sometimes it's just one of those years

Nov 15, 2014, 4:17 PM

Injuries and attrition blew us up this year. Just looking at the laundry list of player losses, I don't really know how much blame there is to go around.

We've essentially lost our starting three QB's. One to multiple injuries (Watson), one to off the field conduct (Kelly), another to injury combined with meltdown (Stoudt). Dunno what you do about that. Do I wish Stoudt had played better? Sure. How much of this was his shoulder injury? Dunno. Stoudt certainly hasn't been nearly 100% for most of the year. I'm tending towards the notion that he's a practice-field player who looks good in 7-on-7's and low-pressure situations (remember, he was 19 of 20 against SC State last year, if memory serves) but doesn't look nearly as good in actual game pressure; it happens. Normally you just move along to the next guy. Minus Watson and Kelly, though, there really wasn't a next guy. Schuessler certainly didn't look like any kind of answer today.

We've lost two 4-star RB's for the season; Zac Brooks and Adam Choice. Tyshon Dye is just now coming back after two serious injuries and isn't close to 100% or game-ready yet. Even DJ Howard is banged up now. Kurt Fleming quit football. That's 5 RB's down or out. Dunno what you do about that.

We lost our top two WR's from last year to the NFL draft as juniors. Another went down with a knee injury last year and has never been back healthy this year. Instead we're starting true freshmen and true sophomores. Dunno what you do about that.

We've had two TE's out for long stretches of the season, Cooper and Leggett.

We graduated two OL's, and we lost Oliver Jones for the season and Jay Guillermo for most of it. OT Joe Gore was out for more than a month with appendix surgery. Still, this is the one area where you can really look at and say: "we didn't recruit the numbers or quality" and stare hard at Dabo and his staff as culpable because they didn't recruit the numbers and the quality here. Still, considering we have one of the top OL crews in the country coming in, along with the #1 OT in the country, Mitch Hyatt, you have to say that's being addressed as well as it can be addressed. Dunno what you do here right now except get through this year the best you can.

Would say we need to take a hard look at special teams. Our kickers are good; Pinion's been great and Lakip recovered very nicely from a shaky start and has been money. But our return game is awful. We get absolutely nothing off our punt and kickoff returns; we don't block those worth jack and our return personnel are unexplosive. Humphries fields well - well, usually - but doesn't break anything, and why TJ Green is our kickoff returner I'll never know. We need upgrades here - badly.

Other than the obvious takeaways that you need to recruit better OL - which we are - and get more explosive returns (which hasn't been addressed yet), I dunno if this is the kind of year you go pointing fingers. It's tempting to come out and say: "FIRE SOMEONE!" when stuff doesn't go well, and Robbie Caldwell probably does deserves a long inquest for the state of the OL though I dunno if you just fire a position coach because the staff as a whole - who spread out their recruiting territories - missed big at one particular position.

Ultimately, I think all you do is, shrug your shoulders, root as hard as you can for the team the remainder of the year...and look forward to next year. And in years like this, just back your team, and your staff. This isn't a case like I saw repeatedly during the Bowden, West, or Hatfield years where there were a billion goofball coaching decisions not being addressed.

This was just...bad luck. Astoundingly bad luck, in a lot of cases.

Just my .02 worth.

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sometimes it's just one of those years

good points! please send this to Dabo and Chad...they

Re: sometimes it's just one of those years

Re: sometimes it's just one of those years

Re: give em a raise then!***

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