NOTE: On the morning after a big loss to a historic rival its easy to BASH everything and everyone. However if you reflect upon your actual reasonable pre-season expectations, where did this team fall short of THOSE expectations?
Below are the areas where this team fell short of my pre-season expectations
1. LINEBACKER PLAY: This one deserves little explanation. We had two senior linebackers with lots of experience anchoring the position but they were constantly overrunning pays, missing holes, getting beat to the outside and attempting to "arm-tackle" college athletes and looking silly in the process. Very disappointing.
2. TURNOVERS: I was really expecting that with a new defensive staff, new coaching, and emphasis upon generating turnovers. We created 10 opponent turnovers ..the same number as last year. We recovered only TWO fumbles all year. We were MINUS-16 turnovers last year and MINUS-6 turnovers this year. That is better but still on the MINUS side. I really expected improvement to POSITIVE turnover ratio.
3. SPECIAL TEAMS: I guess I bought into the pre-season hype about how our special teams were going to be game changers. While special team were clearly better, the only game special teams "changed" was MSU unfortunately. The most significant play by our "kick block" team was actually a "roughing penalty" yesterday.
OTHER: Offensive line play was clearly better this year. I don't think this actually "fell short" of my expectations to a significant degree. Early in the season they looked almost dominant at times. We wanted and needed them to be better, but perhaps my expectations were not as high.
Below are the areas where this team fell short of my pre-season expectations
1. LINEBACKER PLAY: This one deserves little explanation. We had two senior linebackers with lots of experience anchoring the position but they were constantly overrunning pays, missing holes, getting beat to the outside and attempting to "arm-tackle" college athletes and looking silly in the process. Very disappointing.
2. TURNOVERS: I was really expecting that with a new defensive staff, new coaching, and emphasis upon generating turnovers. We created 10 opponent turnovers ..the same number as last year. We recovered only TWO fumbles all year. We were MINUS-16 turnovers last year and MINUS-6 turnovers this year. That is better but still on the MINUS side. I really expected improvement to POSITIVE turnover ratio.
3. SPECIAL TEAMS: I guess I bought into the pre-season hype about how our special teams were going to be game changers. While special team were clearly better, the only game special teams "changed" was MSU unfortunately. The most significant play by our "kick block" team was actually a "roughing penalty" yesterday.
OTHER: Offensive line play was clearly better this year. I don't think this actually "fell short" of my expectations to a significant degree. Early in the season they looked almost dominant at times. We wanted and needed them to be better, but perhaps my expectations were not as high.
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