Random takes, Doom and Gloom edition.

[CadaverDawg]

What stood out to me at the game:

• Our offensive line was not ready to play. I don't mind being outplayed because of talent, and I can understand new players having some trouble with communications, but our returning starters had issues. Way too easy to confuse them to allow a guy to go through untouched. Ridiculously bad. It did get better in the second half, but can't give up an entire half to figure out that you need to at least touch people on their way to hitting our QB.
  
  
• How are we this bad at RB. Shocked at how bad Dan 17ed this up. We couldn't find a legit JUCO RB? That's got to be the easiest hole to plug in JUCO, and to my knowledge, we didn't even look for a JUCO RB. That's inexcusable. And on top of that, as weird as it is to say, Lee and Williams better suck just as bad as Shumpert. A good RB would completely change the outlook for this offense. If we waste Dak's senior year b/c of shitty RB play, we better not have a good option on the roster. Dan better be looking at JUCO options for RB next year now.
  
  
• The game was much worse than the score. We were able to come back b/c Les did what Les does, took a solid lead as an opportunity to go ultra conservative on offense with a belief that his D wouldn't allow the other team to catch up as long as his O avoided turnovers. For those people excited about how we played in the second half, they need to remember that Les closed up 90% of his playbook and then we started catching up. We didn't really show that we could stop them if he tried to be a little balanced.
  
  
• Dak is not Dak right now. He just hasn't thrown the ball well. I assume he is going to figure it out. Unless maybe he's injured and they're not telling people. Or maybe running the ball and moving the chains is what helps him get in rhythm on his throws.
  
  
• Dan Mullen is Les Miles. A very good coach in most aspects but with glaring and inexplicable flaws. They both have poor clock management skills and apparently refuse to just get a GA to keep them from screwing up at the end of the half/game. They both tend to go ultraconservative with leads but at the same time will randomly try make huge gambles when they don't seem to make sense. They both will go into a game with inexplicably bad game plans. The one that is most frustrating to me is that Mullen apparently has a crazy long time horizon or is much to accepting of losing. You'd think this off season would have been all about finding a JUCO RB. He apparently took the position of "This year is going to be extremely limited by RB; that's an issue that we're going to have to fix in future seasons." WTF is that?

We are not far from being very good. If we had a pretty good RB (i.e., one that would at least be invited to camps with the expectations that they could win a spot, not necessarily a star), if our safeties improved (which not crazy unreasonable to expect Bryant to turn into a good safety with his athleticism or for Peters to develop into a good safety if he got to play. I guess Coman is what he is at this point), our O-line at least figures out how to handle basic stunts and blitzes (which should be a bare minimum to expect out of our staff), and Dak start playing like the Dak of old, we're back to a 9-10 win team. With the way everybody in the SEC west has looked, we could still get 10 wins this year. But I don't think we're going to figure out the RB problem and I don't think Dan is going to change things this year. I love Mullen and in no way are my criticisms intended to imply that he's not a good coach or that his strengths do not greatly outweigh his flaws, but we know what he is at this point, and we're just not going to significantly change things during the season unless injuries force us to.

Good post. I think we have a good enough RB on our roster...unfortunately they are young and Dan won't play them. It could be Lee, Williams, Dear, Gibson...who knows? We won't know til Dak is gone it appears. Personally, I'd like to see if Gibson could help us. I have nothing but his measurables and high school video to base this on, so I'm just throwing it out there, but he seems to be built like what we're lacking....a guy in between the size of Shumpert and Holloway, that has less power than Shump, but much more quickness, balance, and speed. I'd love to know if anybody has seen Gibson in action to tell us what he looks like.

That being said, no chance Dan pulls Gibson's redshirt. So Dear may be our only hope this year at a RB capable of what we're all wanting to see in the backfield IMO. Unless Lee or Williams surprise us, which I'm ready to see if they can.