Not sure about what you saw in the other games from this and last year, but I can tell you why they were bad last night. Cause they were on the field the whole not. When your offense cant keep a drive going and give the defense a rest every now and then..they are gonna start sucking wind. And we had quite a few defensive stands last night but they can only do so much! The one defensive area that we lacked in early in the game was pressure on Tebow!
That is true about Russell, but when he started he was a soph., after sitting a redshirt season, and playing some minutes his redshirt frosh season behind Marcus Randall. He started in his THIRD fall at LSU, not his first.
Crip, Lee's stats last night were very similar to Tebow's, and Tebow had that freakin' 70 yard TD pass that McCray ever-so-generously tipped into Harvin's paws. He wasn't the worst thing about that game by a long shot. What did we expect Lee to look like stepping out onto the field in the Swamp on a Saturday night already down by 7, then 10, then 17? We finally started moving the ball on our 4th possession, then HATCH places the ball on Scott's shoulder pads, and we have our first lost fumble by a RB in 612 carries. Dickson then proceeds to have his worst-ever half of football and basically causes Lee's interception, then flat-out drops a first down ball on the next possession. There were drops galore. How about Chris Mitchell dropping a pass that hit him in the hands on our second offensive play? It's not time to bench Lee and throw Jordan Jefferson out there. Now, if we lose the next two weeks, sure why not? And Jamarcus had much worse games when he was young. Matthew Stafford had more interceptions than TD's his freshman season. Tebow had the luxury of only being on the field a few plays a game his freshman season. That would've been Lee had RP not been kicked off the team. I still think Lee will be fine, but he's going to face some stiff competition, which is what our biggest problem at QB is this year. But, hey, it's not as bad as it was in '02 after Mauck was out for the season--yet.
I would agree with the deep ball. I don't remember seeing any deep balls thrown. At least try it a few times to make them respect it. UF was crowding the box a whole lot last night and shut the run down. Our OL got beat pretty bad last night and Lee took some mean hits in the 1st half that I guarantee affected him in the pocket the rest of the night. All in all, my main concern is the defense. Young QB's will struggle and I can live with that. But defenses win games and our defense can't do it. The combo of co-DC's, young secondary, lack of pressure from DL, are my concerns. We need a good DC that can teach young players to play, I don't know if that is the problem with our DC's or if they just have bad game plans. But I have to think not teaching the secondary is a major issue because they are out of position a whole lot and WR's are wide open. I'm worried about the defense much more than the QB's. We usually have a defense that can get the ball back after a QB error, but we couldn't do that last night. The defense played great in the 2nd qtr, but collapsed after that. You can say they were on the field forever, but they gave up much of it in the 1st qtr. After halftime they were rested and still allowed UF to control them. All I can say is Defense Defense Defense. Miles need to address this now and the DC situation needs to be addressed after the season and he needs to bring in a DC.
I don't suppose anyone is going to point out the fact that Lee was getting hammered all night. There seemed to be very little adjustment for the pressure Fla put on him. It was obvious that a young QB was going to be easily rattled, and he was.
i agree with you that most of the drops were b/c of bad passes (behind the WR's) but this is all part of Lee's learning process. i mean did anyone think that if Florida played to their potential which they finally did last night, that we were gonna roll into the Swamp with a freshman starter and take the W??? who honestly thought that??? this isn't gonna be a NC type of year so let's let Lee take his lumps. Timing is the issue with the bad passes and that just comes from repetitions and practicing over and over with your WR's to get in rhythm. and it takes game experience against guys with different looking helmets. it's not always something you can perfect in practice. this is all a product of the RP situation. if it wasn't for his transgressions LSU would have an experienced QB but that's not the case so expectations have to be scaled down this year despite the start and the lofty ranking. plus RP wouldn't have won that game last night the way the gators played. whether it's lee or JJ (now i know why you like him) someone is going to perform in a substandard manner this year. Lee has improved believe it or not and execution will come with experience. it' ok, trust me. i don't think you're the kind of fan who expects an NC every year so just know in the long term this is all natural progression.
Rattled, yes. Hammered? No. Lee's passes were just not very accurate whether he was pressured or not.
Are you kidding me about Dickson. What about the route up the middle that Lee left him out to dry by forcing him to TURN his body to catch the ball and leaving him open for that defogger hit. And we have Byrd, and Lafell..WHY THE HELL is Lee throwing to C. Mitchell anyway??? And this is not just about one game. In the Auburn game Lee was having HUGE problems with his timing. Our wrs made up for that with some GREAT catches that most Wrs would not make. BUT IT IS STILL HAPPENING. Timing is about practice as someone else has said. He has had since the week after Auburn PLUS a BYE week to correct this problem and he hasnt which leads me to believe there is something wrong with his mechanics!
Sorry Crip, but I gotta at least somewhat disagree here. Were his passes perfect? No, and noone is saying they were. But most of them were catchable but weren't caught. In the OU/Texas game, thos two QBs were throwing the same type passes. You cannot expect a guy to be perfect. He's got to put the ball where his WR can make a play. For the most part, he did just that. And our guys did not make the plays. A bigger problem to me is that we did not control the LOS. We were supposed to dominate this phase of the game on both sides of the ball. Instead we got prison raped here. We had to resort to quick 3 step drops and short passes. Could not run the ball for our lives, and couldn't give Lee enough time to throw deep enough to back Florida's D off of the line a bit. On defense, we let them run that same play all night long, and never even pretended to be interested in stopping it. They used our size and speed against us. Lack of discipline by not staying in our lanes, and shoddy tackling. There were a LOT of problems last night, but Lee is a ways down the list of things that need to be fixed.
I was bummed until I realized that we're realistically looking at 10-2 or 9-3.. That's a bad season? Maybe we're spoiled. :wave: :geauxtige
