Monday positive vibes thread...

[Xenomorph]

1. Through 3 games Will Rogers is completing 75% of his passes giving him 122/163, 1,083 yards, 8 TD, 1 INT (The season record is held by Dak with 4,113 in 2015)

2. The defense performed well again. We allowed 159 yards passing; 102 yards rushing; gave up 2 TD and had an INT

3. With the mysterious injury to Ruiz, McCord looks to be a solid backup. That's a plus.

4. We continue to show good hands in the passing game. Polk is pushing Walley as #1.

5. Special teams is a solid unit (one screw job by the refs notwithstanding). After our punting woes through 2 games, switching to Trafford gave us a respectable 42 yard average.

6. Dillon Johnson is a serviceable running back. He's making the most of his carries, picking up blitzes and has good hands when we dump it off to him.

 

[Smoked Toag]

Tulu to Tailback. I think everyone sees this but Leach. I wish he'd ask Nuttsack about Dexter McCluster and if he'd made that move earlier.

 

[CoastDawg18]

Tulu is not getting on the field much. He had a few plays at WR, but not many. He seems like a playmaker, but maybe something is off on his ability to pick up the offense? I’d like to see more touches, but not sure of what he is showing that we don’t see. Something seems off.

 

[horshack.sixpack]

Gives me flashbacks to Holloway.

ETA: Holloway being misused. Loved him as a player, lest anyone think I was pointing negativity at him.

 

[Smoked Toag]

Gives me flashbacks to Holloway.

ETA: Holloway being misused. Loved him as a player, lest anyone think I was pointing negativity at him.

Tulu is a solid size bigger than Holloway. And I never had too many problems with Holloway at tailback anyway, I love getting speed on the field, especially when our alternative was Shumpert.

 

[Mjoelner]

7. When trailing in the 4th quarter and the opponents know we have to throw the ball so they are dropping 8, we have scored 5 TD's in 9:56 game time. If pushing the ball downfield when they know for certain we are throwing it works in the 4th quarter, there is zero reason that it shouldn't also work in quarters 1, 2 and 3 if we try it. Rogers needs to grow a pair or Leach needs to turn him loose. One of those two things is holding us back.

 

[horshack.sixpack]

Lord knows we don't have any power running calls up the middle so it might work out!

 

[Mafiadawg]

We may have the slowest running backs in football.

 

[horshack.sixpack]

Not sure about that, but the number of times down on a single arm swiping at their legs surprised me.

 

[Dawgzilla]

7. Our OL seems to have figured out how to block 3 with just 5 guys. Now they need to work on blocking 4.

 

[o_dawgnabit]

We may have the slowest running backs in football.

Have we seen them run in the open field yet? Everytime they get a handoff they have to break a tackle in the backfield in order to get positive yards. And when they catch the ball, they usually have a corner coming up to take their legs out.

 

[Smoked Toag]

Have we seen them run in the open field yet? Everytime they get a handoff they have to break a tackle in the backfield in order to get positive yards. And when they catch the ball, they usually have a corner coming up to take their legs out.

Yep. That's why I laugh when I see people say, "wE hAvE tO rUn ThE bAlL!!!111". Well, doesn't appear the Air Raid allows downfield running.

 

[Drebin]

7. Our OL seems to have figured out how to block 3 with just 5 guys. Now they need to work on blocking 4.

Hot take: Most of these holding calls are the fault of the QB holding the ball too long. It's difficult for anyone to hold a block more than four or five seconds.

 

[NWADog]

I like positive comments. There’s no denying the frustrating and lulls of suckage we have but we outgained them by double the yardage and completely dominated every statistic. We have pretty much every game. In each game it’s been us or in this weekends case refs screwing us. Penalties that kill drives (QB’s holding the ball too long factors in some) and also I think Lashley just got really tired Saturday. The first quarter and most of the second quarter the line looked amazing. We had the ball on offense for like 22 minutes on some long drives. Tons of snaps. It looked like his feet got slower and slower and he kept getting caught leaning and was just getting pulled around which led to holding penalties and just getting beat way too much. If we can get mistakes cleaned up we will be just fine. We look much more improved from last year. We scored two touchdowns against Vandy last year and 0 against UK. I still have hope. Makes it more frustrating to see us hurting ourselves knowing if we play cleanly we can win games relatively easy.

 

[The Peeper]

and doing it w/out holding or false starting

 

[johnson86-1]

1. Through 3 games Will Rogers is completing 75% of his passes giving him 122/163, 1,083 yards, 8 TD, 1 INT (The season record is held by Dak with 4,113 in 2015)

2. The defense performed well again. We allowed 159 yards passing; 102 yards rushing; gave up 2 TD and had an INT

3. With the mysterious injury to Ruiz, McCord looks to be a solid backup. That's a plus.

4. We continue to show good hands in the passing game. Polk is pushing Walley as #1.

5. Special teams is a solid unit (one screw job by the refs notwithstanding). After our punting woes through 2 games, switching to Trafford gave us a respectable 42 yard average.

6. Dillon Johnson is a serviceable running back. He's making the most of his carries, picking up blitzes and has good hands when we dump it off to him.

This is a repeat from another thread, but my positive thought:

We are sucking for a reason other than the scheme. I get people are concerned about whether the air raid will work against the SEC and unless we find out that Bo Pellini has been cloned 13 times and all other SEC teams are inexplicably going to hire each one for their DC's, the results have not been encouraging so far. But the air raid will work against 17ing Memphis and La Tech. The fact that it's not tells me that we are not running it at an even mildly competent level right now. So yes it's bad that we suck and it's concerning that we haven't been able to make any more progress than this after a full year, but it does leave open the possibility that we will actually learn how to execute the air raid and it will work against SEC defenses (or at least work like Mullen's did, where it's serviceable or better against all but a couple of defenses we see each year).

 

[MSUDC11]

Hot take: Most of these holding calls are the fault of the QB holding the ball too long. It's difficult for anyone to hold a block more than four or five seconds.

I don’t think that’s a hot take at all. We ask our OL to do way too much at times. And when you throw it 60-70 times a game you are going to have some sacks and holding penalties.

I wouldn’t consider our OL a good one, but they are made to look a lot worse than they actually are at times.

 

[HumpDawgy]

I'm not sure if he will work at RB, but dang it, can we throw that hitch screen pass to him instead of any other receiver. Put Heath and Williams in front of him to block and let him run with it. Nope, we try and throw it to Williams and have Tulu block.