Chris Mitchell caught Flynn's first pass of the night. After that, Doucet was about the only receiver that saw the ball. That, combined with Flynn's apparent reluctance to throw the ball on a number of plays (especially in the first half), tells me these guys were not getting any separation. Flynn's a little too inexperienced to expect him to have the confidence to fit balls in the places we saw Russell throwing the last year. Give him time. But on the other end, our young guys have to do a better job getting open.
My observations, and I'll stick to the negatives: 1) The offense was very Plain Jane and not particularly effective for most of the game. Despite scoring 45 points, you have to realize that only one time in the whole game did we put together a drive of more than 45 yards. If we didn't get a short field, we didn't do much with the ball. It may have been a matter of simply not wanting to show much, holding it back for later in the season. 2) I didn't like how we used Holliday. He was never a decoy, and he only came in when our offense was struggling. I think he is more effectively used when the offense is getting a push, and he can be a guy to come in a score a killing blow or as a decoy to get the defense worrying about him when the play is going somewhere else. 3) We need to be able to pass down the field if we're going to have consistent success. It always seemed like the field was CROWDED when we'd put 4 or 5 receivers in the pattern and send them all 5-15 yards down the field. The receivers didn't have any space to work and the DBs didn't look like they were ever worried about getting burned. Part of this may have simply been not wanting to show the hand, and letting VT think we're strictly a short passing team. I know you can't live on long passes alone, but you have to have the THREAT of a long pass in order to open up the shorter passing lanes and open up the field for your guys to move. 4) Clearly, the offensive line needs work, and not just the right side. Ciron Black gave up a big sack that could have been a safety. Helms and Johnson allowed the DL to get a push inside once or twice. Johnson got a big penalty. Yeah, Stewart looked overmatched against a very good player and needs to improve, but don't give the other guys on the OL a pass. No one looked particularly great. 5) I watched part of the game on Tivo this morning before work, keeping an eye on the right defensive end (Pittman and Alem). Those guys rarely disrupted a play or occupied more than one blocker until the game got out of reach, and often got faked to the inside on a misdirection play. If it's true that Ricky Jean-Francois is ineligible for the whole season, we will miss that guy a lot. The DL as a whole got off to a slow start, but dominated most of the game. If they're going to single-block Pittman and Alem, you'd like to see them be able to make more plays, though. I realize they're going up agains the other team's left tackle, who is usually the best blocker on the team, but you have to get somewhere on him. There are a lot of positives (for sure), but those are the areas I'm sure the coaches will be concerneda bout.
While not playing great early on, we still moved the ball pretty well. Imagree with NLMD, I like Hester at Fullback - not because he is a bad RB, but its just allows another threat to be on the field. Blocking wasn't very good, but I think part of it was due to rain anmd playcalling. On a lot of those runs MSU defense came with everyone. Either way, I expect next week's offense to not look anything like this week's and for our defense to look about the same.
I hope with us giving alot of playing time to True Freshman well help us with recruits and let them know if your good and work hard you can play. Hope it especially helps us with Julio Jones because alot of schools have been telling him he wont play as a freshman at LSU which is a major part in his decision process.
You answered yourself. We were killing this team with a vanilla offense. No need to show Tech the whole passing game. Or to put unneeded pressure on Flynn. I don't think we showed them the whole running game either.
We weren't killing them in the first half. MSU was still in that game until the last play of the first half. They had moved the ball a little, and it would have only taken one or two flukey plays to get them a touchdown or two. I know we weren't showing everything at this point, or even most of it, but what we were showing wasn't executed particularly well. If you're looking for innocent explanations, you can certainly point to the rain, being on the road, the first game of the season, etc., but any failure to execute has to be a cause for concern no matter the reason. I don't want to give the impression that I'm being a doom-and-gloomer, but I think it's clear that if we're going to have the season we all want, we're going to have to make some significant strides quickly.
Well, we're opening on the road versus an SEC team in the rain and following up with a top-10 team. We won't get the usual three OOC cupcakes this year to work out all of the kinks. But there are always kinks in the first game.
My post-game impressions are as follows: 1. Flynn made some very good throws 2. (the obvious) Our o-line was suspect. 3. Carnell Stewart needs to step up and I saw Ciron Black hiccup a couple of times 4. Brandon La Fell is alot bigger than he was last year 5. Our special teams coverage looked great 6. Our defense looked as good as advertised 7. Perriloux looked sharp 8. Keiland Williams should get more carries 9. I can't wait until Trindon finally turns the corner on someone 10. I think LSU is a National Championship caliber team.
