Took some time to decompress after that game including some men's league ice hockey but I feel a little clearer about the situation with the game and the team.
Starting the season the first few drives our offense showed its first glimpses of problems when it stalled out. It took the defense and the takeaways we had on defense to get the offense going. Then Delaware was obviously an FCS team. Syracuse was probably our true measuring stick. The offense struggled but the defense was confident enough and played hard enough where they did not give up big plays. Versus Michigan is where I think we started to become deflated and lost confidence. We came out flat but the defense shut down Michigan and got us back into the game in the second half only to have our offense falter. Vedral fumbled and missed a wide open Melton late in the 4th. After that game we were flat from "go" v OSU and they steamrolled us and same with MSU and today. The confidence and focus is gone. We are not less talented than we were earlier this year but we've definitely lost mental focus on defense especially. That was a tough stretch.
We need to refocus through this bye week but we also need some changes. You can't make wholesale changes and bench all of the older guys and team leaders for youth because that will have the opposite mental effect. What we need to do is:
1. On defense reset mentally and recharge their batteries.
2. Schematically figure out the middle of the field and get DBs to cover tighter. GS needs to be more involved.
3. Get AC and all other guys healthy.
4. Pick a starting 5 on the OL and stick with them. No more rotation.
5. You can't bench both Pacheco and Vedral because I think that could cause a lot of internal issues. Seeing as we already rotate at RB I would equal out the touches for Young, Mononghai and Pacheco and rotate those three depending on the circumstance.
6. Bring back (in small sample sizes) the Johnny football package. WTF happened to that in short yardage situations?
7. Let Cole Snyder play Illinois. Wimsatt is not ready and Vedral has not had a single good game this year against an FBS team - https://www.espn.com/college-football/player/gamelog/_/id/4243539/noah-vedral . Our offense cannot get worse. There are WRs and TEs open that Vedral does not see and when he sees a guy and tries to get the ball to them, the opportunity passes because there's either no accuracy or no power behind the throw. Cole could open up the playbook if he's able to visually see the middle of the field and make throws. Right now we're limited to dink and dunk passes for anywhere between a 3 yard gain to a 5 yard loss. It's not working.
8. Gleeson needs to be in the box and not on the field.
Look at Oklahoma. They benched the pre-season Heisman candidate Spencer Rattler because they were losing last week and now he didn't start this game. No one lost any sleep. While they have more talented players, they didn't know what the result would be but didn't think it would be worse than what Rattler was doing. It paid dividends.
If it doesn't work you can go back to Vedral. If you become too loyal as a coach, you're going to make decisions that are not in the best interest of your team.
Starting the season the first few drives our offense showed its first glimpses of problems when it stalled out. It took the defense and the takeaways we had on defense to get the offense going. Then Delaware was obviously an FCS team. Syracuse was probably our true measuring stick. The offense struggled but the defense was confident enough and played hard enough where they did not give up big plays. Versus Michigan is where I think we started to become deflated and lost confidence. We came out flat but the defense shut down Michigan and got us back into the game in the second half only to have our offense falter. Vedral fumbled and missed a wide open Melton late in the 4th. After that game we were flat from "go" v OSU and they steamrolled us and same with MSU and today. The confidence and focus is gone. We are not less talented than we were earlier this year but we've definitely lost mental focus on defense especially. That was a tough stretch.
We need to refocus through this bye week but we also need some changes. You can't make wholesale changes and bench all of the older guys and team leaders for youth because that will have the opposite mental effect. What we need to do is:
1. On defense reset mentally and recharge their batteries.
2. Schematically figure out the middle of the field and get DBs to cover tighter. GS needs to be more involved.
3. Get AC and all other guys healthy.
4. Pick a starting 5 on the OL and stick with them. No more rotation.
5. You can't bench both Pacheco and Vedral because I think that could cause a lot of internal issues. Seeing as we already rotate at RB I would equal out the touches for Young, Mononghai and Pacheco and rotate those three depending on the circumstance.
6. Bring back (in small sample sizes) the Johnny football package. WTF happened to that in short yardage situations?
7. Let Cole Snyder play Illinois. Wimsatt is not ready and Vedral has not had a single good game this year against an FBS team - https://www.espn.com/college-football/player/gamelog/_/id/4243539/noah-vedral . Our offense cannot get worse. There are WRs and TEs open that Vedral does not see and when he sees a guy and tries to get the ball to them, the opportunity passes because there's either no accuracy or no power behind the throw. Cole could open up the playbook if he's able to visually see the middle of the field and make throws. Right now we're limited to dink and dunk passes for anywhere between a 3 yard gain to a 5 yard loss. It's not working.
8. Gleeson needs to be in the box and not on the field.
Look at Oklahoma. They benched the pre-season Heisman candidate Spencer Rattler because they were losing last week and now he didn't start this game. No one lost any sleep. While they have more talented players, they didn't know what the result would be but didn't think it would be worse than what Rattler was doing. It paid dividends.
If it doesn't work you can go back to Vedral. If you become too loyal as a coach, you're going to make decisions that are not in the best interest of your team.
