Chavis said in today’s presser they did not pressure Eastern Illinois a lot for reasons he would not get in to. I’m wondering what he meant by that:
Was he hinting that we were keeping everything under wraps?
Is he perhaps suggesting we don’t have the personnel (talent and/or experience) to implement his aggressive, attacking schemes?
Some combination of the above?
All good questions and I doubt we will know, at least for awhile
Given how vanilla our offense was, I’d guess they kept some of our defensive scheme under wraps as well. But it could be a combination of that and talent. Not having Ramsey available also may have impacted that.
All of these decisions are pointed at Auburn. Things we are doing now amount to game planning for Auburn.
This seems very plausible with the 3 opponents before AU being ones that you hope don’t require the whole playbook to beat.
They will need every page of the playbook to have a chance to beat N. Texas. Very, very good team with a dynamic QB running an offensive system that has given us fits in the past. Think a poor man’s Patrick Mahomes.
Dayyuuum Mahomes killed us. I wish they played somebody better than Incarnate Word this week so we could get a good feel for them. I know they are good but we just don’t know how good. We don’t know if EIU was terrible or if SMU was terrible as measuring sticks for us and UNT.
I agree we didn’t show much as far as pressures go,there is a lot you can with the DL and LB we didn’t show.very vanilla for sure.
Could be with the game well in hand, they wanted to see the secondary under live fire.
Unless we are keeping 5 or 6 stud players in the dressing room under wraps, I don’t think this matters. We aren’t going to beat Auburn by surprising them. I have heard this “under wraps” talk for years. It is not going to make any difference. You gotta have the players. We all know this, don’t we?
The most obvious reason is that they didn’t think they would need to show their packages. I wrote in advance that I was looking for something less vanilla than the uniforms. But that’s exactly what I saw on both sides of the ball, vanilla.
I thought they were vanilla to a fault on both sides of the ball. Storey said they didn’t use the offense. No doubt, the missing elements on offense was lots of pre-snap movement and there were no counters, reverses or jet sweeps. I KNOW that’s a major part of the offense.
I saw some press coverage at some points in the game, generally with a high safety. But I did not see many run throughs with the linebackers. Dre Greenlaw is a major part of the blitz package and he went out. Bumper Pool may not know all of the packages as well as Dre at will linebacker. I know Morris said he had some alignment busts in the first game, typical of a freshman.
But the obvious answer to your question is that they did not show much on either side of the ball. You should not have to expose all of your bells and whistles against a team like Eastern Illinois and they did not.
I actually feel they installed plays and formations that the players could execute. The bad part is that I feel, and it’s an OPINION, is that they just weren’t very ready system wise. It seems they were behind all summer camp, and just couldn’t get things done. I bet it’s frustrating for the DC.
I think they wanted to play, and came to play, but it just seemed odd, and off for me. Like some knew what to do and some didn’t. But as Jackson Reid said in an earlier post, none of this matters and should matter. When we get on the field Saturday, they really need to be much more advanced. CSU will try us up front, and I just don’t think holding anything back is an advantage. There were some SEC teams that I saw that were very prepared and on form in their first game. We need to get these guys some confidence and some belief. How much of that is coaching, and how much is talent is subjective.
Either way, it needs to be better this week.
Elmo shows how little he knows in almost every post. He does put THINK in all caps. I am glad he does that because it’s clear that it’s what he thinks and not what he knows. They have run the blitz packages in every scrimmage and every practice. The offense has run the jet sweeps and reverses in every practice. Storey mentioned how little of the offense they ran in the post-game presser. He caught himself about halfway through the comment and realized it’s probably not something he should say and he stopped.
Maybe it’s just me, but this “keeping it under wraps” seems a bit silly. Coach Chavis has coached for 30 years. Every good coach knows his defensive blitz schemes. Just watch last year’s film. Same for Morris. He could possibly have some new wrinkles, but not Chavis.
I think coaches just talk sometimes. In my opinion, the reason Chavis didn’t blitz much is to see how the DL and secondary performs when the QB has time.
Clay Henry off the top rope with the elbow drop.
They were prepared. They chose to do what they did. Did not run the ball well and that’s a big concern, but acting kike they were prepared is just silly and agenda driven.
We may not get to watch a lot of practice, but we get to watch some and talk to people inside the program who watch it all.
If you go back and watch all of Chief’s press conferences, he likes to talk in generalities and not specifics.
One of his favorites is “I’m not going to go into specifics.”
Arkansas is not very good, but it is most certainly not because of the new staff, who - as noted earlier - is in the process of recruiting its way out of it.
It also makes great sense to me to keep some things under wraps. Why help out the next team when you have enough vanilla to pummel them anyway.
You’ll need to break out more offensively and defensive with each of the first four games because each next opponent is better than the last.
I’ve never known a coach to run everything in his arsenal the first game. Don’t show what you don’t need to show. (BTW, everybody knows you have to have talent to win, but any element of surprise is worthy of holding your cards next to your vest.)
By Week 4, if not sooner, we will see more exotic blitz packages and more pre-snap offensive movement to go with misdirection plays if the team is capable of running them, which I suspect they will be.
Mahomes threw for 243 yards, 1 TD, 2 picks that night, and also ran for 58 yards and two scores. Those picks kept us in the game. They also threw a halfback pass for a 72-yard TD but can’t credit that to Mahomes.
Wow…If you guys REALLY think this team with this coaching staff is gonna “sneak up” on someone by not running some plays or being “vanilla”, then y’all need to get a grip. Not saying things in a press conference is not going to have this big bearing from what I saw. And I watched all the plays on you tube, and watched the game live. It’s not agenda driven at all.
All I was saying was that it SEEMED that they were behind during almost the entirety of fall camp. From the QB’s to the O line, to the D line, it seemed that it was a struggle for this staff. And it looked it in the first game. It looked like not everyone was into the game. And compared to some of the other SEC teams I saw play, we looked far behind them. That’s it. That’s all.
And why is it you guys keep wanting to use the previous staff as this excuse??? We had no problem running the ball and scoring points last year. Now on defense, well that was not good. We know this. But you’ve got to stop saying it’s all CBB’s fault. This staff has had all year to sort this out. They had 9 months to evaluate and shape this team. LSU had a QB come in at the last minute and play well right away. Ole Miss didn’t have issues, MSU looked good, and they all have new coaches. Who’s at Bama now? Dan Enos.
And if they don’t sort out the running game, and the secondary, we may not win Saturday. It’s not probable, but we have to be better. You cannot count of all those fumbles and turnovers in the next game.
In this corner, we have Clay, who’s covered the Hogs every day since 1992 and a lot of days before that and has forgotten more football than most of us will ever know.
And in the other corner, we have the self-appointed president of the Joey Freshwater fan club, whose hero just got 63 hung on them by OU.
Hardly seems like a fair fight.
A small quibble on new coaches - Luke and both coordinators were at Ole Miss last season.
We are less talented than Alabama, Auburn, A&M, Ole Miss, Mississippi State, and LSU. THAT is on Bielema because he is responsible for the vast majority of this roster. Fisher and Morehead inherited much better rosters top to bottom and it’s really not close.