WMD's Armchair QB - Burnin' Down DWS Edition

[War Machine Dawg]

Gents, I'm pissed beyond measure, so I'm gonna burn down the house.

1. I have virtually nothing positive to say about this game. Nothing. I left after our 3-and-out to start the second half. And I pretty much NEVER leave a game early. The lack of effort had my blood boiling. There was NO excuse for putting that **** on the field Saturday. I don't care if it was Bama hangover or what, but we should've come out ready to beat up someone. Instead, we looked like we didn't even wanna be there. Pathetic.

2. Let me start by saying, TR has been solid this season. He's got a big arm and can make throws most QBs can only dream of making. However.....as long as he starts, we're going to be a finesse team. We just aren't physical right now. It blows. Run the damn ball. Use Dak, JR, and Griffin more. There's no excuse for us to throw it 35 times a week, especially if we aren't trying to throw it deep.

3. Speaking of not throwing it deep, what the hell happened to getting the Secret Weapon and/or Bump downfield? We did it when Relf was QB, but now that TR is in there and can actually hit those throws, we take them out of the damn playbook. It makes no sense.

4. Why the 17 don't we get Malcolm, RoJo, and Tubby involved in the passing game? Bump disappears in big games. Always has, always will. I really like Chris Smith, but he isn't going to regularly generate any explosive plays. He's a small possession WR. I just don't understand how our coaches so completely fail to identify who our playmakers are and/or fail to get them involved. I've been on this soapbox for weeks. Looks like I'll be on it for a while.

5. Our OL isn't great, but TR makes them look worse by holding the ball. The first sack he took was all on him. He had time to get rid of it and didn't.

6. Scrap the 5-wide set. It sucks. It hasn't been successful since Mullen got here, and we don't have the talent at WR to use it right now, unless we start using Malcolm, Tubby, and RoJo.

7. I love Perk. He's been our best offensive player so far. He was getting good runs getting wide, then we decide to run him between the tackles. WHY? The only guys that need to be going between the tackles are JR & Griffin. They're physical in a way Perk isn't. That's not a knock on Perk; he's just a different type of back. Also, why the 17 can't we involve him in the passing game, too?

8. I've been worried about our tackling for a few weeks now, and it really showed up Saturday. What the 17 are we doing in practice? Because we clearly aren't practicing how to tackle. And what pisses me off the most, tackling is about effort, imo. It's the effort to wrap up and drive through a guy. Instead, everyone is trying to go for the damn kill shot and/or strip the ball. It's 17ing terrible.

9. Our playcalling on O blows. This is another reason Mullen needs to give up STs. Playcalling is as much a talent as the ability to throw, catch, run, etc. Some of it can be taught, but the best just have a natural ability for it. See Sean Payton, Cliff Kingsbury, Mike Leach, and Mullen. Koenning may be a good organizer & teacher, but he's not a natural playcaller. Mullen needs to be free to run the O himself on gameday. Giving up STs would allow him to do that.

10. Why do other teams seem to get 5 yards a pop with their bubble screen game and we struggle to get 2?

11. Worst. Defensive. Gameplan. Ever. A 3 man front? Are you 17ing kidding me? We aren't a 3-4 team. Hell, if we'd stuck with what we'd been doing all season, we'd have been better off. Chris Wilson needs to go. Period. Someone asked it before, but it needs to be asked aGAIN: When is the last time we hired away a coach from Oklahoma that they thought was worth a ****? He's responsible for the DL, and we've all been in agreement that our DL play doesn't match the level of talent on that unit. Maybe we could bring back David Turner? He's looking for a job after today.

12. For all the man-love he's gotten here, aTm made Nickoe their ***** Saturday. He isn't the same player he was before his Achilles injury. And he probably never will be.

13. We've got arguably the best tandem CBs in the nation. Man the 17 up and GET AFTER teams. Sure, we'll get burned some. But it ain't like we're not getting burned now. Bring extra guys, whatever it takes, just get some damn pressure for a change.

14. We got physically handled. I can't remember the last time I saw that, but it was probably the '08 Egg Bowl. We've taken some bad beatings, but I've rarely seen us get physically dominated like that. And it bothers me.

15. The players should be damn glad I'm not the coach. Practice this week would be hell. Nothing but tackling drills, the Oklahoma drill, and bull in the ring. We'd either get tough, half the team would quit, or we'd lose multiple guys to practice injuries. We've GOT to find a way to be physical aGAIN, quickly.

16. The coaches aren't the only ones who get blamed for that shitastic performance Saturday. Every player on the team needs to take a long look in the mirror and decide if he wants to play. That game said we have ZERO pride. Players with heart don't come out and give that kind of ****** effort after an *** beating like Bama gave us. Re-evaluate and decide you have pride & want to play 17ing hard-nosed, physical football. If you can't get ready for LSU, don't bother getting on the bus to LSU, much less getting on it to come back to Starkville after the game next week.

17. Students: You're 17ing pathetic, too. I know the Bulldog Bash was Friday night. I know it was an early game. So the 17 what? Get your asses outta bed and fill up your damn section. The rest of us drug our asses there, you can too. You have no 17ing excuses.

18. We can still finish 9-3 if we get our heads back on straight. It's what I predicted before the season, but I reserve the right to change it. But we *should* be able to beat Arkansas and Mississippi.

19. Stop fellating Freezus and Mississippi. They haven't beaten a team worth a damn, either. Sure, they're playing harder. But the only thing they've illustrated this season is how completely they quit on Nutt last year. The old MState mindset is still strong in our fanbase. Quick to think the sky is falling and Mississippi will beat our asses. Get over it.

That's how I saw it. As usual, fire away.

In Mullen We Trust?

WMD

 

[thf24]

4. I feel like Bump disappears partially because he's our only receiver who gets significant playing time who's SEC average or better, so decent defenses can cover him up without worrying too much about our others. Which leads directly back to your opening sentence on this point.

9. Couldn't agree more. I don't know how many times in the past few years we've looked dead on offense but suddenly come out and put together a great drive, and then hear later that Mullen took over the playcalling at that point.

 

[drt7891]

Here are my thoughts:

The playcalling was atrocious. The reason being is their D-Line and a linebacker are their strength on defense. Running between tackles, going 5 wide, and option dive calls play right into that strength. Then they realized all they had to do was attack Russel and they just brought the house... and it worked. Russel cannot stand up to pressure. He can't. He cannot be like Manning or Brady... or McCarron or Mettenburger and withstand the pressure enough to find the open man. Russel will stand there and get hit, yes, but the pressure on him yesterday was overwhealming. They went with an extremely aggressive gameplan on defense and it worked. My biggest problem with the offense is we IN NO WAY attempted to neutralize their strengths by stretching the field wide. No swing plays, no pitches, no screens, no bootleg passses (they overpursued us and crashed the middle up front like there was no tomorrow), no rollouts no jet sweeps... nothing. We played into it the whole first half. That's why we only managed 87 yards and 5 first downs.

Defensively, our problem was NOT the 3-4 scheme. LSU slowed this same team down TREMENDOUSLY with the 3-4. Here is the problem we did have, however... we didn't utilize it well at all. The point of the 3-4 is to stretch the line horizontally with LBs and be in a position to contain the edges. Well, we didn't do that... we crashed the middle EVERY TIME... both with the line and the LB's. What did that do? Give Johnny Football 8 acres of unobstructed green pasture in which to work with. Our line was NOT going to get to him, but they made it really easy by constantly giving up position by getting inside or behind him. You CANNOT beat a team like this playing aggressive up front. You have to create a wall in which you do not allow them the edge, or the middle in the running game (I'm including scrambling and designed draw plays in this), but concede the pocket in which to throw the ball, which brings me to my next point...

Our secondary. You will NEVER stop them by conceding position to their running game AND giving them 10 yard cushions. There is actually a "point of diminishing returns" you reach when you give too much cushion... which is what happened. Yards after the catch was the worst I've ever seen. We had players downfield, but did not have the speed to get to them because they were able to run away from us. The whole point of the zone defense is to keep players in a position to make the tackle after conceding the catch, completely negating their opportunity to gain yards after the catch. Well, we conceded the catch, then gave them 10+ feet to run in whichever direction they wanted on deeper passes.

Now to the bubble screens... did anyone else see a scary resemblance to the Houston '09 game and this one? Yea, I did, too. They had to have run at LEAST 25% bubble screens. Why, you ask? because we can't freakin' stop them. All they had to do was block a corner, and off to the races. You HAVE to be able to do one of two things against a bubble screen: get off the block fast, or get ahead of them where they can't block you. We did neither. We sat back, let them make the catch, then let the other receiver block us and off they went. Same thing in '09. I bet nearly 3/4's of their passing yards were yards after the catch. I'd love to see a stat there.

Ultimately, our defensive gameplan should have been solely focused on stopping the run. They averaged almost 7 yards a carry and JF ran free whenever he wanted to. All he had to do was wait on our end to try to roll inside the block or let our tackle go just a half yard too deep and off he went. We left no one in position to stop him. Not only that, we KNEW that was what he likes to do on offense... that's where most of his yards come from. The point of a 3-4 defense, aGAIN, is to create a horizontal wall. We didn't do that. That resulted in another Auburn '09 where we conceded almost 400 yards RUSHING. I knew we would see a 3-4 defense... LSU showed us that is the best way to stop them. However, we pretended a 3-4 was a 4-3 while playing our secondary 15 yards behind the receivers... Offensively, we have GOT to get more creative. We needed to have spread the field more horizontally and forced their weaker areas to make plays.

Lastly, we need speed... yesterday was like watching football version of the stansbury stall...

 

[Coach34]

"Our playcalling on O blows. This is another reason Mullen needs to give up STs. Playcalling is as much a talent as the ability to throw, catch, run, etc. Some of it can be taught, but the best just have a natural ability for it. See Sean Payton, Cliff Kingsbury, Mike Leach, and Mullen. Koenning may be a good organizer & teacher, but he's not a natural playcaller. Mullen needs to be free to run the O himself on gameday. Giving up STs would allow him to do that."


I'm writing article tomorrow on that exact subject

 

[Koldfire]

U 17s are always oozing out the sunshine that Mullen pumped up your butts. I don't know who started this lie that every good play was called by Mullen. But if it doesn't work, Les sucks. Sure Mullen may call a play occasionally. But he hears every damn play called (that's why he wears headset) and he can change every play called if he desired.

The truth is every play called is Mullen's. Hell, he's too damn controlling to let the coordinators create their own schemes, both OC and DC. That's precisely why Hud didn't like working with him. Some guys can't be good a head coach because they want to be the coaches. Sure he has the championship ring, but doesn't mean he knows more about football than the collective knowledge of 6 other coaches. I'll bet my right arm that every week the coaches agree that something within the scheme isn't the best approach. But they can't question the COACH. If you could be a fly on the wall in the meeting rooms, you would hear a coordinator say "I know that we need to do "x" but I have to give Coach what he wants."

But the good thing about the butt kickings that we suffered the last two weeks, is that they will teach our Coach. He's a victim of early success (at Florida). Makes you think that you are magical, you know all. He's accustomed to looking down. But getting kicked to your knees changes that perspective. Only then will he admit to himself that he needs help and trust his coaches.

 

[Coach34]

U 17s are always oozing out the sunshine that Mullen pumped up your butts. I don't know who started this lie that every good play was called by Mullen. But if it doesn't work, Les sucks. Sure Mullen may call a play occasionally. But he hears every damn play called (that's why he wears headset) and he can change every play called if he desired.

The truth is every play called is Mullen's. Hell, he's too damn controlling to let the coordinators create their own schemes, both OC and DC. That's precisely why Hud didn't like working with him. Some guys can't be good a head coach because they want to be the coaches. Sure he has the championship ring, but doesn't mean he knows more about football than the collective knowledge of 6 other coaches. I'll bet my right arm that every week the coaches agree that something within the scheme isn't the best approach. But they can't question the COACH. If you could be a fly on the wall in the meeting rooms, you would hear a coordinator say "I know that we need to do "x" but I have to give Coach what he wants."

But the good thing about the butt kickings that we suffered the last two weeks, is that they will teach our Coach. He's a victim of early success (at Florida). Makes you think that you are magical, you know all. He's accustomed to looking down. But getting kicked to your knees changes that perspective. Only then will he admit to himself that he needs help and trust his coaches.

even more reason for Mullen to release Special Teams and get more involved with the offense to take over playcalling. You can't halfass it. You need one playcaller- period. Been there, done that with battling the HC over what to call. Never works.

 

[RingN2012]

I could feel it before the game started. The Junction didn't have it's usual life and had many empty tents. The electricity inside the stadium we had for Auburn and Tenn games was not there. This was a too 20 matchup that should not have been at 11 AM. We still wouldn't have won but probably wouldnt have been embarrassed like that.
Yeah, the game plans were awful. It's time to phase out Arceto, Chris smith, Cam, Cherington and our safeties, etc. None are bad players but guys like that aren't going to win big games for us playing major minutes.

 

[SPMT]

Glad you posted this. The 3 DL was not the problem in and of itself. AS you note, LSU shut them down when they went to 3 DL. We lacked effort, desire, and overall talent. I have to wonder.............was the reason we looked so slow because they could have had their asses worked off in practice? It is a very bad idea to work the team hard during the season with weights or multiple repeat wind-sprints. Yeah, supposedly it will harden their mind and all that ********, well........if you haven't taken care of the conditioning in preseason you will only make performance worse during the season when it's extremely important to recover for the next game.

 

[War Machine Dawg]

I think y'all are missing the point.....

Yes, the 3-4 itself isn't necessarily the problem. However, we don't have the personnel to run it effectively. For the 3-4 to work properly, you need a huge NT that commands the double team. We don't have that. Cherrington has the size, but is a ***** who gets pushed around. Nick James also has the size, but he'd be out of gas after the first series. I like Boyd, but he isn't a game changer and sure as hell doesn't command double teams. LSU has the types of DTs that allow them to seamlessly switch between the 3-4 and the 4-3. We don't.

Switching our base D was a classic case of overthinking on the part of Wilson. We'd have been fine sticking with our base 4-3, keeping the DEs wide, and playing loose zone on the back end. Hell, that's what we've done almost all season. And we've NEVER used a 3-4 for mobile QBs prior to Saturday. Wilson didn't put our guys in position to make plays. In fact, he actually made their jobs tougher by switching to a base scheme that we are completely unsuited to use with our current personnel. It was a ****** decision, period.

 

[codeDawg]

The 3-4 gave Manziel both a lot of time to throw and a lot of room to move.

 

[Bully78]

Yes, the defensive plan sucked. Yes, the offensive plan sucked. But if what you're doing isn't working, why in the 17 don't you make adjustments to something that will work?

 

[drt7891]

Not necessarily. The 3-4 lsu used did nothing but contain. Our lineman gave up their outside And forward position on nearly every play trying to get to manziel... So did our linebackers. I posted before the game that we needed to focus on containment, not attacking. Manziel thrives on pulling guys out of position, then taking off. It's like chess, I play where every move I make is defended by at least one piece, preferably 2. That's how I wanted us to approach their run game, particularly on the outside. Let them beat us throwing the ball, but we'll be damned if they beat us running and throwing. NFL teams win games by making the other one dimensional. We didn't do that. Sell out to stop the run, give JF the pocket and nothing more, and make him beat us throwing the ball down the field.

 

[CookieMonster.sixpack]

"Our playcalling on O blows. This is another reason Mullen needs to give up STs. Playcalling is as much a talent as the ability to throw, catch, run, etc. Some of it can be taught, but the best just have a natural ability for it. See Sean Payton, Cliff Kingsbury, Mike Leach, and Mullen. Koenning may be a good organizer & teacher, but he's not a natural playcaller. Mullen needs to be free to run the O himself on gameday. Giving up STs would allow him to do that."

How many screens have we run for Perk this year? I bet you can count them on one hand. Does the staff not remember how he just TORCHED Ole Miss in the last two Egg Bowls in the passing game? He can be such a weapon and we don't utilize him at all. Not sure what we are doing...it's like we don't want to play to our players' strengths...

 

[War Machine Dawg]

That also goes to Point 4 - Identifying our true playmakers.

Perk is a weapon we aren't using to his full potential. As you point out, he's VERY effective in the screen game and a receiver out of the backfield. We should be doing more to get him the ball in space. Frankly, we've lost our identity on offense.

Like I said in Point 2: As long as TR is our QB, we're a finesse offense. And that really pisses me off. I miss the physical, nasty team we were on O the last 3 seasons. Also, one of the best ways to help mask OL deficiencies is to let them run block more. Linemen love to run block, because it lets them dictate tempo and be the aggressor. We NEED to rediscover that physical identity or we're going to be in for a world of hurt. Let's use more of Dak and give our big guys a chance to hit the other D in the mouth. And sweet baby Jesus, please let us see more of JR and Griffin between the tackles. They're both VERY physical RBs, especially JR. As I've said probably 18 million times, the guy runs angry and always falls forward for extra yardage. Perk is best outside the tackles and in space, so let's put him in better position to succeed by letting the other guys take some of the load.