1. Terrible outcome. How did we lose to USA while also not getting any significant reps for an underclass QB or RB? Horrible, horrible job by Mullen.
2. As someone else said, Mullen's give a **** is broken. Mullen can coach, but he's lost his intensity. There's no way Mullen from 2009 through 2012 would have done such a poor job. That Mullen hated losing. And if he had done such a poor job, the press conference would have been epic. But he barely seemed bothered in the press conference. It's like 2012 falling apart on Mullen made him realize, "Hey, I'm a multimillionaire with a great family. Losing stinks, but I'm not going to let it stop me from enjoying my awesome life." That's a very healthy perspective to have, and basically makes you incapable of being an SEC West head coach for the long haul.
3. I can see why Mullen would have trouble with blue chip recruits. Yeah, if you're a Chris Jones you will get to play, but lots of capable underclassmen that could make plays don't get to play because Mullen doesn't trust them. There are benefits to Mullen's system, but we have a lot of potential playmakers with basically no experience their third year in the program.
4. It's criminal that we played USA and Holloway got 11 carries, Shumpert got 3, and A. Williams got 2. WTF, Mullen. If HOlloway is our best back, we don't need his 160 lb self getting 11 carries against USA. We need to save him for conference games.
5. It's time for a youth movement. It's so unlikely we get a bowl at this point, we need to be getting young players reps now since we won't have bowl practices. Anybody that's not an SEC player needs to sit (Damien Williams, Shumpert). Anybody that's an athlete but for some reason isn't performing needs a chance to figure things out (Jamal Peters). Anybody that's roughly equal to an older player ahead of them on the depth chart needs to be getting at least 50% of the plays available and probably more like 60% (so Senior should probably become the swing tackle with Jenkins and Rankin taking more reps; I hope there is somebody we can play that is roughly as good as Desper).
6. I don't think there's any way Mullen turns it around at this point. He's had plenty of wake up calls and I thought he might get motivated again, but if after the way he finished the last two years he couldn't motivate himself enough to get the players ready to play USA, I just don't see it happening. It really boggles the mind to think how far below his potential Mullen has to perform in order to lose to USA. We're probably going to be in a ****** position at the end of this year. We're going to have a coach that has semi-retired that nonetheless has a track record that says no way in hell he should be fired.
7. Freeze was stupid to go all-in right out of the gate. He has his weaknesses like any coach not named Saban, but he's pretty good and I think he would have had a good chance at having success even if he hadn't gone all-in. At the very least, I think he would have had a track record that looked similar to Mullen's early years, and at that point he could have pushed the envelope some and it wouldn't have been so blatant.
8. Based on the way that we played Saturday, we should be a dog in every game we play other than two OOC games. Maybe only a slight dog to UK and USCe. I'm assuming we're not quite as ****** as we looked Saturday, but even so, I'm not sure who else we're going to be close to. I guess Arkansas would be the next best bet. After that it looks like we will be way worse than UM, A&M, and Auburn. Maybe one of them will implode before we get to them, but otherwise, even if we improve a good bit we're still probably looking at a 5 win ceiling.
2. As someone else said, Mullen's give a **** is broken. Mullen can coach, but he's lost his intensity. There's no way Mullen from 2009 through 2012 would have done such a poor job. That Mullen hated losing. And if he had done such a poor job, the press conference would have been epic. But he barely seemed bothered in the press conference. It's like 2012 falling apart on Mullen made him realize, "Hey, I'm a multimillionaire with a great family. Losing stinks, but I'm not going to let it stop me from enjoying my awesome life." That's a very healthy perspective to have, and basically makes you incapable of being an SEC West head coach for the long haul.
3. I can see why Mullen would have trouble with blue chip recruits. Yeah, if you're a Chris Jones you will get to play, but lots of capable underclassmen that could make plays don't get to play because Mullen doesn't trust them. There are benefits to Mullen's system, but we have a lot of potential playmakers with basically no experience their third year in the program.
4. It's criminal that we played USA and Holloway got 11 carries, Shumpert got 3, and A. Williams got 2. WTF, Mullen. If HOlloway is our best back, we don't need his 160 lb self getting 11 carries against USA. We need to save him for conference games.
5. It's time for a youth movement. It's so unlikely we get a bowl at this point, we need to be getting young players reps now since we won't have bowl practices. Anybody that's not an SEC player needs to sit (Damien Williams, Shumpert). Anybody that's an athlete but for some reason isn't performing needs a chance to figure things out (Jamal Peters). Anybody that's roughly equal to an older player ahead of them on the depth chart needs to be getting at least 50% of the plays available and probably more like 60% (so Senior should probably become the swing tackle with Jenkins and Rankin taking more reps; I hope there is somebody we can play that is roughly as good as Desper).
6. I don't think there's any way Mullen turns it around at this point. He's had plenty of wake up calls and I thought he might get motivated again, but if after the way he finished the last two years he couldn't motivate himself enough to get the players ready to play USA, I just don't see it happening. It really boggles the mind to think how far below his potential Mullen has to perform in order to lose to USA. We're probably going to be in a ****** position at the end of this year. We're going to have a coach that has semi-retired that nonetheless has a track record that says no way in hell he should be fired.
7. Freeze was stupid to go all-in right out of the gate. He has his weaknesses like any coach not named Saban, but he's pretty good and I think he would have had a good chance at having success even if he hadn't gone all-in. At the very least, I think he would have had a track record that looked similar to Mullen's early years, and at that point he could have pushed the envelope some and it wouldn't have been so blatant.
8. Based on the way that we played Saturday, we should be a dog in every game we play other than two OOC games. Maybe only a slight dog to UK and USCe. I'm assuming we're not quite as ****** as we looked Saturday, but even so, I'm not sure who else we're going to be close to. I guess Arkansas would be the next best bet. After that it looks like we will be way worse than UM, A&M, and Auburn. Maybe one of them will implode before we get to them, but otherwise, even if we improve a good bit we're still probably looking at a 5 win ceiling.
