Okay so after a night to rest on it here are some of my takes, and a couple of questions. I'll preface this with the fact that I consider myself overly knowledgeable about football to the point of annoyance at times (just ask my beautiful wife), and I still am scratching my head at some things....here goes..
Firstly, I'm really not sure where our running game is. Last week, yes, TJ had a nice performance, but in general the balance in our offense has been non-existent (stats wise you will see we have more rushed then passes, but there has been lack of balance still). Is it an offensive line thing? De we feel uncomfortable running the ball with our current oline make-up? What is it? I know that if you take out our gashing aTm last week, the numbers are REALLY bad. We should have pounded Va Tech (less than 3 ypc) and CSU (3.1 ypc), but we couldn't. That scares me.
The second problem I have seen is our pass blocking. Which a ton of can be blamed on a young o-line. The other problem has been Cyrus K's inconsistency at LT. I blame that, in all honesty, on lack of effort. Being as good as he is, sometimes it is easy to lull yourself to sleep and suddenly you are getting beat off the line by a defender who is not near as good as you make him look...
The biggest problem we've had on the defensive side of the ball, and it looks to be our only TRUE weakness is our secondary. That's why next week scares me. We've had problems with big receivers, and Mississippi has three targets who are 6'3" or bigger (Evan Engram the TE who plays like a WR, Donte Moncrief who gave us some fits last year, and FR Laquon Treadwell who is super talented). If Belue can't go, we're going to have a tough game with all the young guys trying to match-up with them. Which of our young corners will step up and make a name next week? If Eddie Jackson has the mental part down, this could be a breakout game for him...heck, he should have had a pick last night, but Landon Collin broke it up!
I think we'll definitely show up against Mississippi, as i feel about the CSU game much like I did against Va Tech. Our focus probably wasn't solely on our current opponent, as we knew that our next test was a week away...
A couple of questions to leave you with...
Will we see more of Adam Griffith at kicker? When they showed Foster's career stats last night, it scared me (less than 50% in his career), and I am glad he hit that second FG to give him some confidence after the early miss. I think it's a possibility that the young guy gets more reps going forward.
Is Kenyan Drake due a bigger role? I think he could be our most COMPLETE back. He has really impressed me, and reminds me of a throw back t Derrick Lassic.
Did anyone notice that OJ was AJ's main target with Amari out? This kid, as much as we say it, is going to be special. Also...Chris Black can move.
