Re: What do you see as the main reason for Tajh's performance

Orange Blooded [2196]

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Like many of us have already observed,

Oct 20, 2013, 9:24 PM

1. The offense isn't as good as last year.
2. The WRs are not as deep.
3. The running game lacks an identity. You have to have true, strong RBs. McDowell can't do it all, and neither Brooks nor Howard are "true" RBs. They are great athletes that offer options, but we are way too thin at RB.
4. No dominant TE.

I'm not going to criticize the OL from a depth or talent perspective. I'll get to them in a minute.

ALL of these things have affected Tajh. He is not crisp. He does not enjoy an overall core group of leaders with him like he did last year. He had Ellington, Hopkins, Watkins, Ford, Brown, and Freeman who grew up with him. They had chemistry. They helped him lead.

This year, he has Watkins. The rest are new to his "core group." New center, new, emerging WRs, new headliner RB, new TE.

I don't know how he leads the team. I don't know if he leads verbally or by building "familiarity." But I think the OL just isn't very well lead; we have more depth than we've had in a long time. They may not be great as a unit, but I do think we have some good OL players. The way they play well as a unit, I think, comes down to leadership.

There just isn't the depth at other positions, and, combined with the OL lack of unity, we therefore lack overall unity on the offense, IMO.

That affects QB play. I think Tajh is pressing, pushing, and then maybe even somewhat "panicking," for lack of a better word. I don't think he's afraid to compete...but he's not in control and can't get control. No one person really does have pure control, but I think there is a sense of "no control" for him at times; Saturday night, it was all night. So he tries to do too much himself.

Expectations have been very high. I truly think championship teams live and die by their QB. Tajh has inconsistent pretty much all year. I think our players all knew it. The pressure kept building because I think the team knew that there was a simmering problem that they just couldn't seem to fix. I too noticed the nervousness on the buses.

I certainly don't think the offense is as bad as we saw Saturday night. Turnovers and momentum (or lack thereof) affect focus and performance. But the confidence in the offense to recover, I think, had to have been less than it would have been last year.

I have felt deprived of my "fix" of the amazing offensive plays I saw last year. They are not common this year. If we notice it, certainly the team notices it.

And Tajh is the one who has the wheel of the car.

Having said all of this, I do think he is a wonderful person and talented QB. The offense just hasn't been what it has been. And I don't think, after the highs of last year about the offense, anyone thought that we couldn't plug in some new guys for little dropoff.

I absolutely am sick over the loss. I am embarrassed. I HATE being embarrassed. BUT I do think that this can be a learning experience for our program. I truly believe we are much better than we showed, but this should cause a level of "soul-searching" by all for improvement this year...and for years to come. This can bring good our way. I hate to have to go through it as a fan, but terrible losses at Wake and against WV did lead to improvements. I wish we would figure out how to improve without having to make it a national show and entertainment, but we obviously can't do anything about it.

And for Tajh? I hope he now can at least calm down a bit since the pressure has to be off of him some. He will go down as one of our greatest, and he has helped lead us to a much improved state as a program.

One last thing, to illustrate our lack of depth: We missed on "almost sure gets" in Gurley, Marshall, Robinson, Adams, a couple of highly rated DEs (take your pick...we know we've had a lot of drama there), etc. Those players definitely would have made a huge difference for us. Huge.

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What do you see as the main reason for Tajh's performance

Pretty much a little bit of all you listed.***