I?ve watched some clips from the previous games.
Will is not playing good.
Will is actually playing awful currently and the receivers are there but he?s not seeing them because he?s terrified of any pressure.
He was better in 2021.
What happened
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I?ve watched some clips from the previous games.
Will is not playing good.
Will is actually playing awful currently and the receivers are there but he?s not seeing them because he?s terrified of any pressure.
He was better in 2021.
What happened
Yea ... I've known this for a while now. But everybody wants to blame Leach's offensive system. Now Leach can be blamed for not having another QB or for the QB's performance, and also for how this offense not performing, but it's not his system that is the problem.
I also think this may be why the receivers' attitudes may not be that good too. Take Heath maybe or just some of the others. If folks are constantly open downfield somewhere and they never get the ball, they probably wanna say WTF after a while.
I also think it may not set well that Leach defends Will so much. I'm scratching my head on some of the dynamics around all of that myself. Something seems very off to me ... but I have no idea or even inkling of what it might be.
I'm not sure of he can't see the field very well, or is afraid to throw over the middle. He's had a high number of passes batted down too.
I think he's afraid. His completion percentage on passes over 20 yards is actually pretty good if I remember correctly. Which makes all of this more unusual.
I will say this:
I think that he got used to people rushing three and dropping 8 because everyone in the SEC thought that was how you stop Leach. Well, Will and MSU started to absolutely shred the rush three drop 8.
And then teams started to rush four and try some stunts and things like that. Will hasn't quite gotten to where he has adjusted completely to that. The middle of the field was wide open a LOT against Georgia. We actually started to attack it after awhile and had some success doing so.
Once Will adjusts to people rushing four then we will be fine. It's probably coming- hopefully sooner than later. Right now where he is at is about the same as early last year with the rush three drop 8. But he did eventually adjust.
Nick has actually been very defensive of Rogers.
One thing most of us don't know is whether Will is working through his reads correctly. In the Air Raid system there's a saying that "the reads are sacred". You can't see the entire field at the same time, so it doesn't matter if a guy is open before or after the read gets you there. He is coached to follow the reads. It could very well be that he's following the reads he's being coached and that's why Leach hasn't been too hard on him, whereas he's been pretty vocal about the receivers. This would make the problem more if a scheme issue than a Will issue.
Clearly there's been some adjustments by defenses since the Kentucky game where no one is doing the the rush 3 drop 8 thing anymore. I'm not saying Will is playing well, only that it's very possible that he's following the reads as they're being coached, he's just not being coached well right now based on how defenses have been playing us.
There's no way that Mike Leach looks out there at the disfunction of this offense and thinks that he is putting his QB in the position to succeed.
You're either coaching it, or allowing it to happen (his own words)
Leach has his problems but if Will is staring down a wide open receiver and NOT throwing the ball he needs to be benched. There was a thread over on Gene's where a couple of guys that were at AU broke down a dozen plays in the second half where we had receivers wide open. A couple of those were probably easy touchdowns. Will dumped it off to the RB on most of those plays. The others he just chunked he ball out of bounds.
I get the frustration with Leach but he's been as successful as any coach here. I don't like firing coaches too early. Especially when they haven't been that bad. I want to see a different QB first. I think we need to hold off another year or two unless we have a sure fire lined up.
If Will hits a few long passes/TD bombs to wide open WR's against ETSU (FCS level), it might lend more substance to thoughts that O won't work against good SEC D, soft/disappearing WR's in SEC games, etc. If we can't get big plays against them through the air Saturday, there are really some problems. Execute in an encouraging way to hopefully play 4 quarters against OM.
2020- 21.4 ppg
2021- 29.1
2022- we're at 31.2 and that's fixing to go up. Despite picking up uga and dropping vandy. Dan only had two seasons over 32, dak's final two years.
We're bad at times, but maybe we're a little hard on leach. He's doing this without a playmaker at qb.
Dropped passes surely have something to do with the success of a passing game, right?
I mean, Leach is concerned about future generations having hands......
In conference only games we are at 25.6. Dan's last 4 years, including 2016 was higher than that. 2014 we actually avg 33.8 in conference games. But 2016 the offense was at 29.3 (Peter Sirmon sucked so si bad) Last year we were 28.5, which was a pretty good year in conference games. We fired Moorehead after his season of 23.3 (although we know that had more to do with culture and problems in the locker room)
ETA. When looking at all games we have to consider that Leach leaves starters in the entire game. Dan pulled starters a whole lot more in blowout wins. That really skews the offensive numbers.