THE GOOD: 1. Jordan Jefferson is getting more confidence at QB and it is contagious. 2. The defense did not get caught out of position as it did in a dozen plays last week. 3. Freshman QB Shepard got to play and looked spectacular. We will be seeing more of him. He's almost as fast as Holliday but has better moves. THE BAD: 1. The offensive line continues to have trouble opening inside holes for Scott. Big Herman Johnson is clearly missed. 2. Jefferson missed a wide-open receiver for an easy TD on a long pass. LSU used five receivers a lot last night and Jefferson seems to have trouble hitting them in the middle of the field, mostly working the sidelines. 3. LSU has five or six top receivers and Jefferson is going to have to be a more accurate passer or LSU can't take advantage of them. THE UGLY: 1. The deep snapper sent one over the punters head and out of the back of the end zone for a safety. 2. The SEC refs ignored flagrant holding all night from both teams. I don't like this. 3. It never rains in Tiger Stadium, but the uhhh, humidity was coming down in buckets.
I agree with your points, and i will hit you with some things i saw. The Good: Jefferson is a safe quarterback, i never at any point felt like JJ was going to go out there and lose the game for us by making a stupid mistake. He may not be to the point where he can bring us back from a big deficit, but i don't think he is going to throw a dumb pick due to pressure, he throws the ball away, and that is a good thing. JJ completed passes to RJ Jackson, Lafell, Tolliver, Dickson, and Sheppard, he also threw to Peterson, and Mitchell. I like the fact that he is spreading the ball around. We don't know at this point if the coaching staff is telling him to take the short routes if they are open because they are uncomfortable with his elongated throwing motion. Throwing on the run, he is very accurate. The Bad: Richard Murphy looked like he is done for the season. That looked nasty, i really hope his knee is ok. At some point we are going to have to get Michael Ford some touches, because he needs game experience before next year when Keiland and Chuck the Truck lol, are gone. The Ugly: The offensive line could not pass protect. This has to get better, and JJ needs to work on a quicker release.
Good - Williams played good for the second week in a row and to me looks like the best option right now as the starting RB under the circumstances ie bad OL play - No huge mistakes other than the long snapper - Punting was slightly better but not great - RJ Jackson made a few good plays, good for him - Freshman are getting a chance to play Downs, Shepard, etc. Bad - Defense gave up a lot less yards but to me they have a hard time still getting off the field... teams are having an easy time picking up the 3rd and 5-10s especially early in the game. - OL is doing a bad job - DL there is no pressure and no run discipline at times. - D scheme seems to actually suck balls Ugly - OC still telegraphing play selection by formation and personnel on the field... if I can tell you what is going to happen most certainly the other team is going to know - Les looks bored and the team played with no excitement
the final stats for the D ended up looking a whole lot better than the team did. maybe the humidity skewed my view of the field, but it seemed like Vandy rushed for more than the 122 they actually got. same on 3rd downs. I was somewhat shocked to hear Vandy only converted 4 of 15 3rd downs.
Frankly, I didn't see near the improvement over last week in any phase of the game that I was hoping for. Sure, Vandy didn't pass for nearly as many yards. But their QB isn't nearly the passer that Locker is, and their WR's dropped at least two passes that would have been first downs because our DB's were nowhere in the vicinity. The defense is still missing entirely too many tackles. They're getting tremendous penetration, but they're over-pursuing and quickly putting themselves out of position. Maybe this style of play will be more successful against a pure-pocket QB, but there are too many QB's that can move these days to be limited like that. The offensive line didn't show much improvement, and that is my biggest concern. The run-blocking wasn't creating many decent holes, but we were still able to muster up some success in the running game despite their performance. And Jefferson was being forced to move and improvise far too often. He has to get decent protection if he's every going to realize his full potential as a passer. I also thought the playcalling was a bit odd last night. Five wide on practically every first and ten? I was really hoping that we would pound it in the second half, especially since the rainfall had worsened. We know that we can pass, but we really need to establish our running game. And can we please, please ditch the swing/screen pass towards the sideline? We've never had much success with it, but we run it no less than 5 times per game. Our WR's never seem to be able to properly execute the open-field lead block on the corner that is required to make a decent gain. It seemed like there were a lot of extenuating circumstances that potentially contributed to the performance against Washington. But they played at basically the exact same level, so those explanations don't seem as valid to me anymore.
Punting was much better. Not bad, but not dominating either. Some of the analysis surely does . . . :insane: I have no idea what you are talking about here. I saw a very excited team except for much of the third quarter when both teams seemed bogged down and frustrated. Les looked like Les. :milesmic:
I also really don't like the offense making the play call at the LOS. I understand the reasoning behind it, but I think it just gives Jefferson too much to think about. I think he probably needs a little time to visualize the play. Could have something to do with his reluctance to go down field, especially considering his willingness to do so vs Arky and Ga Tech last year.
