I know 10-2/9-3 is still on the table, but I just don’t have the confidence that many on this board have that the Missouri and Kentucky games are the easy wins some think. Neither of those teams are as bad as people want to think, and we haven’t played a complete 4 quarters all year. If our offense can’t figure out how to score more than 20 points against teams not named South Carolina, these next two games are going to be L’s.
We certainly have time to figure it out. But the playbook needs to get a bit more creative and we need to find a way to play 4 full quarters like we did last year consistently. If I hear a player come out again in the post-game press conference and say for the 3rd time “we just lost our edge” I’m going to lose my mind.
so i agree with this. and given our road woes....you just can't take any game for granted. i think UK is a better match up, football wise, for us i think, though if they get the run game going, that could be problematic. mizzou can cause us some problems...great wr play, gutty qb play..and very solid defense. i can't pencil in w's. i think they're certainly two games we can win, and i won't be surprised at all if we win both.....disappointed if we go 1-1 or worse. neither are 'roll your helmets out there' games for sure.
as for the players getting complacent, and i'm not jumping on the bash cjh train here, that's a coaching issue. that's also a locker room leadership issue. guys like Joe Milton and Aaron Beasley should be pissed. i'm glad some of the players actually came out and said what it was though. that at least shows some level of ownership....what they do with it now, remains to be seen.
as for yesterday on the field...the refs were bad. i can't say that's the reason we lost, but it certainly didn't help, and it goes on the list of reasons. that alabama had 1 call for 5 yards is criminal. they do so much after the play that "unnecessary" and could/should be flagged. and the holding....well that's just a tale as old as time.
on Joe, i think he is what he is, and my biggest critique of him is real simple...when you have to, he can't/doesn't. there's probably a litany of reasons/theories as to why, all of which have been discussed here a lot. bottom line....when you have to make a play.....ugh.
i love that cjh is aggressive. but we don't have all the horses to be as aggressive as he's been a times this year, especially considering the play calls on some of those 4th downs. i will never understand running right in to the strength of that DL out of the shotgun...made no sense to me. so some of those decisions had me scratching my head. but, that's a 'play to win' mentality, and i'll never not be ok with that.
that said, there are things he can learn situationally about managing a game from this year. margin for error is/was slight for us. and we played in to that, and it worked to Bama's favor.
losing mincey and hadden were big losses. we really miss Bru's blocking on the perimter.
there were many positives though. i thought Squirrel and Keyton both had really good games. Joe really wasn't bad yesterday...he really wasn't. but i think what we saw yesterday may be his ceiling, and that's ok, if he can do that consistently. i loved his own aggressiveness when he ran the ball and he threw the ball with some confidence finally. he had 2 or 3 of the best balls he's thrown here yesterday.... WR's went and got the ball for him. Wright ran hard, and Sampson is just awesome. i appreciate jabari small, but i think wright and sampson should be getting all the carries/touches at this point. our defense was very good...til it wasn't. and our DL is just good....good to see Cassels more involved.
the biggest positive i'll take from this game is for 30 minutes we saw what this group is capable of. so it's no longer a matter of capability.....they need to carry THAT in to every game the rest of the way.
