What would I do at this point? I would tell Coach Chavis to play anyone who can make a play and rotate more of all the younger guys to keep players fresh and gain experience (and create competition). Our defense has issues for sure but that is not the big reason we are 2-2 at this point. We cannot expect to stop the SEC caliber teams remaining on the schedule. We have to out score them.
We have scored 112 points in four games and allowed 98. That is 28 for Hawgs and 24.5 for bad guys. The defense has scored/set up 24 of the points and we have given up 14 points on turnovers. Furthermore , we have been in every game going into fourth quarter this year.
Our problem is we are not scoring enough points and we cannot expect to shut down the teams we will be facing in the next eight games. We have to get creative on anything we can do to score points and force other defenses to respond to us. Now that is an easy thing to say and probably hard to do (why I am glad I am not Morris) but Morris’s claim to fame is being able to do just that. It is his only option to save the season and keep fan and recruiting interest alive. The spring and fall practices when our defense dominated the offensive reflects more on the offense I think (and Morris controls that).
Reading the Monday recap of press conference today gives me the feeling that we will be sticking to the plan (take what defense gives us–which is what we are bad at handling). Hope I am wrong as it did not work against the easy part of the schedule. To quote a fellow board member, time to lose the fear.
NOw, when those young guys like Bishop who got torched Saturday night play and fail because of youth and inexperience, you can’t jump all over the coach and player. Buster Brown has been playing but was hurt. There is a lot of youth and inexperience on that defense. Brooks true freshman, Catalon, True freshman, Soli, Williams; soph curl and pool. Only real returning depth was defensive line and there you have clay and Gregory playing too. Lots of youth. Gotta see if these puppies will bite!
He needs to do whatever it takes to try and beat A&M this week. If he does, the last week will be chalked up as a fluke and the team was looking past. If he can’t do that, he needs to win one SEC game to show progress or he likely may be fired this year or next.
The one thing I liked about Frank Broyles was if he could get an up and coming position coach to do a job he did.
Oklahoma got a new defensive coach. LSU has Dave Arabia. If it is the fault of who we have on staff, change it. I know the players are trying, but we have a lot of freshmen. Hard to know where the problem lies. No coach threw 5 interceptions though!
Nice post and replies…We have to remember Nick Starkel has only started and played a few games in his college career, so far. He has 2 years to play, counting this year. The guy is a talent. He needs to be mentored, but man the guy throws an effortless ball. You can win with Starkel, Knox, Boyd, Burks, Woods, and O’Grady if you can get some help on defense. How many SEC teams have that kind of skilled people? That is our team strength. Unfortunately, if is difficult to overcome poor offensive line play and a defense that is weak and inexperienced.
Coach Chavis is going to have to get this defense to play better for us to have a legitimate chance to win an SEC game. Can he? I don’t have a clue. Where is John Thompson when you need him?