One of the biggest reasons why we won the game is our lack of mistakes and penalties. While Oregon had many turnovers and penalties we didn't. Our two biggest penalties were questionable calls, the holding call, and the spearing-launching call on Loston. I was proud that we weren't jumping off-sides, or lining up wrong, I think we had one delay of game penalty, but we didn't have a lot of penalties. We had the one botched snap. There were no real time management problems. We weren't shuffling people in and out while the clock ticked down toward zero. We weren't forced to call time outs to refrain from taking a delay of game penalty. Perhaps I should expect this outcome from a well coached disciplined team, but unfortunately the recent past has caused me to lower the bar. It is extremely critical not to get these offensive penalties so we can run the ball and keep on schedule because we tend to have our passing game problems. It was pretty good for opening day.
That's what coaches tell receivers. They also tell QBs they have to give the receivers the best opportunity to make the catch. He wasn't doing that.
Well, those defensive players who keep blowing up the other team are being coached to do so, don't you think? Agree that the passing game has to be a lot better by the time conference play begins.
That actually sums it up perfectly. That's pretty much my take on it. He's not crazy inaccurate, but just enough or timed just a little too late to give ourselves a chance to wholly succeed in the passing game. The bad news is he didn't have a great game. The good news is it appears we're not far off from having a credible passing game.
One thing I liked about Lee was that he didn't hesitate to throw the ball downfield to a covered receiver. We have very athletic receivers and when one of them is in single coverage, we need throw it to them and let them do their thing, especially Randall. We play in a league with a a lot of good defensive backs, so receivers are going to be covered. Lee's not thinking about scrambling, he knows he has to complete the pass. Jefferson could be hesitant about throwing to anyone that wasn't wide open and always had his eye on an escape route to tuck and run. We're going to miss that quarterback draw, though. Once he gets timing down and isn't facing a top-5 opponent, I suspect the passing will improve. There was a ton of pressure on Lee last night that will be gone next week.
Sadly, I predict we'll run the ball a lot and not take advantage of being able to practice throwing the ball in a game situation.
I think the gameplan vs. the Demons depends on the weather. If it's clean out we may open things up a bit and hit some quick passes to Beckham and see if he can make something happen, maybe a few deep balls to Boone/Wright/Randle but if there's any rain we could just see something similar to the McNeese game last year.
The Marshall-WVU announcer pointed out that, in blitz situations, Lee was 6-9 with no INTs. That's a big improvement over 2008 Lee.
