UGH

[Spaz]

Spaz: Coach Bennett, We're the worst team ever...
Phil: Yes we are, Spaz. Yes we are...

Seriously, I'd REALlY like to have a win this season, and I'd like to win homecoming. But the liklihood of that is less and less every week.
Are we gonna be winless? Surely we'll put ONE in the bag....

[Nacho]

Unless we suddenly develop an offense I don't see a win this season. Sorry but this team is headed for 0-12, barring an unforseen meltdown by one of our opponents.. The conservative offense that Bennett thinks is the way to go has gotten us to 0-6. Why tamper with success like that? A reasonable person might step back and look at the results. A reasonable person might deduce that our conservative offense is not winning games. A reasonable person might want to change what he is doing. We obviously are not dealing with a reasonable person. So we will stay conservative and go 0-12. I hope you are not a senior. I hate to see you go out this way.

[PK]

Nacho, you are letting your frustration tie your brain into a knot. OK, against Texas Tech and OSU we didn't have a chance no matter what we did so let's ignor those for now. Baylor game, we kept it close, could have won , should have won, but ultimately we shot ourselves in the foot...Nevada, kept it close, but ultimately shot ourselves in the foot...Utep... Do you see a theme here? It's not the game plan or the play calling that are keeping us from winning...it's the stupid mistakes, the interceptions, the fumbles ,the defensive offsides that give the other team another first down. As I have pointed out before the play calls are pretty balanced between passing and rushing, but dropped balls, interceptions, and the occasional bad pass has made our rushing the only thing that appears to be happening. It gets back to the players having to execute the plays. You can't have a defensive back miss five tackles in a game. You can't have recievers dropping the passes. You can't have the defense jumping offsides in a critical 3rd down situation. You can't turn the ball over 3 and 4 times a game and expect to win. GET A GRIP MAN.

[i10pony]

Your exactly right PK with everything you have pointed out. This team has no discipline,and makes stupid mistakes. I put all of that on the coaching staff. Look it at this way the Dallas Cowboys basically have the same team they had last year. The difference this year is the Tuna. His teams are always disciplined and well prepared they never "shoot themselves in the foot"

[Mike Damone]

Except the Tuna can just cut everyone and bring in new players if he wants to.

And he costs $4 million a year.

[i10pony]

I know that. But the fact is that team is the same team from last year with a few exceptions.

[PK]

Many of those same players that Tuna has to work with have been playing at the pro level for more that just a few years and lack of discipline may have been their only problem. A lot of our mistakes are being made by freshmen...not all of them, but a lot of them and that is due to a lack of experience and not necessarily discipline. Texas' redshirt freshman QB, Young, made a few glaring errors too...it is a problem all freshman have to deal with. Even some of our upperclassmen don't have all that much game experience. Regardless, the coaches are not totally without blame and they admit it, but you cannot give the players a free ride in this mess. They are the ones on the field that have to make it work.

Lest you think that I am implying that all turn overs are due to stupid mistakes, I'm not...sometimes it is just plain good defensive play by the other team. The fact is that as young as this team is, we are not good enough to recover from very many errors or turn overs.

[Nacho]

Are you on the payroll PK? You should be. You deserve this team and more importantly this coaching staff. It is apologists like you that have made SMU the loser that it is for over 14 years. You embrace losing. You secretly like it. Some part of your psyche needs it. That's okay with me. Many people feel a need to lose. You are one of them. Keep defeding the coaches. I'm sure they appreciate it.

[ponyte]

We have had a system that was designed for failure and that is exactly what we are getting. We self impose unrealistic rules on our athletic teams. We have made recruiting a near impossible task and we demand more academic excellence form our athletes than we do from the ballerinas in the Meadows art school.

Bennett didn't design the system (neither did Copeland and many others). We the alums deserve some of the blame cause we didn't demand and vote with our pocket books more dedication form the University for athletic excellence.

Now we are correcting the Pye model and it will take time. Better players will mean less mistakes, fumbles and so forth. But that will be in the years to come. For now, get out the brown paper bags and show up at all games had show we have spirit if nothing else (I know, it is a pretty desperate and lame appeal).

[PK]

I love free psychoanalysis...don't know how I would get through the day without it. Thanks Nacho. Same time tomorrow?

[WildHorse]

You forget one thing: PK is right -- comparing Coach Bennett with Coach Parcells is more than an apples-to-oranges thing. I'ts like apples to .... I don't know .... ribeye steaks or something. Coach Bennett is just beginning his career as a head coach. Tuna has been a head coach for how many years? He has how many Super Bowl rings? He took over an undisciplined team with how many professional athletes? (53!)

The hardest thing Coach Bennett must have to do each day is to resist the urge to throw all his young guys in there and let them learn on the field. He's played some young guys, and there are more waiting in the wings. That's not meant as a shot at the juniors and seniors, either - we'd have no program at all without the years of work they've put in. But every coach talks about "his" guys, and Coach Bennett has one and a half classes of "his" guys. He won't use the "young" tag as an excuse, but I will. Hey, I'd love it if we had 22 seniors starting across the board and 22 juniors ready to take over next year, but the fact is we don't. We have played some of the young guys. (Too many for my taste, but that's another discussion for another time.) And when you have turnovers and penalties like we've had, that's going to decide games that are so close on a talent level that they could turn either way. Not to issue any coach-speak here, but the little things - penalties, mental errors, etc. -- have kept us from being 3-3. If we were, folks would be talking about a statue of Coach Bennett next to Doak Walker Plaza. We're not. But we are close -- really close -- to breaking through. If we'd played offense all year like we did in the third quarter against San Jose, and defense like we did against Nevada, we might even be 4-2. The talent is there. The execution hasn't been. But it's coming.

[Stallion]

we are NO WHERE NEAR close to breaking through-we have the foundation of one relatively strong recruiting class-and that is it. We'll see 2-3 years at least from now how well we've done.

[i10pony]

poynte,

Yeah I'll get out my brown bag and cut holes in it for my eyes and mouth, and put it over my head when I show up to homecoming. Just like the bag heads at the New Orleans Ain'ts games. Instead having the squires in the end zone we should have guys in ties, khakis, and brown bags over their heads.

[SMUstang]

Just how bad can we get? I don't see how we could possibly get any worse than we are now. Aren't we at the point yet that the only way to go is up? If we're not there, I'm out of here.

[PlanoStang]

Maybe our dull unimaginative OC, or our scared to go 0-7 again head coach could start having some fun with the offense X's, and O's, or find a couple more RBs to run the power I every play.

We are not good enough to recover from very many errors or turn overs unless we score some points, or hog the ball as long as we can.