I don't care about his motives for not playing him. Someone has to be accountable here. We heard all off-season how we we're going to get the ball in his hands as much as possible. They didn't do that. Yeah, there were no opportunities to give him the ball. He scored twice in four touches in the first half and only touches the ball three times in the second half. Maybe if he got the ball more the offense would stay on the field longer.
I edited this into my post so you probably didn't see it before responding, but running the ball more isn't a bad thing when you are trailing that badly in time of possession. Holding and fumbles ruined our offense, not a failure to get Shepard or any of our other playmakers the ball. We threw to Shep four times, and he caught 3. I don't know how many handoffs he took but it was at least one. That's at lesat five attempted touches in roughly 55 plays...Is 10% of our offense not enough in a game that we were cruising? If Claiborne doesn't get roasted and Ridley doesn't fumble, we kneel on a two-TD victory and rave about the new look big play offense that gets Shep involved.
Talk to anybody outside of LSU fans, that's where you get a really good non biased opinion. To a person, they would all ask you "where the heck is your playmaker Shepard. Where did your passing game go?". Don't take my word for it, talk to non LSU fans and really find out the truth.
Why would you pass it when you're up 30-10 and trailing by ten minutes in time of possession? The natural inclination is to grind clock. If we try to establish the passing game and JJ throws a pick-6, it'd be Miles' fault too I'm sure. Second-guessing is easy isn't it?
You're wasting your breath. No one wants to hear the truth, all they want to hear is how we're fixing the problems and going to win 10 games. :rolleye33: The '08 and '09 seasons tells the tale of the real story.
And if UNC didn't fumble the snap, and if UNC didn't hike the ball out of the endzone, and if UNC had all their future NFL draftees starting... The problem with this game is that there are too many ifs. IF LSU would have continued to crush UNC in the second half and not fold up like a Les Miles lawn chair in the 4th quarter, there would be very, very few people griping.
- 08 we had a terrible defensive staff (since replaced) and a terrible freshman QB who was unfairly thrown to the wolves for reasons out of the staff's control (since replaced) - 09 we had a "damn strong" season minus two disappointing toss up results. Improvement has been there from year to year though.
Agreed, not trying to play the if game either. Just saying how perception can change based on certain plays. Shepard got plenty of action Saturday, 3 catches, 1-2 running plays, and two TDs...It's a misallocation of blame to blame the collapse on not getting him the ball. Blame holding, fumbles, and defense. Don't blame a lack of Shepard.
I was in the gameday thread and I kept calling for a sustained drive. We had not had one all game long. There was absolutely no continuity in the offense, even in the first half. All we had were 2 big punt returns that set up 2 big touchdown plays (both of the 50 yard variety) and a punt return for a TD (against a team, unfortunately, that had players on the field that had no business being there due to all the subs having to start instead of play special teams). So in essence, 21 points were scored on 2 offensive plays. Nothing wrong with that mind you, it says a whole lot about our big strike capability. But don't get comfortable thinking this offense was just clicking along in that first half. There was never once offensive continuity against North Carolina. Penalties, undisciplined play, turnovers, poor execution, etc all added up to a pretty listless night offensively. And we're obviously going to need that all season long. We have a long way to go offensively. We have the players in place that can allow us to be terrific offensively. But until the coaching gets better, I am afraid we are not going to see it come to fruition.
