Lashlee is literally chocking the life out of our running game with his single minded fixation on the inside zone. The entire scheme behind our running game is complete garbage. Our RBs are Cam Harris, Jaylen Knighton, Don Chaney and a healthy Robert Burns. All these kids were 4 star players coming out of High School and this is not a situation where you have kids that don't live up to their ranking. Every single one of these backs are players. Every single one. Yet this is the best we can do? I don't want to hear a **** thing about the OL because this staff has known that our OL is not good enough to sustain blocks. You look all around college football and you see OCs scheming innovative ways to run the football. You see teams put in wrinkles. You see teams that don't have elite talent on the OL mix in misdirection, and all sorts of little things to get an advantage yet it doesn't seem like we ever do that. Why can't we run more outside zone? Why can't we run tosses or sweeps? Why can't we mix in more misdirection? Every defense we play loads up or just sits on that inside zone and we are perfectly happy to run our RBs right into it knowing full well pre snap that the defense knows it's coming. Why don't we try more straight up traditional inside hand offs? Why can't we run more quick openers? Maybe I'm not football savvy enough to figure out why we don't run much other than inside zone. Lashlee is literally literally making us one dimensional with his Techmo Bowl level rushing attack. If we were more creative in using the talent that we have at RB our passing game would open up that much more. Are we even capable or running RB screens?
King had himself a good game yet for some reason it didn't feel like it. The reason for this is mostly rooted in our pop warner/Optimist level running game. This is because Lashlee is still trying to force this offense into a physical run first unit and consequently we are putting ourselves in far too many 2nd and 3rd and long. Lashlee must do a better job of putting this offense in a position to succeed on 1st down. That right there is a huge part of the problem. This is a much more effective offense when we go spread 4 wide single back. There was a drive in the second half where we settled for a FG that was a thing of beauty. We had UVA spread out and they had absolutely no answer for anything we did. Also we were much more successful running the ball out of those spread looks. We had UVA gasping for air and begging for the drive to stop. 2 things here. First off, that is the type of offense we should be running more often. Secondly that drive and what came after is a perfect example of Diaz's and by extension his team's total lack of killer instinct. We had those guys ready to puke but we let them off the hook by horrendous play calling inside the 5 yards line. At this point in the game we should have been stomping on their lifeless corpses, blowing the game wide open and deciding on which way to administer the death blow. No not a Diaz coached team. Our defense gets the ball back for us after a 3 and out and we find ourselves at around midfield with a 6 point lead, the ball and the momentum and the offense proceeds to nonchalantly go through the motions and give the ball back. IMO it was clear from the outset that attacking UVA vertically down the field with the passing game would be a matchup in our favor. Instead of putting pressure on their defense by continuing to explore that strategy we get away from it and play right into their hands. We were feeding Mallory early and they had no answer then all of a sudden Mallory is MIA never to be heard from again. WTF?
Defensively we have the disturbing tendency to concede yards, plays, areas of the field that we have no business in conceding. I can't rip the guys on defense because they played extremely well especially in the second half. What I find disturbing is the fact that offenses gain cheap yards on us much too easily. How many times did we see 98 at QB knowing full well that he was no threat as a passer then just allow him to easily get the corner or basically tip toe through the middle of our defense with minimal effort? How many times did we watch our defense look around trying to figure out how to line up? How many times do we see WRs or TEs running wide open at the sticks or a few yards past the sticks on 3rd and long? How many times did we see a CB stay in his backpedal way past the sticks while a WR just casually breaks off his route just past the sticks and stand there wide open waiting for the QB to throw him the ball? How many times have we seen our defense give up leverage just by our pre snap alignment? How many times have we seen a CB inexplicably release his man thinking that it was zone when in fact we were in man? I could understand this with young inexperienced players but we're talking about 3rd year CBs and 3rd and 4th year Safeties? That's coaching. It's 6 games into the season and we still have no idea how to consistently set an edge and are still getting gashed in the running game over and over. Is it just me or is our pass rush not nearly as potent as we expected? I'm very happy that we held UVA to 14pts. I really am. My problem is that Baker's passive style is eventually going to cost us a game/games that we have no business losing. It seems as though we tend to play a very tentative brand of football where the offenses we play are stopping themselves as much or more than we stop them. I don't care what anyone says. This defense despite its weaknesses has plenty of great talent all over. My problem is that Baker doesn't press his talent advantage and that instead of putting his talent in the best position to make plays he prefers to sit back and wait for the offense to make a mistake and shoot themselves in the foot. Let's be real, that UVA offense is hot garbage. That should have been a TFL and 3 and out party.
Playing down to our level of competition is a recurring theme. Somebody mentioned that Diaz lacks fire and never goes off on the officials after bad calls or non calls. How many times does Phillips get held every game? It's one thing to be even keel, level headed and even stoic. It's another to be a lifeless, low energy beta. Diaz never gives his team a kick in the A$$ when they need it. He never gives the officials a tongue lashing when they clearly deserve it. Diaz has too much of the participation trophy, everybody's a winner type of mentality and the vibe his teams project, their body language and complete lack of killer instinct is a direct result of them taking on his personality. The game last night and it's score is the perfect example of how Diaz wants to win football games. I'm not joking. This is the type of football he jerks off to. Having a wide open offense and scoring a bunch of points is too aggressive and risky for him it seems. He appears to love these 20-17 type of games. Diaz is the type of coach that takes a game against a decidedly mediocre UVA squad that we should win something like 38-7 and manage to turn it into a hard to watch 19-14 snorefest that we barely manage to come out of with a win. Even more infuriating is that after the game he will say how hard we fought against a great UVA team and how incredibly difficult it is to win in this league and how our guys just wouldn't be denied. He will then proceed to tell everyone how mentally tough we were because of the rain and how much adversity this team overcame because of the weather and the 8 suspended players and how this squad rose up and came out victorious after staring the possibility of defeat right in the face and blah blah blah blah. I'm beginning to wonder when this team will begin to tune him out.
Am I happy we won? Yes of course! Am I happy that we are 5-1? Absolutely! There are some issues however that are concerning. Ultimately what concerns me is not only this teams propensity to make silly mistakes but the fact that they don't seem to learn from them. This team seems to lack focus and discipline and that is alarming. I'm concerned about this staff's ability to have this team prepared to play on a consistent basis. Another concern is that this staff will not be able to develop these players nearly as well as they should. I don't want to lose games in week 8 or 9 because we made the same stupid mistakes we made in game 2 and 3. What bothers me the most is that we seem to think that we are good enough to out talent everyone we play. I don't see nearly enough if any game plans offensively or defensively that you can tell were put in especially for the team we are playing. With a few exceptions by Lashlee this staff seems to be perfectly content by basically running the same thing every week thinking that it will be enough.
Yes I'm happy about the win and about our record. What I am not happy about is that we just don't seem to be a very well coached football team and that sometimes we win in spite of that. That just isn't sustainable.
The players are not playing down to the level of competition, the headcoach and his coordinators are only able to coach at the level you are seeing. And this is where not having a seasoned coach is going to hold this team back, because WTF does coach diaz know about offense, he just sits their and let's coach lashlee run the offense whereas a real TRUE seasoned headcoach would tell rhett what he wants,especially in certain situations, that drive where we settled for 3points, that series of play calls was pathetic, but again, like I told people before about lashlee and D'eriq, they both are coming to a stronger league with tougher coaches. This is why it was foolish for flake james to get on coach richt nerves where he told him to ***** off and dipped out, coach richt knew what he was doing and was making this team tougher. Not to hire butch davis after coach richt was pure stupidity and is clear proof there are double agents working within the UM administration, any **** dumb enuff to try and justify not hiring butch davis before or after coach richt needs to cease and desist from all things UM related.
Coach Davis would've went off on rhett for calling them silly *** plays, but coach davis had enuff football knowledge not only in the player development department, but just as important or maybe even more important in developing his coordinators & assistant coaches as well, diaz is nowhere near that level which is why he brought in a coach enos already.
That's why when coach shannon was the headcoach, he went off on coach whipple's *** before halftime when we played clemson and he went off on patrick nix, but those 2 arrogant ****'s didn't want to hear criticism coming form coach shannon, but as we all can see,coach Shannon has accomplished way more than those to jackasses combined.
This team has the talent to be putting on better performances, that's why it's comical too see people acting as if a, in the words of coach diaz "cutting edge" offense is actually here. Both coordinators are not yet in tuned with how to use their personnel best, baker has no more upside, he is who he is, I'll give rhett a semi break cause this is his 1st year, with no full spring practices and he has more potential a d at least tried to stick to his core principles.
