Thoughts on the TCU game

[ROCKNEPONY]

Is it possible the coaches are using too many receivers in rotation creating an issue for Preston to develop chemistry with a specific receiving core? Against less challenging opponents it shows but isn't glaring but OK/TCU he seems to miss throws regularly as if he doesn't know the receivers speed/routes etc.

Every receiver runs routes differently, has a different cadence, different speed for routes, different jump. With the game already moving fast for a new quarterback, have the coaches added one more unnecessary level of complexity?

Another question: why aren't they running Chatman and Lavine as a power one-two punch on 1 yard fourth downs.

[Charleston Pony]

MM- 100% correct. Not sure RL is the coach to make us a top ACC team and Stone proved he sure is not the guy to do it.

Keep in mind that Stone is essentially a FR playing against a roster that was good enough to get TCU to the CFP Finals last year. Most have said all along that 2024 and 2025 will be the years we appreciate his talent. Having said that, I do hope that if Stone struggles against lesser teams Lashlee will give Jennings a look. He's talented and I would hate to see him transfer out for lack of playing time.

[ponyte]

Stone starts to look better for the rest of the season. Reason, the D is good enough against the next 8 opponents to give Stone and the O more short fields. I didn't see the TCU game but the OU game we had a whole lot of long fields to work with. Pretty hard to consistantly go the distance against quality Ds. The O should look better against talent in the AAC. We played with the big boys of the big xii. We should be more dominate against the AAC talent.

Laslee is a disciple of the great Arthur Gustavo Malzahn III. That go for it attitude works great or gets you fired. Might not see so much of that go for broke play calling in the next 8 games as the D will be more dominate. This should provide more oppotunities for quick easier drives without the need for gusto play calling.

[MustangBroker]

Very disappointing game. We got out coached. I don’t like the mentality of getting through the out of conference games and staying healthy for conference. I feel that’s the mentality our staff had. I want a staff that expects to win every game.

[Charleston Pony]

Very disappointing game. We got out coached. I don’t like the mentality of getting through the out of conference games and staying healthy for conference. I feel that’s the mentality our staff had. I want a staff that expects to win every game.

While it was disappointing to see that we don't yet have the kind of roster to compete with the "upper half" of P5 teams, The goal is to win a conference championship and non-conference games don't have much to do with that. Let's hope we are healthy for a run through the AAC

[redpony]

While it was disappointing to see that we don't yet have the kind of roster to compete with the "upper half" of P5 teams,

I doubt if tcwho is in the upper half of the P5 teams like Ohio ST, Michigan, Georgia, ND.etc.
If some of our boosters are happy second level teams in the aac then we should not have moved up.

[redpony]

While it was disappointing to see that we don't yet have the kind of roster to compete with the "upper half" of P5 teams,

I doubt if tcwho is in the upper half of the P5 teams like Ohio ST, Michigan, Georgia, ND.etc.
If some of our boosters are happy playing second level teams in the aac then we should not have moved up.

[ponyte]

The SMU of the 80s started in 1978. SMU played Florida, #3 Pediphile State and #14 Ohio State all on the road. SMU went 1-1-1 in that stretch.

Mike Ford was a Soph QB and lead the nation in total offense that year. He was the starter in 1977 and played like a Fr. Experience at QB matters.

The '78 defense was two or three players from having the depth to complete with top ranked teams.

SMU was 3-1-1 with conference wins over TCU and Baylor. Then the next conference stretch hit and SMU lost to 3 more top 20 teams (#11 Houston, #7 Texas, #11 Arkansas).

This season so far has been overall disappointing but a vast improvement over the previous 5 or 6 years.

This team reminds me of the '78 team. Better talent with more potential and starting to play up to that potential. And competing with he Big boys. The difference is our conference this year isn't the conference of the '78 team.

I'm not satisfied with 2-2. I'm impressed by our defense and we have to give a first year starter QB time to mature and learn. We still can have a very satisfying season and hopefully attract better talent.

Oh that '78 team was what HS Srs like Dickerson, James, Carter and others saw. And that '78 team had a more go for broke style of play as well. And the success and style of play of that '78 was sure appealing to those young men.

[Pony78]

Always appreciate and enjoy your comments, JasonB. And I find myself in 99% agreement with you. You said:
We aren't good enough for the CFP this year, but we sure as hell are good enough to win the AAC. The real season starts next week with Charlotte.
Totally and obviously agree on the first item. Good enough to win the AAC...maybe. But winning the AAC with anything other than a loss free conference record, knowing what we know now about others, to me is a fail and underperformance. With regard to the last sentence, I am thinking this may indeed be the mindset of the coaching staff. Penciling in W's and L's and ceding the L's on OU and TCWho. We needed a statement win in the worst way to show all that we do belong at the adult's table and we still have not gotten that, and have no more shots this year for that. So very, very disappointing from my perspective.

[JasonB]

Is it possible the coaches are using too many receivers in rotation creating an issue for Preston to develop chemistry with a specific receiving core? Against less challenging opponents it shows but isn't glaring but OK/TCU he seems to miss throws regularly as if he doesn't know the receivers speed/routes etc.

Every receiver runs routes differently, has a different cadence, different speed for routes, different jump. With the game already moving fast for a new quarterback, have the coaches added one more unnecessary level of complexity?

Another question: why aren't they running Chatman and Lavine as a power one-two punch on 1 yard fourth downs.

That isn't a problem at all. TCU dropped 8, clogged the middle, and dared us to beat them with passes to outside receivers. We couldn't do it. Preston is missing because he is looking at his reads, and nobody is breaking open quickly. So he is holding the ball hoping that eventually someone breaks free. It has nothing to do with the rotation. We just weren't good enough outside to beat TCU in man coverage.

For your second question, I'm not sure. In general, against the 3-3-5, you have to spread them out, so you don't want to run as much h-back. We have run lower percentage of h-back formation in the last two games, basically because it wasn't working that well - Eby is new to the position and having problems picking out who to block, and our OL aren't doing a great job blocking in space at the second level. The other factor here is that Chatman has been playing really well on the DL.

All of that said, yes I would love to see Chatman and Lavine as a standard look in short yardage situations. None of the rosters that we have run as hard as Lavine in short yardage situations.

[JasonB]

While it was disappointing to see that we don't yet have the kind of roster to compete with the "upper half" of P5 teams,

I doubt if tcwho is in the upper half of the P5 teams like Ohio ST, Michigan, Georgia, ND.etc.
If some of our boosters are happy second level teams in the aac then we should not have moved up.

"Satisfied" and "Realistic" are two different things.

Prior to this year, our roster has never been at a point to compete in the middle of a big boy conference since the death penalty. We have taken that step forward. And while we are not "satisfied" with that position, it is a very big step in the right direction.

Realistically, we are still behind the top teams in the big conferences. We are at number 34 in total talent, which is great for a G5 team (the next closest G5 is 100 points behind us). OU is number 9, a full 150 points ahead of us. TCU is 19, 50 points ahead of us. At number 34, we are in the third tier from a points perspective, which would put us middle to upper-middle of the big conferences.

We aren't satisfied. With each recruiting class, we improve the overall shape of the roster. It just takes time to build to that level. The good news is that we are ahead of UCF, Cincy, and Houston in that rebuild, and we can all see how they struggled in their Big12 openers. If we can make a jump into the 750 total after our 2023 HS recruiting and transfer classes, then we are in great shape going into our first year in the ACC, where we should be competitive against every team and at least finish .500. We just need to keep pushing forward from there.

[JasonB]

Always appreciate and enjoy your comments, JasonB. And I find myself in 99% agreement with you. You said:
We aren't good enough for the CFP this year, but we sure as hell are good enough to win the AAC. The real season starts next week with Charlotte.
Totally and obviously agree on the first item. Good enough to win the AAC...maybe. But winning the AAC with anything other than a loss free conference record, knowing what we know now about others, to me is a fail and underperformance. With regard to the last sentence, I am thinking this may indeed be the mindset of the coaching staff. Penciling in W's and L's and ceding the L's on OU and TCWho. We needed a statement win in the worst way to show all that we do belong at the adult's table and we still have not gotten that, and have no more shots this year for that. So very, very disappointing from my perspective.

I don't think anyone is penciling in losses. We were in both games and competed. Hell, as much as we can debate going for a FG on the first drive, I would argue that a desperate team 100% goes for the TD there. The fact that we took a FG illustrates some measure of confidence in the team.

Both of those teams are very good. When you play against very good teams as the underdog (even if you aren't a heavy underdog), you generate an upset by 1) Great players making great plays, 2) Turnovers, 3) Penalties. We got a little help on penalties in both games, but it wasn't extreme. Both TCU and OU didn't turn the ball over, and losing the turnover battle on the road against a good team is a loss like 95% of the time. So then it comes down to great players making great plays. Stone overthrew Daniels early against OU. Moochie had a chance to make a big catch yesterday and didn't. Wheaton had a chance to break two huge runs and slipped.

So we didn't get the pieces of the equation to generate an upset yesterday. We all want to get to the CFP level. The steps to get there are:

1) Improve the roster to be the best in the G5 - Done
2) Win conference and get in a good bowl - that is our objective this year
3) Improve the roster again in the 2023/2024 cycle to get up to 750 points and be at a top 25/30 level.
4) Have some success in our first ACC season and finish top half of conference
5) Improve our roster again in the 2024/2025 cycle to get above 800 points, which puts us in a position to really compete for the ACC title
6) Challenge for the ACC championship in the 2025 season..

We all want this to be accelerated, but this is the path. The ACC announcement came too late in the 2023/2024 cycle for us to pull in a ton of 4 star recruits, they are already committed. So we won't see anther rapid acceleration of the roster rebuild until that 2024/2025 recruiting class, and everyone knows how awesome that looks so far.

Take a deep breath, forget about TCU, and focus on winning conference. That is how we can really make a statement heading into the ACC. If we finish the regular season 10-2 with two hard fought losses away to two of the best three teams in the Big12, that certainly sets a tone that we are ready to compete.

We will be the favorite in every game the rest of this season. Lose any of them, and then absolutely we can be critical of the team (I will argue that our OL and DL and running game are good enough that even if we hit a bad weather game, we should be able to win). Yesterday was a bummer, but I really thought we would struggle with the matchup. It's too bad we don't play Baylor, Tech, Houston, or OSU this season, because we would beat all of them pretty easily.

[PonyKris89]

Thanks as always Jason for some real perspective.

Everyone step off the ledge, this team is still taking shape.

[mtrout]

We seem to have a lot of highly rated players that don't play like they should be highly rated.

[Charleston Pony]

We seem to have a lot of highly rated players that don't play like they should be highly rated.

Might be that they were playing (at least in the OU and TCU games) against even higher rated players