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I can't believe that people are getting on JJ for installing his system and sticking to it. Look, he is going to spend the next year recruiting players to fit that system. 1) He needs to show recruits what he is running so he can explain where they fit in, and 2) He needs to fully evaluate what he has in order to determine what the biggest needs are. Tweaking the systems to that you don't develop players you want in order to finsh 5-7 instead of 3-9 doesn't do anyone any good in the long run.

Anyway, here are my grades for each unit.

QB: D. BLM was obviously the right choice. He has great mechanics, accuracy, arm strength, and pocket awareness. Turner showed that he is a more than capable backup. Poor grade comes from forcing desperation passes which resulted in interceptions and touchdowns, fumbling snaps, and waiting to long to read that screens weren't going to develop. Good news is that every one of those mistakes is correctable with maturity and experience. He will be a fantastic QB by the end of the year. You can also see with the offense why accuracy is so important. Bad passes and drops force you into second or third and long situations, and this is more of a possession based attack.

WR: C-. Some nice plays, but also some bad drops. Sanders we knew is good. Robinson showed that he will be a force and should cut drops by end of the year. Beasley is going to be a really nice possession receiver for the Mustangs. Need a fourth receiver to step up. Where was Wilkerson and Bryant?

RB: D. Martin showed lack of burst on inside runs, which are a staple of this offense. Seems to only show his speed when he gets to the perimeter. Both he and McKinney missed blocks on blitz pickups.

OL: C. They are a solid pass blocking group. Better than expected considering the youth. Breakdowns mostly came on missed assignments. Pass blocking standpoint gets a very solid grade. Run blocking was not good at all, consistantly missed assignments or were not able to get a push.

DL: D. Were not able to pressure the QB until the late stages of the game, when the score was out of reach. Tackles were abused on running plays and didn't show the size or strength to clog things up. Lack of depth at DT. DE shows more depth, Yenga looked good at the end, but they are all small and can be pushed around. Lack of size is key because they can be pushed wide, and DTs don't get a push, so QB has planty of space to step up and buy time.

LB: D. Smart is capable of making more of an impact than that. He is a good player who is active, but he was caught running in circles a bit. Fleps has good hustle, but not enough speed or athleticism. 4-3 was inneffective in the first half, so spent much of the second half in a 4-2-5. Lack of speed and athleticism of group as a whole was exposed on running plays. Did not have a good night.

CB: D. Lack of depth was exposed. Castro never impressed me in the spring, and was poor last night. Not sure where McElroy or Crosby were. McCann had one bad missed tackle, but was the one guy who did well overall. Needs to be more consistant and focused. Potential to be a shutdown corner. Bell was disappointing. He has a lot of tools, but played too soft after getting beat a couiple of times in the second quarter. Good, quick hips, but doesn't react well to cuts at times. Look for the young guys to get involved sooner rather than later to give depth.

S: D. Jones had a couple of big tackles. Dennis showed rust after not playing for a year and was benched at the half because of it. Hopefully he can recover, because the athleticism is there. Unfortunatley, I think we have a lot of guys who are better against the run than against the pass. I think Banjo is going to start popping up here pretty soon. Exposed though more by poor LB and CB play.

Special Teams: D. My most disappointing aspect of the night. Paid a lot of attention here in the offseason. Morstead was off - several odd looking punts, and struggled with PATs, missing the second one. Kickoffs were short. Two good returns by Henderson, but looked slow on others.

I think that as the season goes on, we will see special teams, QB, WR, and the secondary improve significantly. Run blocking of O-line and performance of d-line will be issues all year, as well as potentially the linebackers. I see us finishing the year with 4 wins, six with a little luck.

Special Teams: D. My most disappointing aspect of the night. Paid a lot of attention here in the offseason. Morstead was off - several odd looking punts, and struggled with PATs, missing the second one. Kickoffs were short. Two good returns by Henderson, but looked slow on others.

are you kidding me? Morestead did look odd on PATs but punted 46.5 yards on average. Our special teams forced 2 turnovers, and returned the kickoffs nearly 20 yards on average.

I generally agree with this assessment but would give the defense a F in all phases. Too slow, too small and manhandled most of game. Our atrocious tackling from last year has not improved. Where we did get a chance for key interceptions,we could not hold on to the ball. In addition, it looked like the defense either gave up or ran out of steam in the third quarter. Very discouraging but these are primarily Bennett's recruits so hopefully this will get better in the future with new better players. As to our offense, I noticed in the Houston paper today that we only managed 337 yards against a Houston defense that last year allowed 510 yards plus per game and was ranked 118 out of 119 nationally for total defense. All we can hope for with this team is to see some improvement each week in how it plays. Surely it cannot get worse.

I generally agree that the Defense was AWFUL. But I attribute a ton of that to failure to understand the scheme. I don't attribute as much of it to a lack of athleticism as some of the rest of you guys do. There we tons of times when CBs and Safeties were in the wrong place. I'm not ready to say the athleticism isn't there just yet.

atleast we finally have a Special Teams coach

They ran 3-3-5 and 3-4 as well. I saw four defensive schemes on the field last night.

CB: D. Lack of depth was exposed. Castro never impressed me in the spring, and was poor last night. Not sure where McElroy or Crosby were. McCann had one bad missed tackle, but was the one guy who did well overall. Needs to be more consistant and focused. Potential to be a shutdown corner. Bell was disappointing. He has a lot of tools, but played too soft after getting beat a couiple of times in the second quarter. Good, quick hips, but doesn't react well to cuts at times. Look for the young guys to get involved sooner rather than later to give depth.

Let's be fair the Defense gave up 28 points and they're correctable too. Bell played strong and physical not to his credit all night. Yes he did get beat and thats a part of the game you have to recover and get back on it. He missed a tackle as did others and he will work on that. I don't agree with you when you say he was a disappointment. Did you watch the game. I think as young as the team is they will get better. In this system you can't have that many turnovers and win the game and that too will come.

RoyBell wrote:CB: D. Lack of depth was exposed. Castro never impressed me in the spring, and was poor last night. Not sure where McElroy or Crosby were. McCann had one bad missed tackle, but was the one guy who did well overall. Needs to be more consistant and focused. Potential to be a shutdown corner. Bell was disappointing. He has a lot of tools, but played too soft after getting beat a couiple of times in the second quarter. Good, quick hips, but doesn't react well to cuts at times. Look for the young guys to get involved sooner rather than later to give depth.

Let's be fair the Defense gave up 28 points and they're correctable too. Bell played strong and physical not to his credit all night. Yes he did get beat and thats a part of the game you have to recover and get back on it. He missed a tackle as did others and he will work on that. I don't agree with you when you say he was a disappointment. Did you watch the game. I think as young as the team is they will get better. In this system you can't have that many turnovers and win the game and that too will come.

I agree with you, the turnovers killed us. This is a better team than we showed last night.

Sorry that I was a bit critical of your son, but I hold him, McCann and Morestead to a higher standard because they all have pro potential. I watched your son closely in the spring and he really has great hips and a nice burst going forward on the break. He is going to be a fantastic cover corner, especially on the short out and is going to have a pick 6 this season. Last night wasn't his best game, he played with a lack of confidence I thought.

As for Morestead, again, I hold him to a higher standard. Sure, the punting average was decent, but he was aided significantly by the horrlbe punt that rolled. He didn't have his typical hangtime, and he was shaky on the PATs.

JasonB wrote:I agree with you, the turnovers killed us. This is a better team than we showed last night.

It's definitely a better team than they showed. The three turnover returns were effectively 3 easy touchdowns and Aldrick Robinson's drop would have been an easy td as well. That's 28 points...remember we had three sure interceptions of Clement dropped by our secondary. Catch those and it's a different game. I agree the d line got manhandled and there were quite a few missed assignments but with the incredible amount of changes (new offense and defense, different style of playing, new players and a true freshman qb with 3 weeks of two a days), we did pretty well until we had mistakes snowball on us. We definitely need to upgrade talent but we'll have a decent year (for us) this year. Like Stallion said, Rice had 3 very talented and experienced offensive players.

It's really laughable that people are panicking with some calling for JJ to be fired.