I'm not so bothered by the loss. The coaches didn't coach another 2005 Tennessee game, they just didn't want to risk putting the young guys in. That is excusable and probably the same thing that would have happened under Saban. In addition, we played a great game and losing such a close game is stomachable for me. I don't expect Miles to be flawless. He has us playing at a high level right now. If we drop a few more like this one this season, my opinion might change a bit, but right now I'm feeling good about Miles and Russell. They have changed my mind from the doubts I was having this off season.
Against Auburn, even if we would have played Scott, there were very limited opportunities for making a dent. Scott could have gained a few more yards and possibly broke one or two, but the likelyhood he would have changed the game without taking a majority of the snaps is small.
yeah, there werent many holes period. i dont think addai could have had an impact in that game, it was a hard fought game and hopefully we get a chance to play auburn again, although unlikely
Well, against Auburn, MSU focued on Irons and did a pretty damn good job shutting him down....but they let Cox beat them. I don't know that our running game will garner the same amount of attention from MSU--we haven't been consistant enough. They'll likely focus on stopping the passing game and make us run on them to win.
It was good to see us come out and spread the field early in the game. I don't expect coaches to admit their playcalling was conservative against Auburn, but we saw more 3 and 4 WR sets in the 1st quarter than we saw the entire Auburn game. Hopefully they'll stick with this gameplan when we play Florida. Scott is clearly the best RB we have right now, but he did miss a couple of blocks on blitzes. I expect we'll see Vincent and Hester in obvious passing downs. I was disappointed we didn't see more of Williams. Guess the coaches feel like he is too far behind. If he doesn't play against MSU, he'll probably come up with a mysterious injury to get a medical shirt. I don't know what to think about what's going on with AB. Miles must be showing him some tough love. Hope he gets his act together soon.
If Scott would have played against Auburn then we might not have JR as quarterback any longer because Scott would have missed a block and JR would have been on his back. That is why he did not play against Auburn.
I'm not going to hash out whether Scott should've played in the AU game. But where JV didn't do anything against Tulane, CS did do some very nice things against the same team. I was surprised to not see AB, i'm wondering if he knee is bothering him. I expect to see CS more against MSU. MSU shut down Lester and Irons so their run defense is somewhat credible, but they will have to give our QB/WR's more attention then they did to Auburn. So this may open up the running game a bit. CS has a full step on JV or AB and is a powerfurl runner so if the holes aren't there he could possibly slip around the ends easier than JV or AB. I expect him to play a lot against MSU to develop and prepare him for UF. Someone mentioned him missing some blocks, which I didn't see but it should be an issue of importance. I didn't like the way he carried the ball. He held the ball with one arm every play and would often bring the ball away from his body when hitting a hole and fighting for yards. This really scares me and the reason he didn't play in the Auburn game maybe because of the blocking issue and the ball carrying issue. He definitely needs to change the way he carries the ball and cover it up. I think it was him that fumbled down on the goal line. Hopefully we see a lot more of him against MSU.
