Game 2 - My amateur take again

[Lord McBuckethead]

Wow, I am sure I do not have to watch this one again to know that what I saw, this time.

We sleep walked through this one. Two high safeties and their weak ass DLine getting pressure on Will is actually concerning.

Overall, okay game by Will. Great game by our RBs digging for yards. WR didn?t look particularly good. They missed some catches they should have had. AW came to play. RaRa came to play. Tulu came to play. Ducking, some good some bad.

OL and DL both had basically terrible day, in my opinion. Both didn?t dominate in ways. Our RBs found running room, until the OL stopped blocking somewhere in the 1st quarter. Our DL didn?t get home. They did well against the run. Both have to be better next week, because LSU has a better line and linebackers.

Trap game, terrible time slot, game ended at 1:52 our time. I am just glad we won.

The refs were the real story tonight, once again. 4 of the same crew from Memphis last year. WTF SEC. That crew, and I am even saying each individual ref of that crew should never call another game again. I counted 16 obvious holds not called. I counted 7 clear pass interference calls, not called. Some of them was against us. Woody Marks almost got his head ripped off by a face mask, it turned his head so far, he couldn?t see the kill shot coming and he fumbled. That damn ref crew didn?t even see the fumble in the first place, nor the clear face mask. Embarrassing. Sankey cannot allow them in the same state of one of our games. It 17s up the GD game.

So, good win boys. The ball was not bouncing correctly today. We tried to make it interesting, but we held our ground. The refs tried their damnest, but we just dinked and dunked our way down the field and beat the spread.

Oh I almost forgot, WTF is up with missing two XPs? I don?t even know how that happens at this level. Then the other kicker comes in and has to drill one laces in.

I was right about 1 thing, we took another 1.5 quarters off again. Luckily our D only took off the first possession of the game. I am concerned with the fact too many WRs running without a defender within 4 yards. The coverage is just way too loose.

[Quaoarsking]

It was sloppy, but ultimately we traveled 2,000 miles to play in the middle of the night against an improved Power Five team that was pumped up and badly wanted to beat us, and we took our punches but still won by 22. I'll take that.

[Ranchdawg]

I only saw bits and pieces of the game. Fell asleep before started and woke twice once in the first and once second half. The parts I saw were not real clean in execution. O line was getting pushed around some but others were saying their D line were weak didn’t see the same guys over on the sidelines as I did those guys were huge like SEC caliber big.

Playing till pass 1:30am is wrong. Excluded a large portion of our fan base from seeing the game. Cohen your are a idiot for allowing that to happen. When you signed the contract to play them out there you should have put a time clause in the contract. And Cohen when Arizona comes to Starkville if you don’t schedule the kickoff for 11:00am which will be 9:00am their time you need to be fired. Also do not schedule anymore games out west. Thought we would have learned our lesson with BYU. Screw them out there!

[MetEdDawg]

Yeah my take is totally different than yours. OL had a couple issues yes. Need to get that fixed before next week.

But we were a Ducking screw up, a Calvin fumble, and a missed face mask on the Marks fumble away from winning this game by 30+.

Their QB had a sub 50% completion day and just about every time we blitzed we made him move from his spot. We had 2 sacks, 3 picks, 9 pass deflections, and held their rushing game to 1.8 yards per carry. And 10 of the points given up came off turnovers and bad field position. So the defense was extremely dominant tonight.

Rayborn looked the part so I'm good with him. He keeps blasting it through the end zone too which is really nice.

Offense for the most part did whatever it wanted even with mistakes. I think we punted 3 times. We stopped ourselves all night and still win by more than 20 on the road after midnight.

Little on the sloppy end, but I think we very much are a Top 25 team. Will looks more confident and quicker in making decisions. Defense can bully people. We've got a good team.

[Cowbell]

I stopped at "weak D-Line". 92 & 1 were better than anyone we have. Those are big time transfer guys.

[thf24]

I'm still reserving judgement in general, but I think our DL did a great job last night in that particular matchup. It's hard to sack a guy like De Laura a bunch, but they were getting good pressure while never losing contain on him, and made him run around like an idiot behind the line which led to bad decisions and an overall poor performance.

[chef dixon]

We were lucky their QB is terrible. But clearly we were the superior team. LSU will tell us everything we need to know

[Tater]

We got out with a 20 point win with a game that would rank up there in our sloppiest of 2021.

We need to get right and back to first half of memphis style of play. That team is a double digit win team. I chalk last night up largely to PAC 12 After Dark. Missed XPs and wild tip drill INTs on missed sacks... and that was just the first quarter.

De Laura's pocket awareness is better than Jayden Daniels imo. Great LSU tune-up other than the fact he refused to take the 5 yards we were giving him when he scrambled away. Need to tweak scheme this week to actually take that away with QB spies and such. Good coaching to scout that out though. Defense outside of drive 1 was largely very good.

Ducking is a slimmer Bear Wilson. His ceiling is extraordinary. That INT seemed to irritate him and he responded later on. Not sure if the one out of his hand was his or Will's fault. He runs effortlessly so it feels easy to blame him for not running faster or "hard". The last TD was awesome to see him big boy the DB. The thing missing in our game plan was taking downfield shots. Week 1, Will was seeing them easily when to strike. For some reason last night he wasn't. Would have liked a couple attempts to see what we got vs. P5 DBs.

Tulu and Austin came to play. Austin Williams might be top 5 blocking WRs in the country. Keep doing things that don't show up in the stat sheet and we'll keep having 20 point wins. One play in particular stood out where we had both block and drive their man out the way for a screen that almost got a first down. Tulu weight roomed a DB.

Emmanuel Forbes is on another level. Screw the rules, that endzone INT was the pick of the night. If I can freeze frame possession and foot in, it's a catch. Best comment I saw: "Well what if he puts his heel down in bounds first, his toe hits out of bounds, but it's an unnatural stepping motion. What then rule boy?" Regardless, that dude was strafing from the ten in a backpeddle stride for stride and high pointed the hell out of that ball. Teams are stupid if they run verticals against us. Forbes should be a first rounder next year. He's got the talent.

Woody and DJ showed AZ what SEC strength is. Strong runs up the middle. We need that consistently and our offense is a problem. The fumble was tough, but face mask + Woody being injured, he gets a pass.

Calvin unfortunately has been passed on the depth chart and I feel for the kid. That fumble is gonna limit his reps further. He helped a lot last year but he's not up to snuff this year. A testament to how well we've recruited and upgraded WR. Antonio Harmon is still a year away. I predict now he'll have a Ducking like transition in the off season.

Offensive line was sloppy. Multiple false starts (I include the one we got away with because he moved. Bad officiating to think an entire defense jumped when we don't have a cadence you can time.) We need to clean that up. When they do their job, we're on the cusp of Georgia. When they dont, we're on the cusp of Mizzou. Dolla Bill got his first hold and could have had quite a few more. Jones could have had more too. That won't fly in SEC play. Biggest thing I saw was they weren't totally drive killers.

Will has unlocked the 3-12 range of throws this year. That's huge for moving the sticks even with setbacks. His heisman campaign is coming soon. Take the speed option out of the playbook and put in a read option instead Leach. Will didn't have the touch needed for a pitch. Turned a first down run into only a 4 yard gain.

Overall B-
Offense B-
Defense B+
Special Teams C-

Special Teams gets that high because we swapped kickers, made both field goals, and looked decent on our punt. Biscardi gets an F.

[Tater]

Post script. The Ducking "Waddle" TD celebration is top 10 in CFB. More of that and SECTikTokNation will love us.

[Lord McBuckethead]

I agree with all of you guys takes on the game. I want to see a team ready to compete against SEC schools. So these cupcake games are what we have to judge on. We just do not look convincing. All we want is a team that is going to compete and win some big time games.

[Catfish]

Post script. The Ducking "Waddle" TD celebration is top 10 in CFB. More of that and SECTikTokNation will love us.

Love the Duck Waddle.

[Quaoarsking]

Playing till pass 1:30am is wrong. Excluded a large portion of our fan base from seeing the game. Cohen your are a idiot for allowing that to happen. When you signed the contract to play them out there you should have put a time clause in the contract. And Cohen when Arizona comes to Starkville if you don’t schedule the kickoff for 11:00am which will be 9:00am their time you need to be fired. Also do not schedule anymore games out west. Thought we would have learned our lesson with BYU. Screw them out there!

I agree with the sentiment of the whole post, but I have some bad news for you about the 2024 schedule...

[Cowbell]

Love the Duck Waddle.

Will joining in by waddling off the sideline was epic

[BrunswickDawg]

I agree with the sentiment of the whole post, but I have some bad news for you about the 2024 schedule...

Loafers scheduled the AZ games in 2014 back when The Ninja was at Arizona. Cohen gets credit for scheduling ASU for '24 and '25.

[R2Dawg]

We played pretty well being on and real late game. Bad TOs helped AZ a lot. The AZ QB is really good moving around, hard to contain. We did pretty well. D is stout. Forbes is a stud DB. We got some good deep talent in front 7. Our OL did pretty well for the most part. If we had not abandoned the run we could have had 200yds rushing. Leach would have none of that which is why we didn't run much 2nd half.

We got great skill players - WR RB etc. Ducking is a matchup issue as are the fast shifty guys. Hope Marks is OK. Be a big loss if he is out for LSU.

We got some things to clean up but they are all fixable. Kicking a real disappointment. What was Leach doing all spring and fall there?

[Goldendawg]

Still concerned about lack of sacks, especially by a couple of DE types projected to have a big year.
Safety pass coverage is still weak. Greene is a former 5 star because he was rated playing Texas HS ball.

[R2Dawg]

Still concerned about lack of sacks, especially by a couple of DE types projected to have a big year.
Safety pass coverage is still weak. Greene is a former 5 star because he was rated playing Texas HS ball.

With a scrambling QB you are not going to get that many sacks. We got pressure which is like a PBU and no INT. They are both positive plays on D.

[Tater]

With a scrambling QB you are not going to get that many sacks. We got pressure which is like a PBU and no INT. They are both positive plays on D.

Disagree. Scramblers are typically easier to sack because they try to run more when they shouldn't. This guy was weird because he refused to actually run and kept throwing everything. So he's not what I call an easy to sack scrambler.

Daniels next week is going to give us several opportunities to sack him. We need to break down and tackle better sure, but the rush is getting there pretty frequently.

[R2Dawg]

Disagree. Scramblers are typically easier to sack because they try to run more when they shouldn't. This guy was weird because he refused to actually run and kept throwing everything. So he's not what I call an easy to sack scrambler.

Daniels next week is going to give us several opportunities to sack him. We need to break down and tackle better sure, but the rush is getting there pretty frequently.

When I say scrambler, I didn't mean he tried to run every pass play. He stood in but when pressure came he was an excellent scrambler and a 300lb DL ain't catching that guy so low sacks will result. We forced him out a lot.

[RocketDawg]

Post script. The Ducking "Waddle" TD celebration is top 10 in CFB. More of that and SECTikTokNation will love us.

Yeah, it's cool. But it looks more like a penguin walk than a duck walk. But it's still cool and not overdone.