I was watching the WSU vs Auburn game from 2013, and I've looked at some clips from other Leach games in the past, and a few things stuck out to me.

- They moved the ball pretty well on everybody.

It was encouraging to see that Leach moved the ball on everybody, but at times he got too stubborn with the pass when the box was empty. Although this was a theme of his against Washington, I am not too worried about it bc with our experience at OL, our stud at RB, and the brain of our QB..I see Leach and Costello being smart enough to see an advantage in the defensive alignment and capitalize on it. When you have a line like ours and a RB like Hill, you can turn a handoff vs a 3 man front into a homerun just as easily as you can a pass vs cover 0.

- When the QB threw picks, it was USUALLY when the QB clearly made up his mind before the snap as to where he was going with the ball.

Again, I'm leaning on our QB's brain on this one, but I think KJ will have to make sure he's making a read before throwing, bc SEC defenses are smart and fast as hell, so they can make you look foolish if you aren't making smart decisions.

- Leach didn't seem to have very good OL's, but still made it work..... Which peaks my interest.

Two things with this. Our OL should, SHOULD, be too good for people to totally abandon the box. Therefore it could open things up tremendously for the run as I said above. So in my opinion it is imperative that in the first two seasons Leach lean a little more than normal on the ground game, bc he wants to show OL recruits that they can excel at State. A true upper half of the SEC OL should give Leach more options than he's ever had, so take advantage and sell it early to offensive linemen. We might see a whole new version of Leach's offense bc he has never had a group of big uglies like he's going to have this year. I'm Interested to see what he does with it.

- Rhythm was key

When his offenses get rolling they are very tough to stop. Penalties and drops seemed to be the biggest derailments to the air raid. Catch the ball when it hits your hands, No false starts. I'll be looking at that early and often.

- His Running Backs had a TON of space

I get wooly as heck seeing how wide some of the running lanes his running backs had. He never had a talent like Hill, so we should see him in space a lot, which in the words of Boobie D should be "Fun, Fun, Fun"


Ultimately I'm a little skeptical as to how this system will work in the SEC...but Leach has definitely made it work pretty much everywhere else and he will have some talent to work with. It has been said a million times among our fan base, but I am most concerned about the defense and Leach's willingness to utilize the run game when we have the numbers in our favor. He's proven the passing game will at least be competent, and should improve each year...but how will he adapt to SEC speed on defense and can he run the ball more when the numbers are there? We will see. Nothing leads to blowouts like quick three and outs and a weak and exhausted defense, and that's my major fear. But I'm going into this first year with optimism and excitement for the following reasons...

1) It ain't Joe Mo
2) The air raid should be fun
3) It ain't Joe Mo
4) Why not be optimistic? 2020 is a mess, yet we have football next week when I thought we may not play this year.

Sorry for the long post, but I'd love to hear y'all's thoughts.

Hail State

PS: Are we not doing "Who's Your Dawg?" this year?