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Scorching Hot Take

ball915

ball915

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Here is my takeaway from being at the game. Something that isn't being discussed as much as the focus has been on the actual game itself is how we got to where we are. Meaning the hype we all experienced solely came from a "10 win season" the year before returning a strong amount of players from that team. However, what nobody wants to acknowledge is how deceiving that 10 win season actually was and connecting it with Sunday night. Mark Richt did what Randy Shannon and Al Golden couldn't which is find a way to win ACC games against average opponents instead of losing them. We became so acclimated to a 5-3 ACC record that going 7-1 was what we felt it should be. However, we found ourselves needing a last second play against a very down FSU, down most game to Georgia Tech, struggled to pull away from Syracuse sealing it late, looked like **** against an awful UNC, then being down two TD's to UVA at home twice before eeking it out. All of that caught up with us at Pitt and then we saw what we saw Sunday night against LSU in what we saw in teams with good coaching/athletes in Clemson and Wisconsin. The gap is a lot wider than we were led on to believe because we were able to escape a lot of close games the previous staffs weren't able to. That is a testament to better coaching it was evident watching the game from endzone seats how far away we still are. The difference is that we have so much more talent on the defense and skill positions but are haunted by 4 Golden starting OL and a Golden starting QB which is showing loud and clear against these teams with equal athletes. The other side of this concern is that in year 3 we have been unable to develop younger Richt recruits to being able to outperform these Golden players that had no business even being recruited by Miami. The writing has been on the wall for a long time but our desperation to be back and fulfillment of those close wins on the surface has distracted us from what's actually going on under the water. Play the young OL and QB's now with the growing pains of it as there is only upside to be had where the Rosier's, Mahoney's, Jones', Gauthier's and St. Louis' of the world are only holding us back with all the other talent we have surrounding them.
 
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Part of me agrees that it was a deceiving record. The other part of me says wins are wins (just look at Penn State). Even Clemson dropped a Silly game they should have won before competing and looking competitive in the playoffs.
 
Completely agree regarding lil John Richt not being able to develop one of these kids in 2 years. That pick six was downright disgusting and inexcusable. And the OL recruiting needs a serious shot in the arm. Let’s not even start talking about the kicking game.
 
Is OP serious? I've been saying that for the last 8 months and all people have done is call me troll for not slurping our 10 win season. I looked at us objectively. We were a 8-4 team that got to lucky for it's own good.

If your heart is beating just to beat 3-9 UNC, 5-6 GT, 4-8 Syracuse, and 6-6 FSU then your not legit. I can understand going through a scare with 1 of these games but all of them? red flag.

Now that all the winning has stop and we're looking at things objectively now and people are realizing we aren't as good as we thought. But of course, there people were making threads about some ESPN analyst that didn't think our team was on par with Alabama. Anyone with an objective line of thought knew everything would come crashing down once we played real teams.
 
We also beat VT and ND convincingly on back to back weeks. Obviously we all hoped we’d look more like that team after a whole off season.
 
Ethnicsands said:
Richt in year 3 is ‘haunted’ by starting four golden OLs and a Golden QB.

That right there tells you all you need to know.
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Given what we know about Navauguhn and his desire to be a cane one could easily make the logical assumption that he would be at UM even if it were the previous regime. Looking at you coach Searels.
 
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If Richt hasn’t developed the golden players or found better players himself then it’s on him. He has been here two years more then enough time to find a qb and a punter that are at the very least better than what we are currently trotting out there. I’m holding out hope that one of the young qbs get a chance in an actual game and show that they have it when the lights are on. Oline is different in my opinion because it’s rare to have young guys come in and be effective right away.
 
Well yeah, this is why I didn't think we were going to "beat the brakes off" (and can we please retire that stupid saying) anyone Sunday evening. It's pretty much the same team that lost to Pitt and went down to the wire against FSU, GT and UNC.

With this LSU game, we were banking on significant improvement from Rosier. I'm not sure how some of you were so sold on this to the point you thought we were going to romp all over LSU. I wasn't. I'd thought we'd lose 17-13 and struggle to get anything going offensively, because we wouldn't be able to run much, and thus it would fall on Rosier to make throws, and he wouldn't be able to. That's what I thought would happen.

17-13 might have been a lot closer to the actual final score, if Feagles had done even an average job punting.
 
Very disappointed. Thought I was going to see a nude picture of Miss America

Last season was a good team They find a way to win the close ones. Last 3 games proved they were far from elite. At the end of last season I thought were 2 classes away from being elite. Unfortunately I started believing a lot of the preseason hype about all the improvement. Improved or not no excuse for the wretched performance I saw Sun night.
 
I felt like our #8 preseason ranking was very generous given the way we finished the season and pegged us somewhere in the 15-20 range given how we struggled against all the conference foes you mentioned. Last year's 10-0 start was absolutely misleading and I'm expecting some regression this year after watching Richt and co. get flatly embarrassed by one of the dumbest coaches in America. Somebody said earlier that Richt is comfortable here, just like he was at Georgia. That's really my biggest concern with this team moving forward. How driven is he to make us elite again, because I believe that substantive improvement will require him to acknowledge his own shortcomings. If James won't hold him accountable for **** like hiring his son and he doesn't have an impetus to make staff-related or schematic changes, I won't expect much to change...and that should terrify all of us.
 
Don’t forget how much we relied on turnovers last year. In games where we got several and won the turnover battle, we won. If we didn’t get many , we really struggled with consistency and lost. Looks like more of the same this year.
 
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