly worked towards implementing his air raid gradually... instead he just tore down what we had for an immediate and complete rebuild... he didn't have to do it that way

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Originally Posted by FISHDAWG

Yep but IMO he should have started with a more conventional offense with what we had and then slowly worked towards implementing his air raid gradually... instead he just tore down what we had for an immediate and complete rebuild... he didn't have to do it that way

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I'd rather him go ahead and run what he does. It will help us out more in the long run.

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Originally Posted by FISHDAWG

Yep but IMO he should have started with a more conventional offense with what we had and then slowly worked towards implementing his air raid gradually... instead he just tore down what we had for an immediate and complete rebuild... he didn't have to do it that way

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Totally agree Fish. Especially in a Covid year with no spring ball. Doing what he did in season was a suicide mission. It didn't have to be that way.

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Originally Posted by Todd4State

You're acting like he took over MSU 2018 instead of a 6-7 team with major culture issues. We won the same amount of SEC games that we won last year and would have been 6-6 with our OOC schedule so we're already at Moorhead level.

If you don't start to rebuild now then when do you rebuild? Leach didn't tell Kylin to puss out. Our players were given a choice to follow the program and some didn't want to do it for a variety of reasons. A big reason why Dan was successful was because he built the right culture here.

I never said that Leach "invented" high rep practices. My point is by adding extraneous plays that our players have to learn it takes away from the core plays of the offense which they have to master first. If they don't master it and we start adding things it hurts us in the long run and it probably wouldn't have worked anyway since the line struggled with both pass pro and running the ball. Except for game ten. And I'm not going to argue with Leach on how he is doing it when he is doing it the same way that has worked other places multiple times. Odds are based on history we will see a jump next year on offense. Let's see if it happens. We averaged 27 points per game our last four games bringing our totals up to 20.7 PPG on the season. In 2009 Dan averaged 22 PPG in SEC games.

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He took over a team that had talent, something to work with. Yes we had culture issues and considering the year he did good addressing that but you don't sacrifice a season/games doing practice hoping they pick it up in 18 months? The rebuild started as soon as Leach got here same as with Mullen, Jackie, etc. But Jackie and Mullen didn't nuke the good that was here and throw the baby out with the bathwater just to install "his offense".

Install your offense but do it as the players can digest it. Well actually Leach said he did and that it wasn't hard or long to install so that goes against what you are saying.

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Originally Posted by R2Dawg

He took over a team that had talent, something to work with. Yes we had culture issues and considering the year he did good addressing that but you don't sacrifice a season/games doing practice hoping they pick it up in 18 months? The rebuild started as soon as Leach got here same as with Mullen, Jackie, etc. But Jackie and Mullen didn't nuke the good that was here and throw the baby out with the bathwater just to install "his offense".

Install your offense but do it as the players can digest it. Well actually Leach said he did and that it wasn't hard or long to install so that goes against what you are saying.

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Are you seriously suggesting that Leach wasn't trying to win when you say "sacrifice the season"? That's incredibly ludicrous. You have to be the most incredibly short sighted fan in our fanbase to suggest that we should go all out with our "talented" team that went 6-7 the year before. Especially since a fair amount of that "talent" appears to have been a big part of the culture issue. But hey! Let's run the ball more because that fixes everything.**

Dan and Jackie didn't have to deal with the culture issues that Leach has has to deal with. And even without those issues Dan only produced an offense that averaged 2 more PPG than Leach in year one. With the same amount of SEC wins.

Leach has installed it as much as they can digest it. There is a difference between install and mastering the offense. We know the plays. We're learning the intricacies of it. Heck- we're just now getting the blocking assignments down. The mastering part comes with reps and live reps of the plays in his offense so no that doesn't go against what I am saying at all because you don't master this offense by randomly adding plays that you aren't going to use after one year.

And I don't get our fans that are surprised that it has taken Leach a year to get off the ground. It's literally happened at both places he has been as a head coach.

Why don't some of our fans get it? It's literally out there in black and white. And we've improved as the season has gone on- as Leach has done at other stops.

Same thing happened with some of our fans when Cohen was our baseball coach.

If I?m Leach, I would let Arnett fire/hire some of his own staff... McBath was a disaster on the recruiting trail this year.

To beat the 3-8. We must have WRs we trust for 50-50 balls. For Leach to win we must have better wide outs and QB that as Mike says ?can see the field?

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Originally Posted by Homedawg

Fact is, we need better players and better execution and better coaching to ever beat teams in the sec. it's unforgiving. We will never consistently beat the blue bloods we won't.

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This is basically correct. We can't compete with the likes of Alabama since they have many more better players. We used to be able to compete with them when they had Perkins, Stallings, etc. but when Saban came in with his great recruiting, everything changed.

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Originally Posted by NCDawg

This is basically correct. We can't compete with the likes of Alabama since they have many more better players. We used to be able to compete with them when they had Perkins, Stallings, etc. but when Saban came in with his great recruiting, everything changed.

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There is no parity in college football. NCAA has made a complete mess of things.

There's never been parity in college football.

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Originally Posted by Coach34

There's never been parity in college football.

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gap seems bigger now b/c of the playoff. Our goal used to be a bowl game. Beat Mississippi and make a bowl and your season is a success. The playoff has made bowls more irrelevant than ever.

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Originally Posted by Coach34

There's never been parity in college football.

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I think a lot of people confuse parity with hope. People remember the Jackie era as parity because we seemed to be able to get to November a few years and still mathematically be in the running for an SECW title. It kept us interested and engaged. The closest there was to parity may have been the SEC from 1995-2002. In that span you had 7 different teams play in the SECC game and 5 different teams win it. However, it was something of a mirage since only MSU and Arkansas made it from outside the "Big 6", and no one other than one of the "Big 6" won it.

Once the playoff is expanded to 8 teams I think we will then have a shot at once in a blue moon getting that 8th spot.