Offense: Very good. Lot of questions answered positively. JR stepped up big time. Running backs, very good, depth helps a lot. O-line, very good. Receivers, Davis and Green were great, need concentration to cure the drops. Special teams: MUCH IMPROVED over last year! Yeaaaaaaaaaa! Defense: Front 4, very good. Lot of heart and effort. Linebackers, good. Secondary, got ripped. Little pressure on passer, scheme needs work. QB had too much time, where was the blitz? They completed passes into our double coverage, to several receivers. Coaching: B- Heart and effort: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA++++++++++++++++++++++ Gutty win on the road against a very good team, after enduring two weeks of serious distraction.
"Gutty win", sure, I agree. Coaching? D+ at best. Poor, poor, poor. Many questions need to be asked and answered, IMO.
On offense, we shot ourselves in the foot a couple times with dropped passes and the fumbles by Russell and Addai, but overall i'd give them an A-, our offense was great. Russell was the man tonight. On defense I'm glad that they came through when they needed to the most on the last drive, but our secondary got toasted all game. We need to find more ways to get to the QB from the front 7 so the secondary won't be left out on a limb like that anymore. Overall i'd give them a C-. It got to a certain point in the 4th quarter where I was just saying that we should let them score so we can have the ball last. It was like a basketball game. I'm glad we came out on top. Now we can fix things over the next week and get ready for the Vols.
Offense- B+, Good game but need to cut out the costly mistakes. Other then that not too bad. -OL- B-, Really good run blocking and ok pass blocking but didn't pick up the blitz very well. -QB- A-, Good game overall but JR needs to do a better job of avoiding the rush -RB- A+, thought they did a great job overall tonight. -Wr- B-, Did a great job getting open, and came through in the clutch. Also good run blocking. Complaints though are need to catch better(comes down to concentration) and need to stop quiting on running plays. -TE- B-, didn't get a chance to catch one tonight but did ok pass blocking and did a good job run blocking. Defense- F, WTF? Our scheme needs work, plain and simple. Its to simple. 10 yrd cushions by the CB's have to go. Our blitzs were picked up all night cause they are predictable. The scheme plain sucked and the play calling sucked bad. -Dl-C+ (KW and CW looked good, the rest need work.) -LB-D+(ali looked good) -DB-F (Steltz and laron looked decent, the rest need major work period. I think its more to do with the scheme.) SP teams- A++++++++++++++(can't say enough about the improvement and it won us the game tonight.) __________________ Rating the coaches Les- B, Good job overall and a great first win. But damn it you should punch Bo in his face. Love what he has done with the special teams. Needs to get JR to do a little better job of managing the game better. Jimbo- B+, same apply's about JR. Overall a good game plan. Had JR ready to go. Monken_ B-, Good passing game but receivers got to catch. Porter- A+++. Rb looked awesome all around tonight. ALL of them too. Henson- B, Te's had good run blocking technique but pass blocking needs work. Sereals- B, good run blocking, ok pass blocking. Bo- F-, Very bad job. Terrible gameplan and scheme. Dunbar- C+, Dline was ok. KW and CW are the poo. Needs to teach them to quit over persuing(sp?) Mallory- F-, Secondary sucked plain and simple. Technique sucked too. Peveto- C, for LB's he gets an F, but for Sp. teams he gets a A++++. LB have bad technique and over persue Moffit- A+++++++++++++, he had these boys in condition and the team never gave up.
We need a defensive coordinator that has some nuts! To much cushion, not enough blitzes early, and where were all those magical turnovers at? To much specialty coaching on turnovers and not enough on fundamentals IMO. Overall we had a good effort up front, but lacked focus at times. One thing won this game for us tonight and that was just raw talent. Start a search for a defensive coordinator ASAP!
Offensively: I think the play calling, for the most part, was solid. Jamarcus looked good--he rarely made a bad throw. Our WR's really hurt us this game as they probably accounted for a half dozen drops. That MIGHT be attributed to "jitters" or not being focused enough. Our WR's need to work on following the ball all the way in. Our running backs--all of them, looked good. We consistantly rotated guys in and out keeping the RB's fresh. Defensively: Our coverage is WAY too soft. Our DB's, while I acknowledge their inexperience, really looked terrible. That last drive by ASU was about the only drive where I saw our CB's up on the line in "bump-n-run" coverage. Our LB's were a non-factor. We still are not a very sound tackling defense. We miss way too many tackles. D-line was ok at best. We relied SOLELY on our down lineman to get pressure, and most of the time, when they did, it was as if ASU let us because they would have a RB or WR just sitting right behind the D-line. Needless to say, I'm VERY disappointed with the defensive scheme used in tonight's game, and equally disappointed with adjustments made at halftime--which appeared to be NONE. Overall, I think if you take everything surrounding this game and group it together, post hurricane, reshuffled schedule for our players, having to play on the road for a "home" game against a top 15 team, new coach, new staff, playing with lots of emotions, you HAVE to take this game, no matter how sloppy the defense, and just run with it. After watching ESPN Gameday Final, it's evident to me that we're more critical of our team than the rest of the nation. Everyone else recognizes this game for what we had to over-come in order to win. That will pay dividens for us with both the #3 and #4 teams losing tonight. We will move up to #3--whether we think we deserve it or not.
2nd that. This game was his fault not the secondary. The secondary did what Pelini's sytem told them to do.
