I posted last year that i thought and hoped that Falk would turn pro for his and the team s sake.I think that as the season progresses ,Falk may rue the day that he did not turn pro.. Of course he will have a monster day against a poor OSU team. OSU is a dream come true for Falk, poor defensively with no real pressure. Falk will excel in this game and people will think that he has"returned'. Then when he faces a good team with pressure ,he will look bad. I wish he had left.
Hercules, Falk, Saturday's game....
- Thread starter CougEd
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Totally agree. Falk will look, performance wise, phenomenal against OSU. On September 29th, not so. Honestly, I would rather have Hilinski in control against USC.
Then stop attributing Falk's problems to not recovering from "head blows." ... and then follow it with a post like this ... stating that you wouldn't be surprised that he had suffered brain trauma. It is clear intellectual dishonesty. Stand up for what you believe with reasoning, admit error or clarify your belief, but this stuff is complete crap.
To quote Ed, "It doesn't appear to me Falk ever recovered from the two head blows in the UCLA game and teh CU game back in 2015." Not recovered from multiple "head blows" strongly infers head injury. But I completely agree with you that getting smacked around a lot is likely at the heart of the current problem.
Well they beat two teams with a winning record in 2016. CSU and Northwestern. They played a horrible Beaver team, as did we, Rutgers, Illinois, Purdue, Indiana State.
Ummm....hard to stand boldly behind a theory it could be brain trauma when we are in the infancy of really knowing the effects. You think Junior Seau after every game said he wanted to end his life which now some believe was CTE related? When Troy Ailman said after he was cleared there are plays he doesn't remember? There are many anecdotal stories being told about these type of events even during the game.
It could be a myriad of things. Could be the fact they are dropping 8 in coverage. It could be that Patrol is right he is a game manager, similar to Alex Brink. It could be he has the jitters because of the hits he has taken. And I wouldn't even rule out (as they don't know enough about brain injuries) his decision making could have been slowed even by simply a nano second that causes him to be a split second late or indecisive.
So no I am not gonna stand up and take a bold statement about head injuries simply because we don't know. But if Troy Aikman doesn't remember touch down passes then I am not one who will simply ignore that could be even a remote possibility with falk.
425...I said they are a perennial 6-6 team. They are a .500 team. Their history proves that. In terms of where they rank defensively, who in the Big 10 was of Sam Darnold's talent, or Rosen, or Falk, or Browning. Or Sefo, or the Cal QB. I would think it is much easier if you play in a conference where you can possibly make teams one dimensional it is easier to defend.
Actually, if we're going to cite history, they are 667-500 with 7 claimed national titles.
Actually, our history (500-527) is much closer to a .500 football team than theirs.
But again, none of that has anything to do with what the teams were LAST YEAR, which was 8 & 9 win football teams.
Woops...meant to say modern times since 1980. Their season last year had two out of what 6 wins against teams with winning records. Should never have held a Mike Leach offense to under 24 points.
I don't disagree, but bowl games are strange for all teams. We *should have* played better, but we didn't. The WR position was all discombobulated after Tav Martin got injured. That doesn't justify things, but it's an important data point.
And we beat Stanford.
And I'm not going to go back and look at their record compared to ours since 1980, because as I've said, none of that matters. They were a 9 win team. That's good, regardless of what they did in 1980, or 1993, or 2006 or even 2015.
Fab...all I said is that they were a perennial 6-6 team, which in modern history is their record. Also, looking at their record their numbers are inflated in my opinion. Do they get the QB play we have in this conference? I would never expect that Minnesota team to stifle our offense to less than 13 points. Never.
The QB like we faced?
UCLA's backup?
ASU's backup?
Oregon State's 3rd stringer?
Arizona's tire fire?
They also took Penn St to OT and lost to a good Nebraska team by a TD.
Just pointing out it's a little silly to call Minnesota's schedule soft when ours was arguably softer.
this is an awful lot of words to spend on the question of whether minnesota is good or merely ok.
I never said ours wasn't soft. And of course I have noted that. Doesnt change the fact we should never score less than 13 points against a team that is of Minnesota's ilk.
So Ed, by your logic, WSU is nothing but a perennial 5-7 team, even with Leach as coach, because that's what a longer term review of our modern history suggests? Any team that plays us should hang their head in shame?
It is simple then Ed, stop making statements such as (quoting you), "It doesn't appear to me Falk ever recovered from the two head blows in the UCLA game and teh CU game back in 2015." ... Instead of pretending, in effect, that you never made them (see above). It is far better to concede error or overstatement, as it shows honesty and candor.
As for CTE, it doesn't present itself on the field of play (which is what we are talking about), but years later. Webster, Aikman and Seau had Hall of fame careers despite it. The alarm with it, is that it isn't noticable until it is way too late. Next, stop conflating CTE, with brain injury in general. We have been studying the effects of brain injury since Phineas Gage. We have come to understand a great deal in the 169 years since. There's a battery of psychometric and neurolodic tests to assess brain performance and decline, to the mili-second, even autonomic response. Assuming that Falk was testing after UCLA in 2015, and his brain performance is now in decline, he and Leach would know it by now, and he would be announcing his retirement. Just because the NFL and the NCAA acted selfishly in the past, doesn't mean the science wasn't there.
We also know a great deal about anxiety. It can cause a brain that has never suffered a injury to shake, hesitate or freeze. Race car drivers, pitchers, surgeons, announcers, have all suffered the yips because of it. Even subclinical issues, i.e. confidence, can play a huge part. Leaf and Gesser demonstrated supreme confidence at this level, but were a shell of themselves at the next. Bledsoe, lacked it, then gained it, then lost it again. Did you seen the difference in Rosen's play against A&M in the 4th quarter?
The "game manager" hypothesis could also apply. Last year we did beat a lot of cup cakes. But the problem with that is Luke Falk, statistically, is among the Pac-12 QB elite in history. 92 TDs, 11,000 yards and a very good 145.0 career PER. PER is a stat used to detect excellence, and we weren't the only team beating and padding stats on cupcakes. Conversely, it isn't like Falk is playing with the talent Bledsoe, Leaf and Gesser had. Never have we won so much with so little, in my opinion. Leach is a miracle worker, but it is harder to beat teams the bigger, faster and talented they become. Since 1985, how many times have we beaten a good USC or UW team? once each.
Dropping 8 has been done for a decade against the air raid. Playing it tight, is more recent approach, but a rookie came in and figured it out pretty much -- we should have scored TDs on all three OTs, in the area of the field where the raid is at its worst.
All things consider, the evidence points to psychology. The others all have significant evidence against.
I think it might be easier to stop reading my posts instead of telling me to stop writing them. What probably needs to stop is your conjecture in what I said originally. "It doesn't appear to me Falk ever recovered from the two head blows in the UCLA game and the CU game back in 2015". I left the door wide open for a variety of possible scenarios what that meant. I could have easily meant taking that beating he was traumatized psychologically meaning he freezes in the moment. People said that is what derailed Rosie after getting blinded what seemed like almost every time he dropped back when he was with the Cardinals.
In terms of Troy Aikman he has said multiple times when talking about the games he JUST played in he doesn't remember plays or situations. All I have said as they learn more and more I am willing to be at least open to the idea it is more than "fright" for lack of a better word.
In terms of how to play the air raid, teams that could get pressure with four and press cover that has been one way to attack the air raid. But without the pass rush and without the corners teams have controlled this offense by rushing three and dropping 8.
I think this is one of the better posts I have read on this board. And I'm not focusing on the rebuttal towards CE as much as I am the rest of the post. I.e. - the "meat of the matter". Well thought out and well presented. My congratulations!
Unless he has the speed to play LB, this seems unlikely, and there aren't many 250-pound d-tackles in the league.
Agree. Hercules would be well advised to wait another year and put on another twenty pounds or so. I'm not sure that he has the speed to play at the linebacker position in the NFL.
Wouldn't really matter if he did have the speed. All of his havoc has been done with his hand in the dirt. The NFL isn't going to draft a guy high as a standup rush end/olb if he's never done it at all in college.
Don't get me wrong he's a helluva football player...I think his best bet is to add 20 lbs and be the Michael Bennett of college football next year, but no way he comes out after this season.
