My take on this season... I started to type this long diatribe on the goods and bads of each area of this year's Tigers, then I thought for a second about a couple of things. 1) The Tigers are 7-2 and I thought we'd be 9-2 this season and play in a NYD bowl and LSU is right on track for that. Many of us said that if LSU came out of the trifecta of games on the road at AU, UGA and UF with three wins = unbelievable, two wins = incredible, one win = respectable. We lost two of the three to TOP 5 teams, by one point to a team who is likely to play for the NC 2) For all the negativism about certain areas and certain players, I believe the coaching staff has done an outstanding job of coaching this year's ballclub. Folks, it's easy to coach great players, it's 10X harder to coach players who aren't great. If you step back and take a look at dominant programs over the past three or four decades, generally it took those programs 8-10 years to build a program to when you lose a player either through eligibilty expiring or leaving early, that a player of equal or better ability replaces them. Nick Saban has the Tigers almost at that point here in year five...I'm looking forward to the end of this year and can't wait for 2005 because I truly believe we'll be outstanding!
most people got spoiled from the 2003 team and just thought we were going to show up with our rifle armed stud QB and put up 50 in every game. people failed to think about our youth, inexperience and lack of leadership. we were just going to seamlessly transition into 2004 and win games on the road against revenge minded teams which we walluped last year. now, here we are with an opportunity to win 10 games and position ourselves nicely for another run at the NC in 2005. it's good to be a tiger fan. I think people have finally awakened to the reality of this 2004 team. let's enjoy it.
Flynt and Russell. I know they are young and was not expecting them to bring us to the OB, but did expect them to show more.
I think those were exactly my expectations also. I thought the defense would have to carry the load the first several games and that the running game would help with time of possession and would move the ball down the field. So I guess the O-lineand JV has been my biggest disappointment this year. The CB's had a bad game vs UGA but have played pretty well for most of the season, ranking 3rd in the nation. But the turnovers helped UGA atack us a lot more due to great field position. The QB position has been a disappointment but I really wasn't expecting it to be much better than it has been to tell you the truth. I also predicted a 9-2 or 8-3 regular season.
This was definitely stated for dramatic effect, as I have never seen one thread about firing NS. As far as the expectations, some people were honest and said they expected a 2-3 loss season and they got blasted by quite a few people here. I had hopes for sure, and grossly overestimated what talent and speed can do for a program who lost so many substantial players on both sides of the ball. I learned that talent alone is not enough, you definitely need experience to go along with that. That is why next year our offense should be a different story if the QB situation works itself out :thumb:
Yeah, the stadium has not "rocked" like it did last year. However, this had to be the weirdest schedule I've seen in a while given the timing of the away games and the open dates. All in all, simply glad to be a Tiger fan.
The timing was wierd, we went almost a whole month without a home game. It almost felt wierd going back into tiger stadium - like I wasn't going in for a football game or something. That definantly added to the lack of "crowd participation" or whatever you want to call it.
I thought that our CB's would have had a lot more success but I guess that all starts with getting to the QB quicker. I didn't expect them to get beat as often as they have at times.
