To Conservative?

[RE Tycoon]

Listening to the game last night, I didn't hear a real difference from the games I watched last year. We crammed the ball down Tech's throat, controlled the clock, played crappy defense, and didn't pass much. What happened to opening up the offense? Why were we so conservative? Let's face it, we're not playing for a bowl game this year so why don't we take chances. What the #$%@ was that wussy play calling before half? We were down by 20+ points and we run the clock out! Throw the ball towards the endzone, if we score that's a huge confidence boost. If not, we are not worse for it. Even if it's picked off were not losing much. I would LOVE to see us take ALOT more chances, WE HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE!

By the way, I didn't believe all the hype surrounding Rushbrook but he had a hell of a game.

Go 'STANGS

[Diehard Pony]

I agree. I think we were too conservative as well, and Tech adjusted accordingly by bringing a bunch of people up close to the line. Instead of throwing the ball deep to Cunningham, we kept running Kincade.

There was a little more passing in the offense last night, particularly in the opening drive, but not enough IMO.

I don't know what to say about the defense other than it appears we have the same problems with good passing offenses as we did last year.

Let's hope the coaching staff is able to make some adjustments that work during this open week.

[This message has been edited by Diehard Pony (edited 08-31-2003).]

[PK]

We started out with a pretty good drive at the start of the first quarter, but even then you could see the kinks in our armor. It was a a fairly balanced attack, but once Tech got their offense on the field it became obvious that we wanted to keep the ball in our hands for as much of the time as possible. The game plan would have probably worked very well for us except we didn't execute it very well and started making stupid mistakes. There were numorous dropped passes, missed assignments, botched routes by the receivers and just plain bad passes...too high, too short or way off the mark.

It was very plain that when Tech got the ball, they were going to score....therefore the game plan was changed to a more clock eating running game. We had at least five turnovers and four of them resulted in Tech scores...that's 28 points right there not to mention that they killed any chance of our scoring. Three of those turnover were interceptions...passing more would have probably resulted in even more int's. As far as throwing the long bombs down field, the QB has to have enough protection to wait for the receivers to get down there.

We had 100 yards in penalties, many of which were just plain stupid. A lot of those penalties either resulted in backing us up into insurmountable holes or kept Tech drives alive.

I don't know why Bartel was so off last night unless he wasn't getting good protection or he was trying too hard...what ever the reason, he did not have a good night at all.

Tech has a potent offense and I suspect we won't be the only team they play this year that gets a lot of point put up on them by Tech. The difference will probably be that the other teams will get alot more points on the board then we did. The Baylor game is going to tell us a lot more about this team then the first game. They have two weeks to fix what's wrong...if it is fixable. I truely hope it is or this will be one long miserable season.

[This message has been edited by PK (edited 08-31-2003).]

[JasonB]

What in the hell are you people talking about? How many times last year did we throw the ball more than 40 times?

I was actually encouraged by the fact that we were trying to throw the ball and play catch up rather than just run the ball and end the game.

[FloridaMustang]

Almost half the passes came after we were down 30 points. Guess they just wanted Bartel to get some practice in. I wasn't at the game and only listened to it so I can't really comment on how Bartel looked. It seemed to me that the recievers were making a LOT of mistakes, dropping balls, bad routes, not finding the first down marker before the pass, etc. They're very inexperienced and I wasn't impressed at all. I'm starting to miss Cody Cardwell. Also, I thought Jaymond Cleveland and Ray Pellerin were going to get some playing time? And where was Fitz?

The D-Line was MANHANDLED all night.. Stansbury finally broke through for a sack and I think the other one was Bischoff on a LB blitz. This is one of my main concerns now. We didn't pressure Symons at all--we couldnt get around that line (and we play Baylor in two weeks!). Symons had all the time in the world to find any of his 5 recievers.

The secondary limited the # of big plays, but for the most part, it seemed like Tech's recievers dropped more long balls than we actually defensed.

KK may be a great back, but he just doesn't have that breakaway speed that we so desperately need. That was painfully obvious on a couple runs he had where he just couldn't break away from the secondary.

I'm starting to like the idea of a mobile QB. With our inexperienced o-line, I wish Bartel was a better runner. Let's hope he doesn't have to run too much for the rest of the season.

Remember, not all coaches are great opening week coaches. Gary Barnett just won his first opener at Colorado last night in a very close game.

As far as the comments slamming Bennett's defensive coaching abilities, I don't understand why he isn't the defensive coordinator himself. At the same time, you have to realize that the defense is depleted (with the exception of the LB's). With that said, all of the current LB's were Cavan recruits! So for all those people bashing Bennett's recruiting, don't you think it's too early to evaluate him when he hasn't even been coaching long enough to coach his own kids? He's been here barely 2 seasons and the program is just BEGINNING to rebuild. It will be 2-3 years before this team can really show some muscle. We need bigger, stronger DTs and a LOT more depth/speed in the secondary to become competitive at those positions. Even Tech's ravaged secondary had more depth and talent than our own.

As far as special teams go, well we had some breakdowns, but it's hard to stop Tech's return guy. He scores on everyone. Just forget about it. And we're not going to face a kicker like 2good every week. Jonas will have some opportunities to return some kicks. Field position killed us all night.

Tech had a great game plan and executed it very well. We just didn't execute.

And that's alright. We have two weeks to work out the kinks. Now if we're still trying to work out the kinks in week 10, then I'm going to start getting a little concerned with the coaching staff, not the players.

Have faith. Stop whining, it's pointless.

Go Mustangs!

[This message has been edited by UNFMustang06 (edited 08-31-2003).]

[GoRedGoBlue]

Note that TTECH had 4 returning starters on their OLine...we should fare better against lesser lines, and as this team gets more experience..

[buspen]

Conservative was right, but even getting drilled, Tech got 21 cheap points that the game didn't reflect. The offense finally showed they could move the ball and rest the defense. Does anyone know why we didn't blitz, Symons had all day to throw with no pressure he could pick anyone apart. I saw two blitz's all game and Symons got taken apart on one. He spent the next two possessions looking behind instead of down field.