Just win baby! At the end of the year this game wont be remembered except for a W in the win column. That said, welcome to Chavis ball. Soft coverage and zone is his trademark. If you think Miles is going to make him change it after one game you're crazy. Miles knew what he was getting and this is the kind of defense that Chavis runs. I know some of us thought Chavis would alter his base defense because of the athletes we have but I suppose you cant change a guy like Chavis. This is what he does. The bright side is Chavis has had good results running this defense as long as the players buy in. Lets hope they are buying what he's selling.
dude... no. his math was right first of all. second of all take your political crap elsewhere. this is the tiger den, not repub vs democrat den.
What is scary is Locker has never been known to be a good passing QB, mostly running and rollouts in the past. He is good athlete thought. LSU really was never able to stop them. They did stop themselves a few times. IMHO I would say UW offense dominated LSU's defense.
clearly the latter. similar to the timeout he took after our INT against tennessee in 07. and my fears of chavis are even worse than i thought. ill give him more than one game to judge him though. he gets a mulligan on this one as he learns his personnel. i think they were 7 of 8 and 8 of 10 on 3rd down at one point.
That was the most alarming part of last night's performance. We did manage to correct that, which is encouraging. And I'm hoping that it's true about a team improving the most between the 1st and 2nd games of the season.
yeah look around. OU was having fits with BYU before bradford went down. Ohio State barely held on against the naval academy. Iowa lucked out on two blocked fgs at the end against northern iowa. first games often suck but become a distant memory as the season wears on. its usually foolish to believe what your eyes tell you in game one.
LSU is dead last in the NCAA in kickoff returns. Clearly no one is going to kick to Holliday, just like last season. We must come up with a better scheme for teams who are going to kick short to us.
My two cents: Grades: Defensive play-calling: D - as others have stated, too much bend but don't break. On the positive, forced FG attempts 4 x, but should not have come to that. Defensive player effort: B - especially in the second half. Players were playing. Bob Davie is an idiot, but he was right that they were pooping out a bit at the end to no fault of their own. Offensive play calling: D - this is where I have my biggest concerns. People can argue it is CLM v CGC, but whatever it is, it has been going on for 1.5-2.5 years now. Typically CS gets the rock early but not late, whether he is having a good game or not (or the O-line is opening/not opening holes, whatever the case may be). CS could not be stopped several games last year in the first half, then did not touch the ball til late in the game when it was known he would get it (UK game). KW is non-existent in the first half, but looks like an NFL back in the second. The offense is vanilla in the first half, then try to open up in the second with more passing. It is clearly a stategy they employ, but if you are behind, ala FLA last year, you can't come back - not the case this game, but concerning since UW was 0-12 last year. I don't buy into the "it's the first game, vanilla play-calling" excuse. This is the exact play-calling they have been doing and will continue to do all year. They don't seem to scheme based on the team, but rather have a set offense they want to force on all teams, rather than exploiting weaknesses, ala UWs inept secondary. Offensive player effort: B - I thought JJ did very well. I see some complaints on the board here, but for his 3rd start, 2500 miles away, late at night, etc, I was very encouraged by his poise and talent level. He's going to be solid for us this year. O-line needs to dominate more, as others have eluded too. Positives: 1. we won. 2. JJ looked good to me. 3. secondary played well. 4. CutRera played his best game. 5. TT overcame a dropped ball (which he did several times last year) to have a breakout game. Negatives: 1. predictable offensive play-calling that varies according to point of the game, not defensive susceptibilities. 2. Bend but don't break defensive approach, that looks like it is here to stay with Chavis (how do you like him now Izzy?), which is NOT Tiger D. 3. Scratch your head in-game coaching decisions. One other point - people should take the PAC-1 more seriously. They are not as bad as everyone makes them out to be. They certainly have more speed than the Lame-10, and that is what keeps them competitive against SEC teams. Case in point for us was the ASU game a few years back where they threw all over us. Doesn't look like that was a fluke to me looking at last nights game. I hope we correct things like we did after the ASU game a few years back. This is only the first game, and we did win! Geaux Tigers!
i am not gonna give grades, just some general thoughts. i am really hoping that the vanilla o was intentional for a couple of reasons. one, to let jj get some game experience and settled in before opening it up. and two, to not show everything we've got. tho if anything, i think the former is more likely. im am not gonna jinx things, but its what we didnt see last night that gives me hope we are on the right track and things will improve. as far as the d.... i am like some others. i am gonna withhold judgement for now. all through the game i kept thinking back to pelini's first few games. the d, and the reaction around here, wasnt pretty. people were wanting to run coach bo out of town. which is why when i read someone post last night (something about) wanting to have coach pelini's d back, i had to smile. give it time. see if adjustments are made so things work. there is one big difference on the d from end of last year. while last nights defensive schemes often didnt work, the d did not give up. it appeared to me they at least kept trying. the is a big attitude difference from the end of last year when they appeared to just say f' it. i think a lot of people around here are not giving wash and locker credit. while it will take a few games to know for sure, wash appears to be a much improved team and not the team they were last year. and even tho a lot of people dont want to admit it, locker is a good qb. the kid has talent. give them some props for being hungry and playing a good game. yes, we played like poo, but they fought all night long. another observation. things could have been worse. a lot worse. to sum up that thought, we could have been ou. a lot of top teams struggled yesterday. i started getting a bit worried early on, but when ou lost, my mojo meter went off the charts. but a good team lost. and they lost with what was essentially home field advantage. and they probably lost their qb for a couple of games. we got out with a win, its time to look forward to what can be and hope the adjustments come. time to cut the name calling and acting like three year olds that just had their graham cracker taken away from them.
That kinda puts things in perspective. And then there is Michigan '07 and OU in '05. I know we won this, but if this crap isn't fixed, it's going to come back to haunt us like it did last year. We started out 4-0, had some confidence, and then went 4-5 (1-5 in SEC play).
