Grading the Mustangs

[GrapevineMustang]

Quarterback: B
David Page made a lot of good decisions, showed great poise, good arm strength. Turnovers prevented an A

Running back: B-
Briggs and Kincade were OK, but didn't run as much as against N.C. State. No long runs (a la N.C. State). Pipkins was ineffective decoy in overtime.

Receivers: B
Cunningham was excellent, Freeman's touchdown was great (but he was underused), Ford was effective but also underused. The rest of the receivers were fairly invisible. Tight ends were noticably absent.

Offensive line: C
Less effective than against Wolfpack. Page had to run for his life every now and then, and running lanes were inconsistent.

Defensive line: C-
Generated little rush against Rolovich, and didn't make adjustments to stop Mitchell in the second half, when he ran the same play over and over and over again.

Linebackers: C
Vic Viloria is visibly bothered by his ankle. Jarrian James has virtually disappeared. D. D. Lee had perhaps his best game yet. Corey Riley was solid but not spectacular, Brian Bischoff was strong.

Secondary: A-
Kevin Garrett and Jonas Rutledge were exceptional - each had a long interception and made nice open-field tackles defending the run. KG in particular was exceptional shadowing Ashley Lelie, who may be the best receiver SMU faces all year. Safeties were decent but blown coverage led to 45 touchdown in the third quarter.

Special teams: C-
Rutledge's returns, especially the touchdown, and Crowley's kicking prevented this grade from being an F. Walterscheid shanked a kickoff out of bounds, dropped one snap on a punt, had two blocked. Not his best day, to say the least.

[PK]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR><font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by GrapevineMustang:
<B>Special teams: C-
Rutledge's returns, especially the touchdown, and Crowley's kicking prevented this grade from being an F. Walterscheid shanked a kickoff out of bounds, dropped one snap on a punt, had two blocked. Not his best day, to say the least. </B></font><HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Actually, Walterscheid dropped two snaps on punts....one was blocked out of bounds and the other was blocked into the hands of a Hawaii player for the touchdown run. Each occurred after Walterscheid recovered the ball and tried to kick it anyway.

One area you didn't grade GrapevineMustang is the very important position of coaching....which I think deserves a F-!! Although the play calling at times was productive, it was at critical times that it was terrible. SMU had only a 7 point lead with 1:33 left in the first half and what do we do?? Just like always we go into a clock burning run mode. This team is not good enough to rest on its laurels with that small of a lead. Every time we get the ball we should be trying to put points on the board. In an irony, we luckily fumbled which lead to us making an interception with a good runback thus putting us in a position to get that late touchdown for a 14 point lead. Had we not fumbled, we would have eaten up the clock and gone into the halftime only up by seven.

At the end of the game, as Hawaii is struggling to score, we have 3 timeouts available and don't use any of them to try to save some time in case they do score. Then when it is fourth down and Hawaii has called a timeout to prepare for their fieldgoal attempt with 0:19 left on the clock we use one of our timeouts to try to rattle their kicker instead of saving the timeouts to use to try to put some points on the board. They miss the fieldgoal attempt and we have 0:17 and two timeouts left....what do we do? We take a knee and let the clock run out! Going into the game we are 0-3 in overtime games. All we needed is a couple of long passing plays like the earlier one to Freeman and we are in fieldgoal range. With 17 seconds and two timeouts, it would not have been out of reason to TRY @#*%&@#!!!!! Or for that matter, why not go for a two point conversion on our last touchdown....then we are ahead by one?!? That's called trying to win. What we did was trying not to lose.

Usually our defensive coaching is outstanding, but in this game we let Hawaii run the same play over and over again without making any adjustments. Why?!?!?

I know we don't have a team made up of 30 top 100 players, but we do have some talent and we should have been able to beat Hawaii. I know we made errors in the game, but that too is a result of coaching or more correctly bad coaching. This loss goes in the coaches' column, not the teams!!!


[This message has been edited by PK (edited 10-07-2001).]

[Vitale]

I agree about the defense in the second half. When Hawaii was running that cutback play again and again and again, we needed the defensive ends to get into the backfield and turn Mitchell back inside, toward Croy and Birdwell and Post. Was this a lack of adjustment by Schumann and his defensive staff, or was it a matter of Melvin Williams not being strong enough yet to fight through blockers?

[stangaholic]

One more category is needed:


Coaching: F-


Hawaii ran the SAME plays over and over!

[graypony]

In regard to GrapevineMustang's original post that started this thread; Jarean James disappeared because he was injuried and did not play. DD. Johnson is out for the year. They are major for the success of our defense and we missed them terribly. They are our best pass blitzers and played a key role in the Mustangs pressuring Phillip Rivers 2 weeks ago. Their absence was more key than Jimmy Chang being out for the Warriors. The other guys did well, but we lacked the depth to have fresh legs in the 2nd half. Also, their speed and quickness cannot be replaced. Jarean will be back soon. I do not think that UH's offense does what they did if those 2 were healthy and playing. They are studs who can reach their destiny very quickly and make the play.

[GrapevineMustang]

Didn't know Jarrian and DD were hurt? Jarrian was dressed for the game, thought he was available (but I guess that explains why Justin Williams got so much playing time? He's a fine player, but hadn't been in the regular rotation.)

Anyone know what injuries James and Johnson suffered?

[graypony]

James has some type of muscle pull or something to do with one of his legs. I don't know when he will be back to full strength, but since he was dressed out, I would tend to think that he would be back very soon. Johnson had a surgical procedure for a condition unrelated to football and will be out for the rest of the year. This is particular disappointing because now in his junior year, he was a stud who could defend the pass and run. Maybe, since he played in just 3 games, he could get a medical redshirt and have 2 full years left.

[Guest]

Last year, there were guys redshirting (Melvin Williams, Kelan Luker, etc.) who dressed out for every game. Can Jarrian James still redshirt this year? Did D.D. Johnson ever use up his redshirt year?

[graypony]

We don't need Jarian redshirting. We need him playing. He should be in the next game or the next. DD might get a redshirt. He has played in 12 quarters. I don't know if that is too many or not.