Don't know if this pisses off anyone else......

[War Machine Dawg]

But Crooms' shutting down the offense and going ultra-conservative when he puts in the second string drives me crazy. He talks about the Bear and how he's Crooms' mentor, but Bear had no hesitation about hanging 70 on a suck *** team if he could. Crooms has some seriously effed up perceptions of his mentor. Bear might have pulled the starters, but he wouldn't shut down his offense. He'd keep running the offense, and if that ran up the score, so be it. I'm damn well tired of Crooms trying to teach Sunday School and coach football. It's time for him to choose one or the other. There was no excuse to not score at least twice more tonight to try to ease the concerns of some of the fans, particularly some of the more sheepish fans. Instead, we score 34, and Crooms thinks it's an offensive explosion of epic proportions and entirely shuts down the offense. Seriously, why bother even putting in the 2nd string if you don't try to get them some actual work with actual plays, specifically passing plays, and playcalling they might be required to run in a real game, like say the one aGAINST Auburn next week.

 

[dawgatUSM]

It doesn't bother me that he puts in the 2nd string, but it does bother me that, when he does that, the play calling is so conservative it'd make woody cringe. I wanted to see Relf show off this arm he has when he came in there at the end of the game, but I didn't get to see that. I'd really like to see us hang 55 on them tonight (which I think we could have done), but I knew once we hit 34 it was over

 

[War Machine Dawg]

I didn't mind putting in the second string. Hell, it was the right move. I'm bitching about the same thing you are, shutting down the offense and going ultra-conservative. I wish I could be as clever as Sad's post last week about how Cheese would catch hell because the offense scored 14 points and we didn't win. It just pisses me off that Crooms deems 34 17ing points enough of an offense explosion to completely shut down the offense and go back to RB left, RB right, RB up the middle, punt. Rinse, repeat. Put in the second string, but keep calling the plays like it's an actual game. Those guys need more game experience other than watching our RB the rest of the night.

 

[dawgfan77]

You are missing the point. I too hate that we don't put the hammer down, but what Crooms is trying to do is get these second and third teamers some real game experince. I mean in the fourth quarter our OL was made up of RS freshman and walk-ons. This will be helpful down the road.

 

[OEMDawg]

How do they get real game experience going 3 and out with a dumbed down playbook against a team that they outman completely? How many carries did Elliott get, 3 or 4? And then they put in Bonner to tote it up the gut a few times. We had 250 yards at the half and finished with a shade over 400 for the game. What Crooms did, once again, is put it on cruise control in the 2nd half. That's all well and good against a team like this that isn't a threat, but it gets the team into the same habit later on down the road. How can the walrus preach discipline, focus, and playing hard all 4 quarters when he doesn't do the same thing week in and week out?

 

[Todd4State]

To me, this shows how out of touch Croom is with the fan base. If I was the HC at MSU, and I had just lost to La Tech, people calling for my OC head, and I had a I-AA opponent coming up, I would think- Man, I really need to put on a show- as in points.

I would have stopped at about 56. I would have taken the foot off of the pedal after the end of the third quarter. What's sad is we left 17 points on the field with TO's, so we probably would have gotten there had we not decided to try to be cute with our gadget plays, which I'm sure Auburn is glad they have on film now.

That 4th and one on about the 10 early in the game. GO FOR IT! Especially with Dixon and especially since you went for it 10 yards before. Makes no sense.

And as far as running it up, I don't think SLU's coach would have had a problem as long as we don't throw bombs to the endzone every play. They signed up for 60 minutes. If they don't like their experience in Starkville, well they can gladly give us our check back. Oh, and someone needs to tell Croom that not trying is just as bad as running it up. But a majority of our stupid fans think that we're "being classy" because we refuse to hang a ton of points on someone. Delmon Robinson took a KO and then ran to the 20 and took a knee? Seriously? After that we might as well tried to work on our Hail Mary's.

 

[War Machine Dawg]

You're right, if you're willing to go for it 10 yards before, then you damn well better be willing to go the next time. By going the first time, Crooms committed the offense to a TD, not a field goal, by going on the previous 4th-and-short. It's not quite as bad as punting from the 30, but it's not far from it. Bottom line, Crooms couldn't find his *** with two hands and a flashlight, and is still out of touch with the temperature of the fan base.

 

[Croomp]

Why would Croom run the score up? The guy doesn't know how to score points to begin with and no point to lie to his players by letting them run the score up when he does not coach like that to begin. And the thing with the field goals was probably to keep Carlson still kicking and experienced for next week when we might need a field goal. We are not a high powered offense so no point in letting the players act like it.</p>

 

[Todd4State]

Why would Croom run the score up?</p>

To try to keep his job.

(I know you're being sarcastic)

 

[cowbell9]

...but I understand why he did it.