The Optimist's Post

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Originally Posted by ShotgunDawg

Matt Luke has a much better offensive roster than we do.

It's clear that Mullen covered up tons of weaknesses that Moorhead may not have known existed.

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In the words of the late Denny Green maybe "they are who we thought they were." And Moorhead is the weak link. Our talent has been evaluated up and down by every media outlet in the country. Talent is not the problem. There is no reason ever a team should go from averaging 400 yards offense per game in the SEC to averaging 201.5 yards per game, while simultaneously bringing back nearly the entire offense and upgrading at WR. It's unforgivable.

Y'all all of a sudden think Guidry is a bad WR? He was going to be the man. Maybe Fitz's receivers always look bad because he is a bad QB. I can cite numerous examples of this. Notice Dak is playing with a group of receivers that can't hold roster spots. Granted they are 1-2 but Dak's completion is WAY above Fitz's is, was or ever will be. Fitz is completing 49% of his passes on the year. As a 5th year senior, Dak completed 66% as a true dual threat QB while he was carrying the team on his back.

I'm sick of people giving Fitz a pass. We were successful with him only because he could run. Now he obviously can't for whatever reason so he has literally 0 redeeming QB qualities besides his stature.

That anyone that can find anything to be optimistic after watching that debacle is incredible to me. This is real and it's over welcome back to 2001 y'all.

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Originally Posted by Coursesuper

That anyone that can find anything to be optimistic after watching that debacle is incredible to me. This is real and it's over welcome back to 2001 y'all.

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Yep and if Cohn is smart and I have my doubts you cut your losses now before 01 becomes 03.
If Moorehead can?t win with this team then he sure as hell cant win with next years

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Originally Posted by Coursesuper

That anyone that can find anything to be optimistic after watching that debacle is incredible to me. This is real and it's over welcome back to 2001 y'all.

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Just throwing out a counter viewpoint. I even stated I don't believe it all.

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Originally Posted by Dawgfan77

Yep and if Cohn is smart and I have my doubts you cut your losses now before 01 becomes 03.
If Moorehead can?t win with this team then he sure as hell cant win with next years

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It's not that he's not smart, he's just an insufferable, arrogant prick that believes he's above reproach. And that's worse than not smart. So we've got that going for us also.

Shotgun - you have some valid points. A couple of more things to add.

As I said in a thread earlier in the week - our OL has always been built around the run under Mullen and always, always, struggled in pass pro. To be effective they have always need to be moving forward off the ball instead of backwards. Expecting this personnel to adapt to that total change in philosophy - let alone the changes in assignments and scheme - exacerbates what we all know - our OL recruiting has been bad.

We are also seeing impacts of inconsistent recruiting and roster management for the last nine years. We hyped ourselves into believing this isn't an issue. But Moorhead had considerably more talent on the roster at PSU - a consistent Top 10 recruiting rank (as high as #5) - and under Mullen we recruited at the same level as Kentucky - in the high 20s consistently. And the area where our recruiting excelled was on Defense - not offense. If MS didn't grow quality RB like trees, we would hardly have signed ANY 4* players on offense. Between '14 and '17 classes we signed 4 non-RB 4* players. Dear, Gray, Rankin, KT. That's it. That's not a receipt to "out talent" anyone in the SEC (KY signed 9 non-RB 4*s in the same period many of them OL). Interestingly, we landed 4 in Joe's first class - but that's no where near the level needed to "out talent" other teams. Question is - can a coach used to having more elite talent on offense adjust his plan? So far he hasn't.

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Originally Posted by msstate7

You think Moorhead can win 9-10 in the next few seasons? LSU, bama, and auburn are gonna continue to be really good. aTm is joining their group. All of the above will finish with a top 10 class. Meanwhile, we're gonna be late 20s at BEST. If Moorhead can't compete with that group above while we have comparable talent, how in the world will he with lesser talent?

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In case you haven't noticed Auburn isn't good. They might be better than us but there's no evidence they are. They have gone two straight games rushing less than 100 yards and they've played Arkansas and Southern Miss in those two games.

There are a lot of factors at play here for us. I don't see why folks can't understand that. We didn't fire an ineffective staff. We lost a staff that was the best we ever had. It's not like we were correcting bad things. We are now having to change things that worked. We've never been in that situation. Moorhead is learning and guess what? That's part of it.

We didn't hire a ready made HC but most on here thought we did. We didn't. He's having to adjust and so are the players. I still have yet to find someone that can make a comparison of our situation to any school in the last 15 years. We had a coach for 9 years and he left with his entire staff to a better job and we had to replace him from the outside. That hasn't happened in the last 15 years and it certainly hasn't happened at a school like ours.

In some ways it would be better if this team were really young. It would be much easier to teach them new tricks than these guys that have gotten tons of playing time in the same system for years. But that's not where we are. We made a mistake alright. We assumed nothing would change, Moorhead would step right in and just take this talent to the top with no issues at all, and that everything would go perfectly. WE WERE WRONG and we just don't want to admit it. We want to puff our chests out to act tough to overcompensate.

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Originally Posted by MetEdDawg

In case you haven't noticed Auburn isn't good. They might be better than us but there's no evidence they are. They have gone two straight games rushing less than 100 yards and they've played Arkansas and Southern Miss in those two games.

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So you taking state over auburn? Lol

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Originally Posted by Todd4State

We don't look disorganized to me. It just looks to me like our o-line is getting their ass beat.

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OTs are getting beat, but almost every blitz has unblocked guys. That's general disorganization on the part of the pass pro team, Hill included who misses a ton of blocks and assignments. Ol gets beat some but we mostly kill ourselves by mentally not knowing what to do

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Originally Posted by MetEdDawg

Everything you posted was the hill I was willing to die on last night. Moorhead isn't this bad. But no matter what you say, the majority of this board thinks he is. They think no matter what changes if you have better players you should just be better.

I think Moorhead is better long term than short term. Mullen wins 9-10 with this group. Question is could he ever win more? I think moorhead can because again, you don't go from being a genius to being totally inept in two games. But our fan base literally does not care. If we underperform but still recruit well that will tell me all I need to know.

There's a lot to sift through right now and it doesn't look good. But the majority on here would rather say Moorhead sucks than try and understand what might be going on. Moorhead didn't become stupid two weeks ago. So think logically people. Maybe offensively we aren't as talented as we thought and the change in offense didn't exactly help us. We've got weaknesses Mullen knew how to cover up after 7 years. Moorhead wants to run his offense but he can't. That must suck. I bet the majority of us would not like to go to work every day and have to do things differently than we are accustomed to.

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If you can't make adjustments, you'll never be a great coach. Moorhead has made zero adjustments. Maybe he'll do better with players that fit his scheme, but only marginally. I really thought he could make adjustments, but he has shown zero so far.

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Originally Posted by the_real_MSU_is_us

OTs are getting beat, but almost every blitz has unblocked guys. That's general disorganization on the part of the pass pro team, Hill included who misses a ton of blocks and assignments. Ol gets beat some but we mostly kill ourselves by mentally not knowing what to do

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I would argue that the OTs are getting beat because we throw an incomplete pass on nearly every 1st down play, and our RBs touch the ball on approximately 20% of our offensive snaps. When you combine those two factors and add in 3rd and longs, it's not hard to figure out why they are struggling.

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Originally Posted by BoomBoom

If you can't make adjustments, you'll never be a great coach. Moorhead has made zero adjustments. Maybe he'll do better with players that fit his scheme, but only marginally. I really thought he could make adjustments, but he has shown zero so far.

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See I don't agree that he hasn't made adjustments. 2 penalties for 15 yards is a hell of an adjustment from 16 for 136. But again, how do you tell a guy hey block that guy in front of you? Eiland and Reese were getting their ass beat last night. Do we seriously think that all of a sudden they just regressed? Hell no.

We were predictable on offense under Mullen for a reason. Our guys could only do what he did. So yeah we ran more and win more. But they can't execute this. Do we want Moorhead to change his terminology? When everyone says we should just run more, what should Moorhead do verbally to tell them to execute better? It's not like they haven't worked on it. Reese and Eiland both were getting beat on the edge. And it's hard RPO when you can't pass.

He's made some adjustments but they can't all happen overnight. Moorhead is still learning. But to say we haven't made adjustments isn't fair. We still have more to make for sure. But he's still figuring this team out. He's only 5 games in.

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Originally Posted by MetEdDawg

See I don't agree that he hasn't made adjustments. 2 penalties for 15 yards is a hell of an adjustment from 16 for 136. But again, how do you tell a guy hey block that guy in front of you? Eiland and Reese were getting their ass beat last night. Do we seriously think that all of a sudden they just regressed? Hell no.

We were predictable on offense under Mullen for a reason. Our guys could only do what he did. So yeah we ran more and win more. But they can't execute this. Do we want Moorhead to change his terminology? When everyone says we should just run more, what should Moorhead do verbally to tell them to execute better? It's not like they haven't worked on it. Reese and Eiland both were getting beat on the edge. And it's hard RPO when you can't pass.

He's made some adjustments but they can't all happen overnight. Moorhead is still learning. But to say we haven't made adjustments isn't fair. We still have more to make for sure. But he's still figuring this team out. He's only 5 games in.

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Getting beat on the edge? You add a blocking TE or RB. Moorhead doesnt want to do that because it negates the number advantage he wants. Not a big deal when you are basing an offense around pounding the run and burning them/keeping them honest with PA. Huge deal when you want to RPO rollout and outnumber the D.