Probably, but I think if he wins all games but Bama, goes to a decent bowl and wins it, he has a good shot.
I am in total and complete agreement with all of that. Unfortunately. What we saw last night was not flashy. It was a straight forward, run heavy, pro-style offense run with a good level of competence and executed well by the players. Plays came in on time, and there were no wasted timeouts or miscues that cost us from a coaching perspective. With our talent, that is all that is needed.
They ran the same plays, with some exceptions. We had some slants last night, which I have really never seen before, along with other short passes to get Etling in a rhythm early. We had 4 completed passes to a TE, which I cannot remember ever happening in the past. All of those things serve to open things up and keep the defense honest. I've been saying for a long time (and so have many of you) that I have no problem with being known as a tough physical run heavy team. But the key is not being predictable and being so run heavy that you only throw on third and long or when you decide to throw a bomb every once and a while. 70% run versus 30% pass is not being run heavy, it's being ridiculous, unless many of those runs come in the 4th Q when things are being salted away.
It was so nice not to see the offense about set, then have them all look over to the sideline, trying to understand some half cocked play coming in (late) and then seeing them set and just knowing less than 50% had a clue about the new play. God I hated that repetitive scenario. Just line up and play (like we did last night)!
I disagree. Mizzou kept safeties in the box regularly throughout the game, and we had no problem running on those defensive formations. And, to be honest, the passing attack wasn't really a big threat last night.
I think it was a great start. Obviously the competition gets tougher from here, but at least we didn't look totally lost on offense for once.
Yes, Missouri had no game tape on us and that probably helped out Eaux a lot but there have still been plenty of coaches that have had to go against teams they don't have tape on, teams that had all off season to work with a new coaching staff, and they still didn't produce as well as we did last night. Coach Eaux and staff deserve a ton of credit for what they did in a week.
The simple question was if miles was still coach, would the score be the same, and the answer is absolutely not. The difference last night was a willingness to let the team play to it's abilities, and not hamstring them.
I don't know how this season will play out going forward, but I do know that we have the athletes to compete with Alabama.
