Actually it made zero sense. Stacking the box, but sending 8 back? We got in the redone many times. Never got a TD. Joel never played.
Grade the Season
- Thread starter cmjh10
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Actually it made zero sense. Stacking the box, but sending 8 back? We got in the redone many times. Never got a TD. Joel never played.
Obviously this is true, however, would you rather have it the other way around? Let's say we beat UNI, beat Iowa, beat TCU, then beat San Jose State, and then finished the season 0-8 and looking worse at the end of the year than we did at the beginning. So we ended up with 4 wins instead of 3, but at the end of the year we looked like total garbage compared to how we started the year.
Would that be better in your opinion? Not in my view. Yesterday put a little damper on the offseason, however, we hung with WV on the stat sheet, especially offensively, we just had too many turnovers and penalties, which if we can clean those up it could be a different ballgame. We moved the ball pretty much at will on them, just couldn't convert into TD's.
Actually, it made every sense. Our lines were physically overpowered at key moments by a seasoned, athletic WVU team. Often, our D-linemen and O-linemen were dominated by their like kind across the line of scrimmage. That's what I saw from the stands yesterday.
Opinions vary, of course. We each decide in our own way what we believe to be the truth about what we witness.
Losing to UNI the way we did was a real ballbuster and set the tone for the rest of the year.
I'm not saying that not playing Lanning was the right call, but I would hope at least people understand the difference between playing TT and playing WV. TT's defense is total garbage, one of the worst in all of college football, and WV has one of the better defenses in college football. And we did hang 500 yds on that really good WV defense too.
I would have liked to see Lanning get a couple opportunities in the redzone yesterday just to see if WV could stop him, and then if it didn't work, then go back to Park, but that's not what we did. Lanning did score on his one opportunity, but a "ghost" penalty brought it back. I think after that run he should have been given another chance, but you can't put him in on 2nd or 3rd and long.
Maybe for you, but luckily not for this team. They continued to fight and actually improved quite a bit throughout the year.
No, I rated the season in it's entirety. I didn't take into account how we looked at the beginning versus middle versus end. Just the whole season.
And the loss to a very crappy UNI team at home was no way to earn a B, even though it was only 1/12th of the season. Also looked like **** against Iowa.
I expected a few bumps especially at the beginning of the year and was pleased with progress, but rating the entire season I can't see how anyone can say it was better than a C.
This sort of thinking is why i find some fans so damn annoying. CMC and his nine-man staff have a combined total of 161 years coaching. And football is a year-around game, recruiting, scouting, player workouts and counseling, football strategy and tactics planning. Is there any fan on this board who puts in the hours of work annually that come anywhere close to matching those a major college football coach devotes to his profession?
Tell us, what P5 coach did not first play high school and college football? Did not work his way up through the ranks as a grad-ass, and an assistant. Is it not the case their fundamental learning about the game of football came about at other than P5 schools? Football is football. Only the size of the stage varies.
And some fans have the temerity, without spending an iota of time in film study to determine the tendencies and talents of that week's foe, to claim from their cozy seats in the stadium that they could do a better job than the coaches on the sidelines? What a crazy, foolish, and yeah, highly condescending notion.
Matt Campbell - 14 years (five years head coach; seven bowl games; small college national championships as a player and assistant coach)
Jon Heacock - 32 years (HC nine years, DC 14 years)
Tom Manning - 11 years
Lou Ayeni - 9 years
Bryan Gasser - 11 years
Alex Golesh - 14
Jim Hofher - 35 years (HC 13 years)
TK MacDonald - 14 years
Eli Rasheed - 21 years
Tyson Veidt - 20 years
Yeah, any common fan in the stands could playcall better. Such an arrogant claim can only come from those who have no clue what the coaching profession demands of its practitioners.
Arrogance of the highest order.
C
Once the O-line was decimated in the off-season, I didn't expect a bowl game.
Had they reached 6 wins I would have given an A.....4-5 wins a B.
Once the O-line was decimated in the off-season, I didn't expect a bowl game.
Had they reached 6 wins I would have given an A.....4-5 wins a B.
Echoing a lot of folks on here.......I gave a C, but I was hopoing for more. we HAVE to have more to do well here. The BIG Liberty Bowl-sized elephant in the room is the UNI game performance. Ugh.....Lot of recruits there. 9 months to prepare. Big Turd laid on our fanbase again. And throughout the season the performances show that we have talent not to lose to UNI....we just got outcoached. So, we have another 5 year cycle likely. I guess I feel less optimistic now thatn I did even 3 years into CPR. I was really 100% CPR until the liberty bowl....then I was lost quick when he showwed he was more loyal to the boys club than ISU.
I would have liked to have a few more wins, but I felt this was a risk with a coaching change. Going into next year, I'm really excited about coaching staff and their ability to recruit and develop players.
Again, I said I like the staff and where the program is heading, but given all that you just typed, it's even more shocking to me that we would settle to kick 4 field goals against a top notch offensive team before even trying our offensive weapon who scored us 5 touchdowns last week.
We lost by 30, so don't tell me I'm baseless here. Field goals and dropped passes weren't going to win us the game. I'm not questioning the entire game plan here. I was just hoping to see us build on what had worked the previous two weeks.
While I haven't been in my job for 161 years, I do have quite a bit of experience, but I've still been known to make a mistake or two. Doctors go to lots of school, and some even have experience, but yet again, they also make mistakes. These coaches are people. They have emotions. They have biases. They're going to make judgement errors and fans will call them out on it, especially when they lose. It's why coaches get fired.
Sometimes giving your 6'3" 245 lbs QB who lead the team in scoring the previous week a chance to make a play when the offense is struggling to put points on the board isn't a decision you need 161 years of experience to feel like you're qualified to make.
You mean, of course, your 6-2, 225-pound QB.
But, you see, the coaches weren't making the decision to play or not play Joel because of his previous week's five touchdowns. The decision was made based on that day's opponent. The coaches looked forward, not backward.
Texas Tech's defense is likely the Big 12's worst, WVU's defense arguably is the league's best.
Does your coaching background prepare you to analyze the performance of WVU's defensive individuals, the unit's schemes and tendencies, and how well iSu chose to attack those individuals, schemes and tendencies? Without that knowledge, shouts from the stands saying, "Put in Lanning, you dummies!" do not ring true.
The coaches know far, far more than you and I do about the game of football and about WVU personnel and capabilities. Do you dispute this statement?
Coaches make mistakes, and those that are so obvious to the football fan sitting in the stands will be commented upon. But the details of the game, the nuances, sail far over the heads of we common fans. (And, I have an anecdote that, in my mind, is proof of that claim. I'll post it if someone wishes to read it.)
I do not know more than the coaches.
I do know we needed to score touchdowns to win.
Just like I don't think we should have started chucking 3 pointers when there was still 1 minute left in the Gonzaga game today, I also think we should have tried to run our 6'7" 290 lbs QB in the red zone instead of throwing to our 4th string TE. I disagreed with that specific decision. Watch all the film you want during the week, but I'd rather have the ball in Joel's hands on 3rd and short inside the 10 than whoever the heck we were throwing the ball to down there.
If you recall, the final score was 19-49. The game plan I think was generally solid. It kept us close well into the 3rd quarter; however, I think not running Joel and settling for field goals was a mistake, and one I bet some of the coaching staff might admit with the hindsight of Sunday morning.
C+ or B-. I expected 3-5 wins, and they got there. We saw steady improvement throughout the season, and more importantly the players bought in to Campbell's program. Would have been nice if they could have finished off Baylor or Okie State. But considering the off season attrition and transition to a new staff, I'd say they slightly exceeded my expectations. Very pleased with the overall direction of the program, and I think a turnaround isn't far off.
These statements are at odds with one another. First, you say you do not know more than the coaches. Then you say the coaches are, in fact, wrong and you are correct because no doubt they would agree with your point of view if only we could ask them.
Really. . . .
I'll bet you that the coaches knew we needed TDs to win. Also, I'll bet you they looked at down and distance, tendencies, matchups and percentages when deciding to get the points that were available to them when they were available to them. Halftime, 21-16, a five point iSu deficit, so the 12 points that came from Cole's foot in the first half kept us within striking distance for a good bit of time.
As we did from a similar position near the goalline against Kansas State? Those two Lanning runs that failed to gain the end zone? That didn't work out well, did it?
It might be that WVU and KSU own the best two defenses in the Big 12. Maybe the coaches had their reasons for using a different tactic this time around, and who are you to claim that tactic was the wrong one? If you're something more than just a fan sitting in the seats, maybe you do. What would you have said, though, if Lanning was used but failed to bang it in as he failed against KSU?
Does that mean they know the tricks?
I swear there was holding all over the field on virtually every offensive play they ran.
Now it got called more than a few times but just like Huggy they can't call them all.
Must be a West Virginia thing.
That's interesting. I discovered Saturday morning that I had lost my binoculars. So, sitting in the stands, for me anyway, was a disadvantage when it came to catching that sort of thing by eyesight alone.
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