We May Actually Be Polishing the Sneaker

Silver King

Pass Block
Joined
Oct 8, 2017
Messages
3,290
"Can't polish a sneaker" has been my opinion of the Canes OL for years now. I have blistered them. Particularly the veterans of this group starting back with watching blitzers go by untouched at LSU when even a hand-check would have helped, and then at that sack-fest at UF. But I saw some actual holes being opened against an SEC front Sat night. Yes, could have done without Clark's mistakes, but it was the best performance by a Cane's OL against a decent team in years.

This is the position group I have wanted to see get up off life-support for years now. It's what I know and I know it's the hardest position group in football to find five guys that fit and can play physical football as a group. They were so much more physical Sat.

The experts can argue about throwing, catching and game calling. But I was, and still am, glad we have a former O-Lineman as HC in a program that obsesses about Skills, but seldom gave thought to why it wasn't winning with them. I didn't know that much about Mirabal, but he said his OL wouldn't be a weakness - Brass Balls of a statement with what he had to work with - but so far, they haven't been. ST and WR group own that.

We win at LSU and UF with this OL, and should have won this one, based on stats. The RBs had some confidence hitting the hole.

Be honest, most of us (who actually have a relationship with reality) penciled this in as an L in those 9-3 or 10-2 predictions for this season. This staff scrambled to fill huge holes, introduce a new staff, system and culture. I know everyone's tired of waiting, I am too. But I'm a Canes fan looking for positives this year and I am encouraged with this been-a-problem-OL-group's showing thus far.
 
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A lot of people are bickering over the wrong thing. You have people defending mario/gattis for that abortion of an offensive performance on Saturday. Then, you have the others who are not happy about that.

In the end, they let a game slip away because of a lack of execution, and super conservative play calling. Mario has always been way too conservative, and he brought in a play caller who is the same way.

I don’t know why anybody is even arguing about this. This is what we’re going to get. Vanilla offenses that will work when we have substantially more talent and can bully the opposing defenses
 
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A lot of people are bickering over the wrong thing. You have people defending mario/gattis for that abortion of an offensive performance on Saturday. Then, you have the others who are not happy about that.

In the end, they let a game slip away because of a lack of execution, and super conservative play calling. Mario has always been way too conservative, and he brought in a play caller who is the same way.

I don’t know why anybody is even arguing about this. This is what we’re going to get. Vanilla offenses that will work when we have substantially more talent and can bully the opposing defenses
I said this from the jump while everyone was destroying the players. There was multiple problems with the offense . Yet people focus on me mentioning Gattis having some issues in his pass game. How dare I not only trash his wr’s or Tvd.

We all knew the wr’s were lacking but to even mention the OC of having some negatives made the cult lose their minds. Like he’s beyond reproach. Then the mob attacks and now ” I want him fired , he sucks and I’m scorched earth”.

They act like it was all roses at Michigan. We hear Broyles award and ejaculate. Even though we all know they brought in people to help improve that offense.
 
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I remember others saying that Gattis wouldn’t be here long, because he would be a head coach soon, that he adjusts to the players he has, yada yada yada.

I for one just need to see improvement week to week. So far I have not, but we are stuck with what we have for now and cross my fingers that we make some changes soon. Just picking up the pace of play would be an improvement!
 
I agree with OP....nobody thought we'd win that game...privately, the vast majority just didn't want to get embarrassed on primetime, which we didn't. An L is an L and so long as we didn't get punished, I'm good with it because I was one of those who had this as an L.

We didn't get into the end zone vs we didn't get into the red zone....which problem would you rather have....yes, Mario prefers a conservative ball control style of offense, and after FINALLY getting to see the Air Raid break records at UM, here we are again with a pro style OFF system, I'm not thrilled about it either BUT....

Before that game had someone told me that we'd outgain A&M by 150 total yards, start 4 drives inside our own 10 (2 of which on the 1 yard line) COUPLED WITH at least 4 trips to the redzone.....I'd be an ecstatic man BECAUSE I'd know the result was 1 of 2 things, either we lost a close game that came down to the wire or we won the game.

Mario has proven the main ingredient and that's proof of concept, that if the players come, they will be plenty successful if they make the plays
 
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I said this from the jump while everyone was destroying the players. There was multiple problems with the offense . Yet people focus on me mentioning Gattis about some issues in his pass game. How dare I not only trash his wr’s.

We all knew the wr’s were lacking but to even mention the OC of having some negatives made the cult lose their minds. Like he’s beyond reproach. Then the mobs attacks and now ” I want him fired it he sucks, im
sco the earth“.

They act like it was all roses at Michigan. We hear Broyles award and ejaculate. Even though we all know they brought in people to help improve that offense.
100% true. All of it. There’s no coincidence that Michigan’s offense went crazy when Matt Weiss showed up. They let Gattis walk for a reason. They weren’t worried about losing him
 
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I’m willing to let this play out more than 3 games. Gattis does have a limited WR room with 6 healthy kids. Let’s see if he moves Brantley or Skinner to help. Let’s see if he changes the play calling to help TVD with quicker reads. He has to get past FSU so he can get X and George back.

As of now, I’m not overly impressed by Gattis for multiple reasons. I am extremely impressed by Mario and Maribal as they have 7 kids ready to push 5star talent around. They will have to keep that up if we are going to win the coastal.
 
I agree with OP....nobody thought we'd win that game...privately, the vast majority just didn't want to get embarrassed on primetime, which we didn't. An L is an L and so long as we didn't get punished, I'm good with it because I was one of those who had this as an L.

We didn't get into the end zone vs we didn't get into the red zone....which problem would you rather have....yes, Mario prefers a conservative ball control style of offense, and after FINALLY getting to see the Air Raid break records at UM, here we are again with a pro style OFF system, I'm not thrilled about it either BUT....

Before that game had someone told me that we'd outgain A&M by 150 total yards, start 4 drives inside our own 10 (2 of which on the 1 yard line) COUPLED WITH at least trips to the redzone.....I'd be an ecstatic man BECAUSE I'd know the result was 1 of 2 things, either we lost a close game that came down to the wire or we won the game.

Mario has proven the main ingredient and that's proof of concept, that if the players come, they will be plenty successful if they make the plays
**** that. After App State pushed their **** in on the rumen game I knew we could beat them with our run plays. But instead, we came out throwing the ball from hash to hash like a run and gun playbook, without the run. Lol
 
I said this from the jump while everyone was destroying the players. There was multiple problems with the offense . Yet people focus on me mentioning Gattis about some issues in his pass game. How dare I not only trash his wr’s or Tvd.

We all knew the wr’s were lacking but to even mention the OC of having some negatives made the cult lose their minds. Like he’s beyond reproach. Then the mob attacks and now ” I want him fired , he sucks and I’m scorched earth”.

They act like it was all roses at Michigan. We hear Broyles award and ejaculate. Even though we all know they brought in people to help improve that offense.
Still think 2nd quarter, 3minutes left, and going into half time sitting on timeouts frustrated me the most of it all. Which goes back to the conservativeness already touched on.
 
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"Can't polish a sneaker" has been my opinion of the Canes OL for years now. I have blistered them. Particularly the veterans of this group starting back with watching blitzers go by untouched at LSU when even a hand-check would have helped, and then at that sack-fest at UF. But I saw some actual holes being opened against an SEC front Sat night. Yes, could have done without Clark's mistakes, but it was the best performance by a Cane's OL against a decent team in years.

This is the position group I have wanted to see get up off life-support for years now. It's what I know and I know it's the hardest position group in football to find five guys that fit and can play physical football as a group. They were so much more physical Sat.

The experts can argue about throwing, catching and game calling. But I was, and still am, glad we have a former O-Lineman as HC in a program that obsesses about Skills, but seldom gave thought to why it wasn't winning with them. I didn't know that much about Mirabal, but he said his OL wouldn't be a weakness - Brass Balls of a statement with what he had to work with - but so far, they haven't been. ST and WR group own that.

We win at LSU and UF with this OL, and should have won this one, based on stats. The RBs had some confidence hitting the hole.

Be honest, most of us (who actually have a relationship with reality) penciled this in as an L in those 9-3 or 10-2 predictions for this season. This staff scrambled to fill huge holes, introduce a new staff, system and culture. I know everyone's tired of waiting, I am too. But I'm a Canes fan looking for positives this year and I am encouraged with this been-a-problem-OL-group's showing thus far.
I said it all off season, if our OL can be better and our defense can get off the field in the 3rd & 5-6 plus situations, I truly felt like we were a 10-2 team.

However the one thing I didn't see was that our offense would be SO ENTIRELY DIFFERENT and much less prolific than a season ago.

I am honestly a little on the fence about 10-2. Still feel pretty good about it, but there is some doubt. I have watched our ACC opponents and the concern is obviously Clemson. Maybe Va. Tech can slow us down a little.

TVD and our pass catchers (WR & RB) have to be more efficient. It's either that, or we go to a 65-35 run to pass ratio, and just be happy with scoring less and controlling the clock. I just hate that scenario, because it is not favorable in a shootout type game.
 
I said this from the jump while everyone was destroying the players. There was multiple problems with the offense . Yet people focus on me mentioning Gattis having some issues in his pass game. How dare I not only trash his wr’s or Tvd.

We all knew the wr’s were lacking but to even mention the OC of having some negatives made the cult lose their minds. Like he’s beyond reproach. Then the mob attacks and now ” I want him fired , he sucks and I’m scorched earth”.

They act like it was all roses at Michigan. We hear Broyles award and ejaculate. Even though we all know they brought in people to help improve that offense.
So you don't trust Mario?

He went through and extensive hiring process, and chose Gattis, and you're saying it was a mistake 3 games into the season?

If Mario was that extensive, and made a bad OC hire, that is concerning.
 
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I said this from the jump while everyone was destroying the players. There was multiple problems with the offense . Yet people focus on me mentioning Gattis having some issues in his pass game. How dare I not only trash his wr’s or Tvd.

We all knew the wr’s were lacking but to even mention the OC of having some negatives made the cult lose their minds. Like he’s beyond reproach. Then the mob attacks and now ” I want him fired , he sucks and I’m scorched earth”.

They act like it was all roses at Michigan. We hear Broyles award and ejaculate. Even though we all know they brought in people to help improve that offense.
I personally do not have an issue with conservative, but its definitely the execution that kills me. If theres a lack of execution on the practice field...its going to ******* translate. Everything I read through Fall camp was a lack of execution and chemistry between the QB and WR's, but we just didnt do enough to fix that.

I thought the plays that were called were boring, but they could have won us the game if we execute.

The majority of college football fans out there want high powered, high scoring offenses. Conservative, methodical offenses can be dominant too, just not as exciting. The SEC and Saban's of the world thrived off of that for years (Mario was there). Now Saban is going the way of the high powered, high flying offenses, and it is actually biting him in his ***.

I am not one of those that are washing my hands with this offense yet. Mario saw this work, but his personnel is not where it needs to be.
 
So you don't trust Mario?

He went through and extensive hiring process, and chose Gattis, and you're saying it was a mistake 3 games into the season?

If Mario was that extensive, and made a bad OC hire, that is concerning.
Don't think thats what he's saying... I think some people are saying that but don't think he's saying that
 
"Can't polish a sneaker" has been my opinion of the Canes OL for years now. I have blistered them. Particularly the veterans of this group starting back with watching blitzers go by untouched at LSU when even a hand-check would have helped, and then at that sack-fest at UF. But I saw some actual holes being opened against an SEC front Sat night. Yes, could have done without Clark's mistakes, but it was the best performance by a Cane's OL against a decent team in years.

This is the position group I have wanted to see get up off life-support for years now. It's what I know and I know it's the hardest position group in football to find five guys that fit and can play physical football as a group. They were so much more physical Sat.

The experts can argue about throwing, catching and game calling. But I was, and still am, glad we have a former O-Lineman as HC in a program that obsesses about Skills, but seldom gave thought to why it wasn't winning with them. I didn't know that much about Mirabal, but he said his OL wouldn't be a weakness - Brass Balls of a statement with what he had to work with - but so far, they haven't been. ST and WR group own that.

We win at LSU and UF with this OL, and should have won this one, based on stats. The RBs had some confidence hitting the hole.

Be honest, most of us (who actually have a relationship with reality) penciled this in as an L in those 9-3 or 10-2 predictions for this season. This staff scrambled to fill huge holes, introduce a new staff, system and culture. I know everyone's tired of waiting, I am too. But I'm a Canes fan looking for positives this year and I am encouraged with this been-a-problem-OL-group's showing thus far.
Everybody's upset because we came so close and have nobody to blame but ourselves for that loss. But I think you've nailed it. We got some really good play from some unexpected sources and that's something to be happy about. Having seen the OL, DL, and at least one CB who shall remain nameless, play better than I thought they were capable of is encouraging.

I don't know what the final record will be, but this is an 8-4 team. Between the talent we have and our struggles as a program, that's just where we are. We might luck into more or less, but that's what we've got right now. Anybody still whining is just a child.
 
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