An observation

[JasonB]

All this stuff about Pope moving to LB and the richardsons being healthy for the first time and...

We start the game by playing Bordano and Yenga inside, no Pope, and we have Montes and Randolph at corner. They go right down the field and score a TD.

Second drive, we play Horton and Pope in the middle with Yenga outside, and we stop them for a punt.

All game, we would either go out there in a base defense with Bordano and Yenga in the middle, or we would go nickel package, with Pope and Horton and either Yenga or Sanders with Montes in the nickel (until he got hurt).

I just don't understand the decisions around who plays. Look, Horace and JR are the best corners on the team. Play them. In the nickel, play Montes, and if he gets hurt bring in Washington or have Randolph play in the slot. Castle is slow and not athletic. And his is like our 8th best cover guy. Get athletes on the field. Bordano and Greenbaur need to hit the bench. Move randolph back to safety, play him next to D Rich. Get as much size and athleticism out there on defense as we possibly can. The crap that is out there isn't working at all, but some of it is because we aren't getting the better players out on the field.

Beyond that....

1) When the other team has the ball in space, our lack of athleticism really is amazing. It is really frustrating to watch our guys just freeze in space. Yenga doesn't attack the ball and gets caught flat footed several times every game, players just run right around him. D Rich and Randolph are pretty much the only players out there that make a play in space.

2) Speaking of Yenga, he and Bordano work absolutely horribly together in the middle. Yenga takes awful routes towards the football. he has the angles to be able to make plays that run a little outside for a 2 yard gain, and totally misreads it and runs behind the guy, allowing them to slip the tackle and get 10 more yards. They often both hit the same gap on rushes up the middle, so the other gap is wide open and a 15 yard gain.

3) the front 7 was supposed to be a "strength" of the defense. But it is awful right now. The players have regressed since last year pretty much across the board. Particularly on the d line. The only two players to make plays this year on the d line were Minor before the injury and Gentry. Wood and Wright have been pretty much invisible. I know in a 3-4 you are supposed to occupy blocks and let LBs make plays, but sometimes you have to make a play, and neither of them even draw a double team. They are getting solo dominated. Whether Mel sucks or people didn't buy into his program, I don't care what the deal is. Either way the d line should be a strength and it is getting completely pushed around.

Players who have been in the system for another year and should be BETTER for it actually look significantly WORSE. I know Mason has them working a lot harder in practice now, but the entire team should have just been sitting at Bubba's for the entire bye week and put on weight.

This team only lost Rambo in the front 7 from last season, and he was hurt most of the time. There is no way we should be this bad on defense. If anything, we should be strong enough up front to force QBs should to pick on our corners non-stop after losing Acker and Parks.

The offense still has a long way to go, and the defensive play was overshadowed by how poor the offense was to start the season. But the defensive performance given what was coming back is absolutely shocking. After spring practice, I thought the LBs looked very slow and not atheletic, but I allowed myself to be convinced that it was because Yenga, Horton, and Sanders were not playing. LB is going to be the biggest area of need on the team moving forward.

[mrydel]

Analyze all you want but the bottom line is we have boys playing against men. We have been out recruited by every team we face at every position on the field, two deep.

[ftworthmustang]

Analyze all you want but the bottom line is we have boys playing against men. We have been out recruited by every team we face at every position on the field, two deep.

My wife summed it up today when she said it was like watching a middle school football game.

[Big12Mustang]

It's funny that the staff felt relieved that we got done with the SEC/Big 12 portion of the schedule and that conference would be easy...the AAC is no pushover, they are the 6th power conference in the making. We have a long year ahead of us and none of the conference games will be easy. I feel like we will lose all of them. We will probably make UConn look as good as TCU did against us