They slowed it down. I actually thought that may have been a mistake.
Can the D be fixed?
- Thread starter COUGinNCW
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They slowed it down. I actually thought that may have been a mistake.
God damn right the mentality should have been let's hang another 50 on them in the second half. Put your collective cleats on their throat and don't let up. Instead they resorted to thinking the game was over and started dreaming of quality time with their fat little girlfriends (coaches included).
TrumpCoug, here's a little something to hopefully cheer you up. Just need a quick turnaround against the Utes on FoxSports1 next Saturday night.
TrumpCoug, here's a little something to hopefully cheer you up. Just need a quick turnaround against the Utes on FoxSports1 next Saturday night.
Thanks PTC....I'm good...my dog finally came home. Been watching this type of Bull Bleep since the Marinovich Melt Down. Just hate staying up to 2:30am to watch us piss down our legs Yay another 10pm start for us ETZ Cougs next week. Will need to buy more Makers.
A loyal dog (or Coug) just about always makes his way back home. He's gotta eat after all
Truly believe CML will get it fixed and get this special season back on track. He's a future Hall of Famer for good reason.
If you like Irish Whiskey (and what proud, freedom-loving American like yourself wouldn't), try some of Jameson's 18 year old limited reserve.
It'll ease your pain and bring a smile back to your face.
What does "not game planned" even mean? Not ready, sure, but everyone inputs a game plan. Come one. The only thing we don't know it was they specifically focused in their game plan on defense. UCLA may have come out and gone against their tendancies they showed in the first 3 games or our guys could've just missed assignments all night. There is no way for us to without someone on the staff telling us what happened
NO. Please stop with that. You're in essence asking for a new coach in the second half to replace the coach that got you a big lead in the first half. It's not gonna happen.
I'm going to simply re-post from the other thread, with some modifications, since most of my comments probably fit this thread better.
We really miss Thompson.
The panic that set in last night, which IMHO led to guys trying to do too much and therefore being unable to perform their own job; is the sort of thing that a leader keeps under control. My biggest Defensive concern after last night is not the lack of talent; the talent was there. It is not the lack of execution; that can be fixed. My biggest concern is the lack of experienced leadership. If we have people who can step up in that area, it is clear that they have not yet fully done so.
That said, thousands of years of history proves that sometimes all it takes is one bloodbath like this to forge the soft steel into something more useful. Audie Murphy comes to mind, but most infantry that served in the interior of Vietnam had their equivalent experience. Every active war has similar situations. The same generic sort of thing happens in sports, business, personal relationships....pretty much everything having to do with human beings. Living through one example of letting panic overcome your training is usually all that someone needs to develop into a more resilient person. And last night was the perfect storm. A bad call initiated it, where 5 guys were mugging a receiver (one clearly has his hand hooked under the back of the receiver's helmet, and is literally trying to pull his head off). No whistle to stop the play. And the replay showed enough to me to make it about 90% clear that an elbow hit the ground under the 5 man dog pile before the ball squirted loose. That turnover started their comeback. A competent PAC officiating job on that single play would have kept the nightmare from beginning. After that, it was on us as WR after WR tried for extra yardage and exposed the ball. If any of those guys had hit the ground when two people had them in their grasp, the outcome would have been different. The O could have simply kept the margin in place, since UCLA's D didn't stop us. But the combination of an increasingly panic stricken D, an O with folks who abandoned good sense in their effort to break the big play, and the occasional pass interference call that went unflagged, was enough for the finish that we saw.
My guess is that we pull out heads out, understand what happened, and give Utah a good game. I've thought all year that Utah was our toughest challenge, so I'm not predicting a win. But I expect something much different than what we saw last night.
We really miss Thompson.
The panic that set in last night, which IMHO led to guys trying to do too much and therefore being unable to perform their own job; is the sort of thing that a leader keeps under control. My biggest Defensive concern after last night is not the lack of talent; the talent was there. It is not the lack of execution; that can be fixed. My biggest concern is the lack of experienced leadership. If we have people who can step up in that area, it is clear that they have not yet fully done so.
That said, thousands of years of history proves that sometimes all it takes is one bloodbath like this to forge the soft steel into something more useful. Audie Murphy comes to mind, but most infantry that served in the interior of Vietnam had their equivalent experience. Every active war has similar situations. The same generic sort of thing happens in sports, business, personal relationships....pretty much everything having to do with human beings. Living through one example of letting panic overcome your training is usually all that someone needs to develop into a more resilient person. And last night was the perfect storm. A bad call initiated it, where 5 guys were mugging a receiver (one clearly has his hand hooked under the back of the receiver's helmet, and is literally trying to pull his head off). No whistle to stop the play. And the replay showed enough to me to make it about 90% clear that an elbow hit the ground under the 5 man dog pile before the ball squirted loose. That turnover started their comeback. A competent PAC officiating job on that single play would have kept the nightmare from beginning. After that, it was on us as WR after WR tried for extra yardage and exposed the ball. If any of those guys had hit the ground when two people had them in their grasp, the outcome would have been different. The O could have simply kept the margin in place, since UCLA's D didn't stop us. But the combination of an increasingly panic stricken D, an O with folks who abandoned good sense in their effort to break the big play, and the occasional pass interference call that went unflagged, was enough for the finish that we saw.
My guess is that we pull out heads out, understand what happened, and give Utah a good game. I've thought all year that Utah was our toughest challenge, so I'm not predicting a win. But I expect something much different than what we saw last night.
I really need to see a couple games of at the very least average defense before I can even process what are chances might be to win any game the rest of the way. I'm pretty sure our offense will perform pretty well enough against most teams, but if they develop some issues that these better teams can exploit it might be a tough season
Agreed. I have not seen even one half game of respectable defense through 4 games this season. Nothing to make me believe it's impossible, but also nothing to make me believe profound inability to execute fundamentals gets ironed out over the next few days.
They miss Pelluer for sure. He was always in the right place and seem to have his teammates in the right place as well. They don't get much of a push up front. It is what made Herc so special, he was always on that side of the back field.
I think as much as anything the preseason schedule did them no favors. We need to find three more games to be bowl eligible and keep that streak alive.
Are you kidding? Would you rather have opened up against Power 5 and started off 0-4 staring down a slate of @Utah, @ASU, @Oregon, @Cal and @UW? It's not unthinkable after this weekend that we may have been looking at a 2-3 win season. With 3 chumps your baseline is bowl eligibility.
In fact it's a reminder that the BEST thing you can do is hide your warts and make a bowl game by scheduling the easiest games possible.
Yes I am kidding, I will be playing at Giggles on Friday and Saturday. You can't play Eastern, Houston and say Ole Miss? Or Maryland, or Syracuse instead of Northern Colo?
Hell at this point I would consider a home and home with Florida State before Free Shoes University figures it out.
And dropping an extra game or two - or three - each year would get us where, exactly?
Yup.
Everyone said it was chicken little to pronounce this defense DOA after giving up 200+yards on the ground to two cupcakes, but look at them now. Even worse that could have been imagined
The D was bad, not enough pressure on the QB, did they even get a sack, was at the game don't recall one. There is a lot of confusion in pass coverage, too many receivers wide open, all day. If they don't fix that it will be a long season. Overall the run D was a little better than I expected.
We were up 49-17 in the late third quarter against a team that was trailing 41-14 to Oklahoma at the same point in time. I'm not sure what happened in our game to have the implosion that we did but its impossible to judge our team based on the results of Saturday night. There are obviously tackling issues and as Leach alluded to, ball security issues, but at the same time, it was more of a freak occurrence than anything else.
In 2017, UCLA came back from 34 points down to beat Texas A&M 45-44. A&M gave up 35 points in 19 minutes. The Aggies only gave up more than 35 points in an entire game three times out of the next 11 games. They held mighty Alabama to 27 points and they went 7-4 to finish that regular season. If we followed that path and finished 7-5 or 8-4, I think most of us would still consider that a successful season. It's too early to panic and pronounce this defense DOA and give up on the season.
I'm worried about how things are going to play out, but most models that make predictions are saying that we have a 7-8 win team. ESPN....despite our debacle....is saying that we are the 6th best team in terms of FPI (factoring in schedule to determine wins). We are 5th in terms of raw predictions but Cal edges on the averaging out of percentages. That puts us in the Vegas or Sun Bowl. I haven't given up on this team just yet.
I can't say that I'm not worried a little bit though.
In the second half, all three aspects of the team broke in spectacular and nearly impossible ways. Offense, Defense and Special Teams. What are the chances of that ever happening again? Will shoring up at least one of those factors be enough to carry the team forward? I'd settle for cleaning up special teams and bank on the offense to bail us out the rest of the way. That's not too much to ask is it?
We had a lot of the same issues defensively last year if not worse. The offense monopolizing the ball was our best defense last year. It kept the opposing offense off the field. Pelluer covered up some of poor tackling as well and we definitely also miss Tago, Thompson, Dale and Comfort. When we needed a drive or play Minshew was obviously special.
It still took an amazing amount of bounces to not come out of Saturday with a win. We are going to need a lot of Gordon chatter the rest of the way.
It still took an amazing amount of bounces to not come out of Saturday with a win. We are going to need a lot of Gordon chatter the rest of the way.
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The problem is, it may be the case that all 3 units need to fail for UCLA to beat us. For Cal, or Utah, or ASU, or UW, or Oregon, they may only need 1 unit to fail.
special teams is not really a talent issue, that's coaching and knowing your assignment. There is no reason for special teams to be that bad
I agree it's mostly coaching/execution for special teams. However talent and experience plays some %. I don't know....20%?
On that kickoff return for the TD, I'm also going to give a lot of credit to the UCLA returner making a really good play. He put some serious moves on inexperienced guys that were in position to make a play. I could actually live with that particular play. It wasn't just us being bad there. Gotta give some credit to the other guy too.
On that kickoff return for the TD, I'm also going to give a lot of credit to the UCLA returner making a really good play. He put some serious moves on inexperienced guys that were in position to make a play. I could actually live with that particular play. It wasn't just us being bad there. Gotta give some credit to the other guy too.
I don't think Brock is coaching players to put a body on the ball carrier and let him go.
I remember Rutgers 2015 when similar things happened.
the coaches aren't teaching them to miss tackles, but most special teams are made up of backups with a few starters in there-I don't think you can call special teams a talent/personnel issue. Looks undisciplined and unorganized.
The last time that I witnessed someone run two kicks back for TDs was the California game five years ago. Leach promptly fired the Special Teams Coordinator mid-game. Boom. You're out. Cannot recall at this time who our current staff member is with that responsibility but he needs to be gently informed of that occurrence.
