I hate to say I told you so, but I've seen enough of this program to know what's going on. Let's get right to it, shall we?
I had this revelation while watching Diaz continue to flounder. Diaz reminds me of Don Jr. Looks polished. Yaps a good game. Zero substance. He's a fake manly nerd who talks about manly stuff. His idea of hunting would be to stay in a 5 star hotel in Dubai and be taken to an air conditioned shooting range where they line up a bunch of animals chained to a post 30 feet in front of him and give him a machine gun. It's the nerd life. The difference between the two is Diaz is trying to accomplish something, but he's simply clueless on how to lead.
I've harped on this fact forever, and the nerds don't get it, but you can tell everything about a football team by their focus and effort level. We are devoid of either. Of course, the dopes on here will litter my thread with "we played hard, but Lashlee sucks." We neither played hard or played focused.
We have a few players who give effort, but, overall, we're a lazy skinny jeans group. We're the guys with the tight pants that stop at the bottom of the calves with designer loafers we can't afford and a backpack that costs more than we make in a month.
Let's discuss some specifics in the pros and cons section of this incredible blog.
Pros:
This won't be popular for the guys looking for a scapegoat, but King played a great game. He was on target with some absolute darts. Yes he missed Harley to ice the game, but this game never should have come down to one pass at the end.
Harley. That's by far the best game he's played. He is a hard working kid, who took the criticism of the WRs personally. Good for him.
Chaney. He's our best RB right now. Yeah I said it. He's tough fast and runs harder than a 14 year old boy watching his mom's hot friend, Nancy, paint her toe nails in her bikini.
Pope showed some life and made a great acrobatic catch. Yeah he had another drop, but expecting Pope not to drop an easy pass every game is like expecting me not to ram my Pickett/Yellen takes from last week down your faqquit throats until your mascara runs.
And...that's it.
Cons:
Scaife set the tone early for the type of tenacity and the mental toughness that we have when he got bullrushed like the ghey fat kid whose dad forced him to play Pee Wee football even though he'd much prefer to be playing with his Barbies. This dude's been a major bummer.
Cam. He ran like he didn't want to be out there. I don't know if he's hurt or what, but I'm glad they finally yanked him. On that stretch play he looked like he was carrying a piano on his back. Weak effort last night.
Bolden on the TD to the TE gave a feeble effort. All he had to do was carry the guy out of bounds, and that stops the TD.
Carter needs to get a Target ad at this point. I can see him with the Target bullseye painted on top of his head saying "I love Target!" while running head-first into a wall like the Kool Aid pitcher dude.
Lashlee needs to realize you don't have to force balance for the sake of balance. King had a hot hand, and, in case Lashlee didn't notice, UVAG was without their best defender, Blount, and their other starting S Nelson. Run them ragged with the throw game. Throw it 80% of the time if you have to. UVAG is horrible against the pass and pretty good against the run, so what does Lashlee do? Yep. Force that ******* read option inside zone all night long.
What's with our new habit of running give up handoffs on 3rd down in our own end? We're just giving away series regularly every game with that ****.
Our pass rush was supposed to be a huge strength. It isn't. Phillips is a great effort guy, but if he's even thinking about leaving early, he needs a lobotomy.
Did you see the play where Ivey gave a huge cushion to a QB playing WR for pretty much the 1st time? Yeah, so did I. He let a QB run him off for an easy pitch and catch 1st down on 3rd and 11. That play summed us up. 3rd and 11 and he's bailing against a QB playing WR.
96 yard drive in 2:40 when we should have been icing the game. That drive speaks directly to the mindset of this team and why I have dwindling hope for Diaz. We were celebrating a win up 13 with 10 minutes left instead of bearing down and trying to open it up on them.
We let a 3 QB rotation control us for much of the 1st half. Keep in mind none of those 3 can throw the ball. Then, Diaz tells the halftime reporter "We need to make them beat us throwing it." Yeah no **** Don Jr. That should have been the idea from the beginning.
Gurvan Hall looked like he didn't even care on that coverage bust for the late TD. We were already in "we won, let's start taking pics for the gram" mode.
Tried to tell you guys last week we got lucky Yellen played. Nope. The CISpool clowns came for me claiming Yellen was just as good as Pickett. Then, they spent the whole week trying to be funny about how Pickett was a god. Flash forward to this week and look at what ND did to Yellen on his home field. That desultory performance against Pitt was what I feared for the remainder of the season and why last week's Fireside Chat wasn't all puppies and rainbows.
There are 2 or 3 L's left on this schedule if we play like we have the last 2 weeks.
I said it last week, and I'll stick with it. We're average. And we're average for the same reason we stunk last year--Don Jr. isn't a leader of men. He celebrates ****** efforts in wins against horrible teams like UVAG as if we just won a NC. He's not demanding enough, and it shows by the focus and effort level of his team. D$ tried to tell me we're in that next tier behind the greats, but we aren't unless that next tier consists of about 65 teams.
We are a little better than last year, and that's solely because of King. If we had Perry at the helm right now we'd be a 3 loss team. I don't know about you guys, but this game felt eerily similar to last year against a much better UVAG team with a much better QB and much better D.
