Gather around the fire with Your Living Legend

[bobbydigius]

His pressure is leading to almost no disruption. I don't know how they tabulate pressure stats, but watching the games, I don't see his pressure resulting in anything very often. I love Phillips and think he can be great eventually, but I'm just calling what I see.

He has limited pass rushing moves, and while a supreme athlete, he just isn’t this QB killer. Even on obvious passing downs, you never see him just beat his guy off the ball.

 

[Memnon]

The hope is to use these dog fights to build confidence and beat the other average teams left on the schedule. I don't think any astute football guys see this as great football even though last night was fun as **** aside from the mistakes and awful defense.

We're still 1-2 recruiting classes & a couple coaching changes on Defense away from being a consistently good team.

The goal of this season was always to just win as many games as possible & parlay that into recruiting success for the 21 & 22 class, what we're trying to do is gather as many good players as we can in recruiting & then figure out the rest later.

That's the most practical pathway back to being a contender for us, is to become attractive enough for local talented recruits to wanna stay home & be apart of the building process & possibly snag in a national QB either from the Portal or from HS that can help push us over the edge.

Because the source of most of our problems as a team is recruiting & coaching, the coaching part is somewhat more of a long fix in the sense that firing HC's can set your program back behind the clock when you do it as much as we do, but position coaches can be interchangeable. But the quick fix is always to just accumulate as many good players as possible & see what happens from there.

I'm still not sold on Manny & have lots of criticisms of how he does things, but as long as we keep winning & if he can translate this season into a net positive on the recruiting trail for this class & the next, then I'll take it.

If he wises up & replaces guys like Baker, Patke & Rumph, then he'll buy himself a ton of leeway because it'll show that he's a performance based coach that is relentless in the pursuit of winning like the top tier coaches in the business, if he sticks with his cronies then they'll sink his ship & he won't last here much longer than Folden did.

 

[The Sphinx]

'Chise, can't agree with you more. You are 1000% spot on, my man. Good write up as always.

Great win in spite of our putrid defense of 3 quarters. King is a beast. So **** glad he wears Orange and Green. Now let's go kick some Hokie a$$ and make it 7-1.

 

[The Franchise]

We're still 1-2 recruiting classes & a couple coaching changes on Defense away from being a consistently good team.

The goal of this season was always to just win as many games as possible & parlay that into recruiting success for the 21 & 22 class, what we're trying to do is gather as many good players as we can in recruiting & then figure out the rest later.

That's the most practical pathway back to being a contender for us, is to become attractive enough for local talented recruits to wanna stay home & be apart of the building process & possibly snag in a national QB either from the Portal or from HS that can help push us over the edge.

Because the source of most of our problems as a team is recruiting & coaching, the coaching part is somewhat more of a long fix in the sense that firing HC's can set your program back behind the clock when you do it as much as we do, but position coaches can be interchangeable. But the quick fix is always to just accumulate as many good players as possible & see what happens from there.

I'm still not sold on Manny & have lots of criticisms of how he does things, but as long as we keep winning & if he can translate this season into a net positive on the recruiting trail for this class & the next, then I'll take it.

If he wises up & replaces guys like Baker, Patke & Rumph, then he'll buy himself a ton of leeway because it'll show that he's a performance based coach that is relentless in the pursuit of winning like the top tier coaches in the business, if he sticks with his cronies then they'll sink his ship & he won't last here much longer than Folden did.

Booch Davis has built a fanbase on here that rivals some other overweight leaders, and Booch did a whole lot of losing here before having his one good season. People forget that he was still losing games like this 4 or 5 years into his run here. How many times did Steve Logan kick his *** with lesser teams? I don't expect Mabo to field a roster like Booch eventually did, but Booch proved you don't have to be a great HC to put together some great classes.

Now, the question is this: Does Mabo have the ability to evaluate at a high enough level to overcome some of our dicey coaching while trying to build this roster? Booch was a masterful evaluator. Seems like Mabo struggles a little in that area, especially given some of his misses at LB.

 

[1LuvCane]

 

[Silver King]

WHEW!!! I'll start by saying that was a wildly exciting football game...

--The King. This is a special special dude. He's tough as nails. Cool as a cucumber. A phenomenal leader... I knew NCSU's D was a **** pile, but King still had to make those plays. Guys were open, but we've seen that before. Open doesn't mean the play will be made.

If we didn't have a handful of drops, King would have been a 90% passer for 500 yards with 600 total yards. Let that sink in. We've never seen anything remotely close to that. OK. I'm going to stop sucking King's dyck because my jaw is getting tired.

--The team's resolve. They made a lot of mistakes and came out sluggish and undisciplined, but they kept swinging.

--Joe B. That dude's automatic, and he gives us a guy we can rely on... And that onside kick didn't happen by accident. He drilled that dude with the ball on purpose.

--Cam Williams. It was one play, and I don't know if anyone even saw it, but it was pretty fun to see a DE 35 yards down the field running down a RB. That was hustle and some crazy athletic ability. Looked like Metcalf.

--Knighton...He's close to breaking a KO for TD, but it'll probably get called back anyway.

--Harley. This little dude has flipped the switch...Harley, before the last 2 weeks, falls down on that final slant that he housed. Now, he keeps his baby giraffe legs and balance and goes to the promised land.

--Pope. He's a con and a pro for me. He's an enigma, but I get the feeling he's right on the cusp of being the guy I always thought he would be...He could have folded after his early struggles, but he didn't. Kudos, Pope.

--OL....We gave King more time than I can remember a UM QB getting consistently.

--Nesta's super manly bull rush late. That was a momentum changer.

--Love little Couch...I love him blitzing from the slot because he's fast, tough, and smart. He's not looking to get absorbed.

Cons:

--Defense. Again, we let a ****** backup (and don't let anyone tell you that POS Hockaloogey is anything other than bad) get comfortable and play easy pitch and catch.

--Al Jr. He dropped a huge INT. On top of that, he's another one of our CBs who is either coached not to find the ball or just can't.

--Pass rush is super weak. I overestimated Phillips's impact in the pass game.

--Penalties. The selfish penalties are absolute killers and so are the offsides on 3rd and 4. We are still a very undisciplined team. We were absolutely killing ourselves with untimely penalties on O and D yesterday. Drive killers and drive extenders.

Conclusion: Not sure that game proved anything... Last night, we humiliated a bad defense, which is what I've been dying to see for years.

Defensively...Play Vag Tech, UNC, or even Wake like this, and they'll hang 50 on us. Good news is we can hang a lot on them too... If we can keep The King rolling like this, we should be able to out shoot the rest of em.

Put King is a fcking hotel and leave him there for the rest of the season. Test some hookers. Let them relieve him of his poison. Give him room service. Do whatever you have to do to keep the VID away from him. But if this guy isn't our QB, we are garbage.

Too many good lines to not just cut it up and condense it with all the A-Material.

 

[Handsome Squidbum]

Seems like Mabo struggles a little in that area, especially given some of his misses at LB

It could also be the case that the LBs evals actually good but they are receiving Jon Richt level coaching from Patke. I think a good recent example is Harley. Dude was straight booty cheeks for his Miami career and then Likens started working with him. Now he's our best WR. Zion Nelson was absolutely horrendous. Then he starts working with Justice and now he's a dependable LT. There were massive technique changes with the OL blocking. It seems to be working.

My gut feeling is that if we had an elite LB coach, our LBs would be playing at a much higher level.

 

[The Franchise]

It could also be the case that the LBs evals actually good but they are receiving Jon Richt level coaching from Patke. I think a good recent example is Harley. Dude was straight booty cheeks for his Miami career and then Likens started working with him. Now he's our best WR. Zion Nelson was absolutely horrendous. Then he starts working with Justice and now he's a dependable LT. There were massive technique changes with the OL blocking. It seems to be working.

My gut feeling is that if we had an elite LB coach, our LBs would be playing at a much higher level.

I'm not sure that McLeod and Jennings are good enough football players no matter who's coaching them. They're slower than Alex Trebek's pulse, and they're not even instinctual or natural footballers. Flagg's slow too, but at least you can see his instincts and feel for the game unlike those 2. I'm hopeful that Steed can use this season to get confidence back in his pins and come back next year with some of the same speed and feel he used to have.

 

[Ethnicsands]

Booch Davis has built a fanbase on here that rivals some other overweight leaders, and Booch did a whole lot of losing here before having his one good season. People forget that he was still losing games like this 4 or 5 years into his run here. How many times did Steve Logan kick his *** with lesser teams? I don't expect Mabo to field a roster like Booch eventually did, but Booch proved you don't have to be a great HC to put together some great classes.

Now, the question is this: Does Mabo have the ability to evaluate at a high enough level to overcome some of our dicey coaching while trying to build this roster? Booch was a masterful evaluator. Seems like Mabo struggles a little in that area, especially given some of his misses at LB.

Agreed. Butch was along with JJ one of the 2 best evaluators of his generation. We don’t have that luxury anymore, and I have long pointed out, people overlook the role of evals in building this program. Dennis crashed it relatively quickly despite winning, in part because he was lazy as a recruiter.

Manny has shown no particular skill at evals, amd I’m not even sure he’s shown effort at it.

This program needs to pump some resources into a serious eval process that reports to the AD so it doesn’t hsve to get redone every time we fire the flavor of the day loser. Won’t matter so long as our AD votes from his basement, but eventually, we can hope for better admin.

 

[brock]

People keep talking about Phillips pass rush but yet again he led the team with 6 qb pressures, had 1 sack and helped with the other one too.

 

[The Franchise]

People keep talking about Phillips pass rush but yet again he led the team with 6 qb pressures, had 1 sack and helped with the other one too.

Pressures, unlike sacks, is a totally subjective stat. There's no sure way to quantify a "pressure."

 

[Handsome Squidbum]

I'm not sure that McLeod and Jennings are good enough football players no matter who's coaching them. They're slower than Alex Trebek's pulse, and they're not even instinctual or natural footballers. Flagg's slow too, but at least you can see his instincts and feel for the game unlike those 2. I'm hopeful that Steed can use this season to get confidence back in his pins and come back next year with some of the same speed and feel he used to have.

Well brother, very few coaches bat 1.000 with recruiting. If Im not mistaken, McCloud was originally an Al Golden commit (yup, that far back). So I can't really put that on Diaz. Hands are kind of tied at that point and his main concern is keeping the recruits committed. On the flip side, if you do want to pin that on Diaz, then he has to get credit for getting Shaq and Pinkney.

Can't argue with Jennings being a bust. However, I think Brooks, Huff, and Steed are studs, and Diaz also recruited some tackling machines. So the roster has a mix of the fast athletic LBs built for the modern spread and more cerebral LBs. Since Miami is running a 4-2-5 base, I think we have plenty of quality depth.

Patke is a bum as both a LB and ST coach. Special teams are better because we have an NFL kicker and punter. All of our returners still have butter fingers and the rest of ST can't block worth a ****. The LBs looked a lot better when Diaz was coaching them. If Diaz isn't going to hire a better LB coach, then he needs to pull a Saban (still heavily involved with coaching DBs) and get more involved with the LBs.

Ultimately though, the fact that the solution to a lot of defensive woes always seems to be "Diaz should take over" (take play calling from Baker, coach LBs again) is telling. If he doesnt want to do it himself, then he needs to get a better staff. I think a top tier LB coach has several quality LBs to work with.

 

[brock]

Pressures, unlike sacks, is a totally subjective stat. There's no sure way to quantify a "pressure."

I’ll take a bunch of qb pressures, that leads into a hurried throw or whatever. That’s a lot actually in one game. Phillips need to finish his pass rush better but on a lot of these plays he’s so close to getting a bunch of sacks.

 

[Plzwork4]

Put King is a fcking hotel and leave him there for the rest of the season. Test some hookers. Let them relieve him of his poison. Give him room service. Do whatever you have to do to keep the VID away from him. But if this guy isn't our QB, we are garbage.

If he catches it Manny better have every kid on the 2 deep licking their classroom desks Mon-Fri. We must not play that game at all costs.

I want Will Mallory slobbering all over the school windows...

 

[Hurracanes]

We're still 1-2 recruiting classes & a couple coaching changes on Defense away from being a consistently good team.

The goal of this season was always to just win as many games as possible & parlay that into recruiting success for the 21 & 22 class, what we're trying to do is gather as many good players as we can in recruiting & then figure out the rest later.

That's the most practical pathway back to being a contender for us, is to become attractive enough for local talented recruits to wanna stay home & be apart of the building process & possibly snag in a national QB either from the Portal or from HS that can help push us over the edge.

Because the source of most of our problems as a team is recruiting & coaching, the coaching part is somewhat more of a long fix in the sense that firing HC's can set your program back behind the clock when you do it as much as we do, but position coaches can be interchangeable. But the quick fix is always to just accumulate as many good players as possible & see what happens from there.

I'm still not sold on Manny & have lots of criticisms of how he does things, but as long as we keep winning & if he can translate this season into a net positive on the recruiting trail for this class & the next, then I'll take it.

If he wises up & replaces guys like Baker, Patke & Rumph, then he'll buy himself a ton of leeway because it'll show that he's a performance based coach that is relentless in the pursuit of winning like the top tier coaches in the business, if he sticks with his cronies then they'll sink his ship & he won't last here much longer than Folden did.

Brilliant post.

 

[Hurricane23]

WHEW!!! I'll start by saying that was a wildly exciting football game. Back and forth. That was some old school Rocky fake boxing ****. It was another slugfest with a crappy opponent with a bad backup QB, but at least this one was fun to watch. Let's get right to it.

Pros:

--The King. This is a special special dude. He's tough as nails. Cool as a cucumber. A phenomenal leader. Just imagine what this season would be looking like right now if we didn't have that dude. Mabo would be circling the drain like a **** shot in the shower. That was the best QB performance I've seen at UM since Vinny beat OU with some superman ****. Sure, it wasn't for all the marbles or any of that other cliche ****, but it was incredibly important to THIS TEAM's season. Without that miracle performance, we lose to a crappy team, and the wheels officially fall off with us likely staring at at least 3 more losses.

King brings not only exceptional ability, but he's a guy that his teammates can rally around because of his toughness and leadership too. This dude's a dream QB for this program and Lashlee's system. I knew NCSU's D was a **** pile, but King still had to make those plays. Guys were open, but we've seen that before. Open doesn't mean the play will be made.

If we didn't have a handful of drops, King would have been a 90% passer for 500 yards with 600 total yards. Let that sink in. We've never seen anything remotely close to that. OK. I'm going to stop sucking King's dyck because my jaw is getting tired.

--The team's resolve. They made a lot of mistakes and came out sluggish and undisciplined, but they kept swinging.

--Joe B. That dude's automatic, and he gives us a guy we can rely on. If we didn't have him, we don't kick that late FG and probably fail on 4th and goal from the 5. And that onside kick didn't happen by accident. He drilled that dude with the ball on purpose.

--Cam Williams. It was one play, and I don't know if anyone even saw it, but it was pretty fun to see a DE 35 yards down the field running down a RB. That was hustle and some crazy athletic ability. Looked like Metcalf.

--Knighton for dropping a hat on NCSU's K. I love that kid's toughness. He's a tone setter. He's close to breaking a KO for TD, but it'll probably get called back anyway.

--Harley. This little dude has flipped the switch. He's pretty much catching everything, and he's a TD machine. Harley, before the last 2 weeks, falls down on that final slant that he housed. Now, he keeps his baby giraffe legs and balance and goes to the promised land.

--Pope. He's a con and a pro for me. He's an enigma, but I get the feeling he's right on the cusp of being the guy I always thought he would be. He was wide open for a long TD on one of King's only bad throws. He had another awful drop and a stupid drive killing selfish penalty, so it was tough to put him the pro section. I put him here because I admire grit almost more than anything, and he showed it last night. He could have folded after his early struggles, but he didn't. Kudos, Pope.

--OL. We rallied. NCSU is a terrible D, but that hasn't stopped us in the past from giving up a ton of sacks. We gave King more time than I can remember a UM QB getting consistently. Still not moving anyone in the run game, but we started getting it going a little bit late in the game.

--Nesta's super manly bull rush late. That was a momentum changer. Our DL isn't getting the pressure I thought they would, but that play was huge.

--Love little Couch. He's a tough kid with great football instincts. The way he evaded the RB on his sack is what we've been missing. Most of the time, our blitzers
just run into blocks and get absorbed. Not Couch. I love him blitzing from the slot because he's fast, tough, and smart. He's not looking to get absorbed.

Cons:

--Defense. Again, we let a ****** backup (and don't let anyone tell you that POS Hockaloogey is anything other than bad) get comfortable and play easy pitch and catch. The D is a shell of what it was. I cautioned when we decided to go up tempo spread that our D would suffer, but I don't think last night had much to do with our up tempo offense. We just looked lifeless, slow and clueless for 3 and a half quarters.

--Al Jr. He dropped a huge INT. On top of that, he's another one of our CBs who is either coached not to find the ball or just can't. There was a long pass early that was underthrown. If Al turns his head, he picks it off. Instead, the WR slowed down, turned around, and caught it. Bad stuff. Watch how Clemson's CBs turn around and make plays on balls, and then watch ours. Ours look like the mentally challenged kid running face first into a wall.

--Once again, just too many guys wide open all over the field.

--Pass rush is super weak. I overestimated Phillips's impact in the pass game. I love his motor and his relentlessness, but he doesn't get enough heat on the QB for some reason. With his motor and athleticism, it must be a lack of toolbox. Wouldn't mind seeing a little more 22 and 12.

--Penalties. The selfish penalties are absolute killers and so are the offsides on 3rd and 4. We are still a very undisciplined team. We were absolutely killing ourselves with untimely penalties on O and D yesterday. Drive killers and drive extenders.

Conclusion: Not sure that game proved anything, but wow was it fun to watch and win. NCSU is a REALLY bad defensive team, but we took advantage of that. We've played some really bad defenses in the past and made them look good by slowing the game down and playing tight formation football in a phone booth ****. Last night, we humiliated a bad defense, which is what I've been dying to see for years.

Defensively, we're pretty weak. Play Vag Tech, UNC, or even Wake like this, and they'll hang 50 on us. Good news is we can hang a lot on them too. I expect a lot of shoot outs for the remainder of this season. We're playing some good offenses, and we stink on D. If we can keep The King rolling like this, we should be able to out shoot the rest of em.

Put King is a fcking hotel and leave him there for the rest of the season. Test some hookers. Let them relieve him of his poison. Give him room service. Do whatever you have to do to keep the VID away from him. But if this guy isn't our QB, we are garbage.

Hard to disagree with anything you said sir

 

[The Franchise]

I’ll take a bunch of qb pressures, that leads into a hurried throw or whatever. That’s a lot actually in one game. Phillips need to finish his pass rush better but on a lot of these plays he’s so close to getting a bunch of sacks.

My point isn't that pressures aren't important. My point is that it's impossible to accurately quantify a pressure. It's incredibly subjective. What you might see as a pressure, I might see as him getting blocked. What are the criteria for determining a pressure and how accurately are they determined?

 

[The Franchise]

If he catches it Manny better have every kid on the 2 deep licking their classroom desks Mon-Fri. We must not play that game at all costs.

I want Will Mallory slobbering all over the school windows...

View attachment 135235

LMAO!! That could actually be a young Will Mallory! And, yes, if King catches it, Mabo better have a plan in place for everyone to immediately go eat some of his boogers. A booger activation plan if you will.

 

[TruCane81]

It could also be the case that the LBs evals actually good but they are receiving Jon Richt level coaching from Patke. I think a good recent example is Harley. Dude was straight booty cheeks for his Miami career and then Likens started working with him. Now he's our best WR. Zion Nelson was absolutely horrendous. Then he starts working with Justice and now he's a dependable LT. There were massive technique changes with the OL blocking. It seems to be working.

My gut feeling is that if we had an elite LB coach, our LBs would be playing at a much higher level.

For the linebackers, evaluation is a problem in the sense of how they actually deploy the players they selected and signed.

Go and watch some of the highlights of guys like Shaq, Jennings, and McCloud from high school. They are EXACTLY what they showed themselves to be on tape. They are being asked to play outside of their strengths and they are playing with no confidence. They never were every down college backers and are not the kind of guys who can run down tail backs on outside plays.

McCloud and Jennings should be blitzing quarterbacks and blowing up gaps between the tackles. They can lay wood when they don’t have to think and run laterally. They don’t read keys well and have to see the ball before pursuing.

Flagg was a great eval. He diagnoses plays like lightening and navigates traffic to get the ball carrier early, even though he is slow.He will be a lot better at what Manny asks him to do as opposed to McCloud and Jennings.

You have to adjust to your players. Forcing players to adjust to a rigid system results in the poor play we have witnessed. It’s a shame because McCloud and Jennings can help us if used correctly.

Hopefully the Flagg signing is predictive of the future. If we can get guys with his skills AND more athleticism we will look a lot more like the great line backing core of the past.

 

[PIPO]

Good shìt Chise.

I feel like Pope will be next year's Mike Harley.

As long as he keeps working he'll become more consistent & be a full time playmaker for us, the kid has a similar work ethic to Mike's in that he will not allow his struggles to prevent him from continuing to work on his craft.

All he really needs to do is keep running on those 9 routes from the Boundary, I feel like sometimes he doesn't think he's gonna get it so he gears down but King will launch it & last second you'll see Pope fighting to pick up his speed to get under it.

But over the last 2 weeks when they have connected on some Deep throws Pope did a good job powering out past Man coverage & getting to the ball, I feel like King & Pope are beginning to gel & build that continuity that he already has with Harley.

Could be wishful thinking, but with the 21 WR's coming in & the TF's from the 20 class getting their opportunity, plus with Pope coming back I actually think we might mess around & have a very solid WR group next year.