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Bennett and his staff have almost zero confindence in the offense's ability to stretch a defense and throw the ball downfield. In other words, to do anything that surprises people. This is painfully obvious. But Bennett is NOT a football idiot. Coaches make gameplan decisions based on what players show them in practice. It's hard to be daring in your play calling when your pass protection is like a sieve, your receivers drop two balls for every circus catch they make, and your QBs are prone to lack of composure and plain bad decisions. Bennett doesn't coach QB's to freak out under pressure and throw directly into the chest of a SJSU player, or throw a 2-yard pass to the flat on a "free" play where the defense jumped offsides. Hell, I'd run the ball too. If our offense showed any ability to avoid shooting itself in the foot in practice, don't you think we'd be seeing it in games?

I'm not here to rip Bartel; I'm saying the coaches work with the O on a daily basis, and have concluded, based on what they see, that it simply cannot be trusted to execute a wide-open game plan. They didn't just make this stuff up. Nobody prefers a boring, predictable, ineffective offense. It's what we got.

When we did open it up briefly in the 3rd quarter, with some success, did Bennett suddenly become pass-happy? No. He knew we had dodged a bullet by completing anything. Maybe he viewed it as a stroke of luck. Either way, his suspicions were confirmed by crucial, bad quarterbacking decisions in the 4th.

Interesting comments by Phillips and Swann last night. Right after the Spartans' final touchdown, Phillips said (and I'm paraphrasing): "I read all the message boards, and all this stuff about jumping off the [Bennett] bandwagon. But this is a situation where the coaches put the players in a perfect position to be successful, and the Mustangs just didn't get it done." Swann agreed. I think his statement was: "[defensive player] needs to be a better football player on that play." That sentence is astoundingly inarticulate, but it's also incisive.

I'm as horrified as anybody by all this. But players win games, people. And we are in desperate need of a few more.

We need JUCOS NOW. Look at SJSU. The ONLY reason they win is because of JUCOS. But we're too worried about our academic rep? GIVE ME A BREAK. We're setting our football program up to fail every year. Recruiting will not be so great forever. I'm not sure the top recruits want to play for a winless team right out of high school... and a team that their high school could probably beat on a given night.

JUCOS. NOW. Why is there no pressure on the administration for this? If I were still at SMU, I'd be knocking on Copeland's door every day and organzing STUDENTS FOR A WINNING RECORD.

Arghh.

Looks like Texas Tech got 7 Juco commits today!

Wow! they really did get 7 JUCO commitments over 1 weekend according to Rivals-must have been a hell of a party. Anybody know when the new JUCO eligibilty standards take effect-I thought we were supposed to see a big drop-off in JC recruiting because of it.

<small>[ 10-12-2003, 05:26 PM: Message edited by: Stallion ]</small>

I'm afraid KnuckleStang has hit on the heart of the matter. Given this offense, what would you do on third and long?

Throw an out or a screen? Those tend to get intercepted by the opposing DEs and run back for 6 pts.

Throw long? And take a sack.

Give it to KK, cause about half the time he'll get the yardage. Drives me bananas too that we're so vanilla, but running the ball between the tackles is one thing this team has proven it can do... most of the time.

For all the wailing and gnashing of teeth about this basic offense, at least the calls aren't downright insipid like Kueck's offenses.