It's not an excuse so much as its pointing out what we have to address. The gameplan against Florida was great, IMO, because we took away their strength and dared them to beat us with their weakness. As has been discussed plenty on this board already, if we make any of about 7 plays in that game, we win. Against North Carolina, I'll cede that we appeared to underestimate Howell as a QB, but we still took away their running game, so the plan worked somewhat. It could have been better. We made adjustments in the 2nd Q, didn't make them in the 4th. That's on coaching, sure.
But what isn't on coaching, yet, are the poor attempts at tackling. If we're at Week 10 and it's still a problem, I'll point to coaching then. Most of these guys who played last year were great at tackling then but aren't this year. Is that only on coaching?