Sunday Morning QB- Bacon Snaps 20 Game Losing Streak Edition

[Coach34]

1. I'd like to be the first to welcome many of you back to reality, but our team and your OM friends have already done that for most of you.

2. When I talked repeatedly about the Leach experiment and if it would work in the SEC, I wasnt just pulling a statement out of my ass. This is the best league in America with the best athletes. Great coaches as well. People that get open in the Pac 12 and Big Ten dont get as open in the SEC. Same with the Big 12. We have now seen 2 extremes vs Leach- M2M Blitz constantly and Rush 3 drop 8 zone. Coaches adjust. Coaches copycat others. Word spreads quickly today.

3. UPig's rush 3 drop 8 plan was copycatted from Washington. Thats the way they played against Leach every year after he beat them in his 1st year in Pullman. After Washington switched to the Rush 3 Drop 8 style against Leach- he never scored 20 against them again. 17, 13, 10, 14, 15, 13 the last 6 games. We are about to see a whole lot of it the rest of this season from teams that have better defenses than the Pigs. All UPig did all night was move their front from playing the ends wide to sliding them inside into a Tite front (404). Thats it. It wasnt rocket surgery- it was "I dare you to throw it 60 times tonight". Well, we did.

4. Hill getting hurt obviously played a major factor. He took a shot to the head and then landed hard on his head. We got away with the fumble there. It looked like he may have even been knocked out for a second. I'm sure he has to go thru concussion protocol but he didnt look bad when they showed him in the 2nd half. Not having him running the ball vs that D certainly helped UPig continue to stay in it. The other guys played ok and made some good cuts- but they arent Hill. Is Witherspoon still on the roster? He looked good for a freshman last year. Amazing he cant even get a carry this year

5. I was surprised our OL didnt take over in the 2nd half. We started being patient and ran the ball some in the 2nd Q and they were hammering their DL. Looked like we would wear them down but never did. They outplayed us in the 2nd half and we didnt even average 4 ypc. Only 1 sack in 61 pass attempts is good- but considering they only rushed 3- it's expected.

6. On the Pick 6- the WR turned his head just as KJ threw the ball, I guess to check where he was on the field. He wasnt even looking and that led to the easy pick- very similar to Fitz's 1st pick at LSU in 2018. Helluva catch by Payton on the TD. 18 catches by the RB's is too many for this offense. It means we are having to check down way too often.

7. Just as many thought, our D has been pretty good against the run. They got us early with some power read, but we adjusted. Another really good goalline stand against their goalline offense. We are doing a good job so far of confusing OL's. We slanted the DL to the short side of the field and looped a LB from the middle around the edge for a sack last night. Usually takes too long for that to work- but it worked last night. UPig made us look bad on a couple of drives but overall a solid performance on D. Franks was 20/28 though and we didnt force any turnovers. The two blown coverages on the fake screens were big. But the bottom line is the D played well enough to win

8. People got mad at me last week for saying we need to run it more. Now you all have seen why. Leach is very smart and smarter than me. But I know you have to run vs a 5 man box. You have to. There just arent that many throwing windows vs an SEC defense dropping 8. Hell, we even got a 4 man box some. We didnt play a bigtime D last night folks. That was an average SEC D. We got some folks coming up on the schedule with much better DL's than UPig. Now that the blueprint has made it's way to the SEC- I'm curious to see how many copycat DC's there are. Some guys are hardheaded like Pellini and wont change because "this is what we do" (much like Leach). But some DC's are coaching whores and will do whatever it takes.

HailState