My national championship wishlist (longish)

Jan 1, 2020, 8:56 PM

I fully trust Dabo and Brent and Co. to give us the best chance to win the national championship against LSU, but I thought it’d be interesting to see what you all would like to see vs LSU. Personally:

ON DEFENSE: I know the LSU offense is spectacular. QB, RB, TE, WR... they are incredible. I hear the OL has been awarded best OL in cfb for what it’s worth so they are definitely far from a weak spot. If any of our DBs are islands, it’s gotta be Terrell and Kendrick. Muse and Turner and Wallace shouldn’t be asked to do that, these wrs are too explosive. These three plus Simmons should be utilized in a way to contain the pass and hopefully give Burrow a hard time executing the big plays.

Burrow is a good runner as well- he’s definitely better than a banged up “80%” Fields at scrambling. I think if smith and skalski and our other LBs do what they’ve been doing, you can’t ask for much more. However, I really hope we can prevent the screen that OSU did with ease- gaining about 7 yards per attempt. It seemed like we didn’t have a man on dobbins... ever. The LSU rb is no joke and would be able to do similar things dobbins did if we don’t adjust.

I’m interested to see/research who has the better OL between LSU and OSU. If you know, please share! Our DL seems to be without Pinckney, so I’m hoping for our guys to mix blitzes and really get to burrow. It felt like Fields had way more time in the pocket than Trevor... but that’s a testament to our offense (Trevor had a better game with banged up wrs and less time in the pocket). We certainly have been spoiled with incredible D Lines these past 6+ years. Definitely going to need a huge effort from those young guys on the line- they’ve definitely been better than I expected this season.

ON OFFENSE: I’d love to see more 5 yard check downs to Amari for big plays. He is deceptively fast and always seems to know exactly where to go when he secures the ball. Fast enough to outrun players and big enough to shake/bounce off them too.

Also on O: our O line played its toughest competition last night and honestly did much better than most of the “experts” expected. If they go back to the normal scheme now that LSU doesn’t have a Chase Young to account for, I think we’ll see much more time in the pocket for Trevor. That means more plays to our wrs and etn, of course.

Also, revisiting the basics like using pump fakes would go a long way. We are going to need every tool to get our WRs open against a strong secondary. I remember seeing a pump by Kelly a few years ago- the secondary bought it, and our guy went for a huge gain. Everyone around me was saying “where has that been all season?” Little things like that can certainly spark.

Running game: keep doing your thing. I think more traditional runs vs exclusively dumping to ETN will be easier to execute vs LSU than OSU...

SPECIAL TEAMS:
SPIERS MVP one more time please!

Final thoughts on OSU: they played rough, almost dirty at times... and we were out coached in 1Q but MAN those tigers really stepped up to all the adversity in that moment- very impressed with Trevor’s leadership in the biggest moments. He was getting hyped up and it gave me chills.

Very thankful to our staff and team for such a memorable year. Here’s hoping for another win! Again, interested to hear your thoughts. Go tigers!

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My national championship wishlist (longish)

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