I think that this season is boiling down to two main themes: a lack of identity on offense, and a lack of progression/growth and inexperience on defense.
On offense, its the 9th game, and I still can't tell exactly what this team's identity is supposed to be. It looks as if the plan for this season was to be multiple on offense, with more formations, more diversity, and more of a load in GMac's hands. It's a logical plan seeing as we have a lot of experienced talent on the offensive side of the ball, especially at the skill positions. However, it doesn't seem to be working, at least not against the tougher opponents. I know that the offense has put up great numbers this year, but it seems to me that when this team is down, we don't have that bread and butter core identity to go to and pull out the win, or at least we haven't seen that since the Arkansas game. Also, it may be lingering effects from the knee injury, or maybe it's something else, but Ingram doesn't look to be the same guy right now that he was even ealier this year. Nothing says that better than the fact that in this game and against UT, I noticed that he has been getting trucked on some blitz pickups, and that used to never happen.
On defense, when you start a sophomore with little game experience at one corner, a true freshman at the other corner, and another new starter at safety with little game experience, breakdowns are going to happen. It's just that when we have a breakdown, the other team seems to gain a ton of yards or score.:mad2: Really, looking at this honestly and objectively, the secondary has been pretty solid considering these circumstances. The real disappointment, IMO, has been the front 7. There was quite a bit of returning experience and talent here, if not returning starters, but I personally felt as if this group had a lot of potential. But I can't say that there has been any real growth by the D-line, and the LB's still make similar mistakes that were being made early in the season. Now, some of this can be explained by a lack of health (Dareus, Upshaw), but it's troubling that we had to play Dareus so much when it was clear he was injured, and the lack of pass rush is just puzzling altogether.
All of these issues are fixable, but there's no guarantee that they are fixable this season. You can't win every game every season. Sometimes you have to take your lumps and learn from them. We have the right head guy, and he'll get it worked out. I believe he proved fairly recently that he knows what he's doing....