Games against people like La Tech and Memphis for us essentially come down to whether our defense can shut them down or not and whether we turn the ball over a ton or not.
Overall I agree with your assessment about physicality.
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I think what a lot of our fanbase is missing is that for all of ******* tenure he played scared in big games. I think that's what I hated most about him, our team and I think our base kind of adopted that mindset after watching non competitive game after non competitive game against top talent. This is not Leach, Leach will walk into any stadium against any team and have the mentality that we can win if we execute. We might not have won anymore under mullen than what we did if he had the same mentality, but I promise you this the games against top teams would have been much more fun to watch that what we had to endure.
Under Leach I at least feel like we are going to try to win, honestly because I feel like Leach wants to win. Just being honest I feel like Mullen didn't care sometimes, he knew he was safe and sound until he found Florida. He could spin the loss anyway he wanted and the media would buy it because.... poor ole middatippy tate.
This team is trying to learn to have a killer instinct, they haven't yet, once they do. Its going to be good and it will give us the edge we need to complete against the top talent.
I think Dan tried to win. But he was obviously a different coach against teams with better talent. Way more conservative. Plus I don't think his style really lended to us upsetting to many people in general. It's not a coincidence his best year with many of his biggest wins was when we were able to pass the ball well with Dak.
Personally in general I feel like it's hard for run first teams to come back on people because to come back a lot of times you have to throw the ball. And if your run first a lot of times that's not their element where they're comfortable.
I also got tired of people shutting us down by simply putting 9 in the box. Happened under Jackie, Croom, Dan, and Moorhead.
Players make plays. I think State executed and generally played with more confidence last week than in previous weeks. For instance, we ran a run play early in the game. THe hole was there. ATM had two LBs in the hole. Marks bounces it outside, out runs LBs to the corner, breaks two arm tackles and finishes the run falling forward. WHat should have been a 0 yard gain, was a 7 yard gain because of Marks ability. Bama will be faster at LB obviously. Will threw it well, zero picks. I don't recall any critical drops in the game by WRs. No turnovers.
With that said, I would interested in hearing the throughts of CoachNorm or Coach34 or any other coach on how difficult is it for a team that runs 4 DLs as the base defense, plays a lot of man coverage, to switch to a rush 3 and play zone coverage all game. I am sure all teams practice a prevent defense on occasion but how easy is it for an aggressive attacking defense to play prevent all game? How well will they execute defensively, the cover 3/6? It looked like last year, playing that 3-8 was easy for Arkansas as they run a 3-3-5.
Going forward, it will be interesting to watch, which defense we perform well against and which shut us down. LSU ran a 4-3 last year. UGA runs a 3-4. Memphis, Arkansas and Bama run 3 DL mostly. OM and aTm and LSU run more 4 DL. and which teams are better playing zone v man to man coverage.
I think this type of offense has the ability to give us better shots at winning games against the upper middle tier like UF, aTm, Auburn and LSU while they are down. I just don?t think it will impact us much against a team like Bama or UGA because the talent level is just too much to overcome. It also puts us a risk though against the bottom half of the conference to lose to someone we shouldn?t. Overall though I am going to be curious to see how it plays out over the next few years
I think it also gives us a chance to have a potential 11-1 type season if we have a team with a lot of talent like we appear to be able to put together every five years or so. Like 2010, 2014, 2018 for reference. I feel like we squandered the 2014 season (yes) and definitely will get no arguments about squndering 2018 from anyone here.
Biggest hinderance on overcoming this weakness is that basically the team resets every 2-3 years, starting the process over. If it were like the pros, where the team could be composed of veteran players, this would be less of an issue, but we will see a revolving door at WR, probably the most important factor in finding the holes in the zone with their routes. I can see it easily being similar to 1 good year, 2 mediocre, 1 great, 2 pretty bad, 1 good, and so on. Rollercoaster of love? No, rollercoaster of hate.
Agreed, but what is one of the biggest complaints on CML? He?s not a guy big on recruiting. Why? Because he thinks his system neutralizes talent gaps and seemingly prides himself on that.
Maybe. I hope you?re right, but I?m still leaning more that-
Eh bad take. Not the same thing in the SEC 😉😂
If Bama is our test like you suggest, it will have next to nothing to do with their drop 8, but everything to do with the three they send. If our OL gets the job done, we will move the ball. If they are forcing our OL into the lap of Will, it may be a long day, longer than expected.
I personally really don?t care about the Bama game. They are far superior to our team in all three phases of the game. I would rather go ahead and forfeit and start prepping for our next two games because nothing will come out of the Bama game other than injuries. But, that isn?t an option, so we might as well give Bama all they can handle.
We need to win the other games, Auburn, Kentucky, Arkansas, Ole Miss, etc. If I had to call one as a test, it would be Arkansas. We really do not match up well against them.
Well obviously QB pressure really effects the passing game. But Saban is a master at coverages. Saban prepares that team to play in all types of zone coverages. Alabama is not going to get confused and bust coverages often. If State keeps that Bama game close, against that secondary, I'll be super impressed with the air raid. I'll be there. So I hope it happens.
Anyways, I agree that Alabama is so talented. Really, it's the UK, Ark and OM games that will define this season.