Recruiting Football Talk VII

#72,728
#72,728
Orange_Crush said:
As I've alluded to, for me the jury's still out. I'm not sure I'm ready to agree with you that the staff deserves blame for eeking out 8-4 or 9-4 with the issues we saw this year. And I'm not going to knee-jerk and assume that the change in play-calling was somehow a coaching regression. Again, if they have a QB that just can't consistently hit X-Passes. It's not coaching malpractice to stop calling those plays. You can only cook the recipes that you have ingredients for.

Again, I think CJH has earned faith until we have more to prove the belief that he somehow regressed in football IQ--especially when you and I both agree there was some mold on all of his ingredients this year (for whatever reason).

Was the coaching perfect? Definitely not. It never is. Should the offensive staff get "blame" (your word) for getting 8 wins after the execution we saw on-field? I personally think not.
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I think people may not realize how good of a coaching job Heupel did to get this team to 8-4.

We all saw the deficiencies this team had this year. Does anyone really think that Butch, Dooley, or Beldar could've rang up 8, possibly 9 wins this year?

The quality of the overall adjustments and patience the coaches had this year may be hidden by unreasonable expectations of the fan base. This roster and coaches were in a tough spot this year and they managed to pull it together enough to get 8+ wins. Pretty much equal to or better than everyone's y3 expectations when Heupel was originally hired.
 
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#72,729
#72,729
Enki_Amenra said:
Kinda like how True Detective changed each season?
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Not quite. True in that it’s a new story/arc and the supporting cast is different but it still follows Reacher’s main storyline plus there are a couple carry over cast members that make appearances in both seasons. True Detective was brand new everything each season and completely detached from the other seasons.
 
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#72,730
#72,730
Orange_Crush said:
(1) If a team had glaring weaknesses that the previous roster didn't show, a competent staff will HAVE to call a game differently. You can't fault them for that. It's what they have to do. For example, if Joe can't land the deep ball and the staff doggedly calls long balls, then THAT is the malpractice. (Just an example.)
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No argument here.

Orange_Crush said:
(2) IMHO, CJH has built up a lot of faith as Mizzu OC, UCF play-caller, and the first two years at UT. I refuse to assume (as some here seem to) that he's all of a sudden forgotten what the hell he's doing. Especially with the glaring problems at several offensive positions, it seems much more reasonable to suspect that he was probably doing a hell of a job working around those issues to give us as much offensive success as we did have.
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Let me be clear, no way I'm saying the staff or Heupel can't coach offense or doesn't know what they are doing now etc. Nothing that I've said remotely comes to that. I'm happy with CJH. We are not too far removed from the Pruitt era 😵‍💫, definitely don't want to go back there.

To answer your question, I do put more on the coaches (if I had to put a % on it I would say 35%). That may be bc I'm so high on them and was disappointed with our play calling and game plan at times. Felt like we wasnt as creative on offense and predictable. The biggest reason I think that was the case was the loss of Golesh. We missed him more than I realized going into the season. I don't expect us to lead the nation in scoring every year (would be nice tho). But I also don't expect us to run the same shovel pass against Kentucky 4x (no zero success outside of Sampson making a hell of a play one one) or only give our backs only 2 carries out of the 11 plays on goal-to-goal downs against Bama when we had success running in the first half. Along with throwing a fade route to our 6th best WR against their top corner.

I said this before, we have the Big Joker with this offensive staff. Going into any game, I felt like we had a change to win (or atleast stay in the game) bc I felt we could out scheme anyone in the country on offense and we proved we could the last 2 years. I didn't feel like we had the big Joker nearly enough this year.
 
#72,731
#72,731
Orange_Crush said:
As I've alluded to, for me the jury's still out. I'm not sure I'm ready to agree with you that the staff deserves blame for eeking out 8-4 or 9-4 with the issues we saw this year. And I'm not going to knee-jerk and assume that the change in play-calling was somehow a coaching regression. Again, if they have a QB that just can't consistently hit X-Passes. It's not coaching malpractice to stop calling those plays. You can only cook the recipes that you have ingredients for.

Again, I think CJH has earned faith until we have more to prove the belief that he somehow regressed in football IQ--especially when you and I both agree there was some mold on all of his ingredients this year (for whatever reason).

Was the coaching perfect? Definitely not. It never is. Should the offensive staff get "blame" (your word) for getting 8 wins after the execution we saw on-field? I personally think not.
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I'm not talking wins or losses. We all agree the staff has done a great job, even the defensive staff imo as a whole. I'm specifically talking about the regression of the offense. We keep adding additional layers.

And the regression in terms of the staff, was primarily due to the loss of Golesh. That's all I'm saying.
 
#72,735
#72,735
JT3 said:
I'm not talking wins or losses. We all agree the staff has done a great job, even the defensive staff imo as a whole. I'm specifically talking about the regression of the offense. We keep adding additional layers.

And the regression in terms of the staff, was primarily due to the loss of Golesh. That's all I'm saying.
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The regression was due to losing Hendon and replacing him with Joe.
 
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#72,736
#72,736
UpstateVol613 said:
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I hate that for the kid, I really do. He reminds me of Harrison Bailey. Didn’t fit after a coaching change and went elsewhere. Still didn’t fit and slid down. I love watching recruiting, but I hate what happens to some of them after they leave. Yes, it shows they needed to move on, but the carnage that happens after, I don’t have the stomach for, especially when their families count on them. It’s brutal. I’m thankful I didn’t have that weight on me when I went to college.
 
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#72,738
#72,738
JT3 said:
I assumed when you say explosive plays you were referring to the deep ball bc we thrived throwing it deep in prior years. We've always had explosive plays in the run so I wasn't including those.

I would say we didn't have explosive plays in the passing game bc we didn't call many. Why? Who knows. I wasn't trying to go down this lane (not sure how I got here lol).

Original topic, plenty of blame, reasons, factors, we weren't as good on offense as years past. That's all I'm saying.
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The deep shots often weren't there because most opponents played their safeties deep to take it away. It was talked about plenty in the Knoxville sports media earlier this season that teams were defending our offense that way. The coaches weren't dumb enough to force those shots.
 
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#72,741
#72,741
SSVol said:
The coaches were most likely the least significant part of the equation. If HH was our QB, I'd lay strong odds that offensive performance would be virtually identical to last year.
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I totally disagree it would be identical to last year. As in #1 scoring offense and total offense? With our oline and group of WRs the way the season played out with injuries etc, we would have been better with Hendon, no question. Same as last year, hell naw lol.
 
#72,742
#72,742
SSVol said:
No he doesn't. He understands that the reason the play calling was weak was due to Joe's limitations. You are insisting that the play calling was weak because Heupel isn't as good as Golesh.
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I'm saying ALL of those factors along with the WRs and Oline played a role. Never said Heupel isn't as good as Golesh. Not sure where you got that from. Did we miss his input? I believe we did.
 
#72,744
#72,744
utvols83 said:
The deep shots often weren't there because most opponents played their safeties deep to take it away. It was talked about plenty in the Knoxville sports media earlier this season that teams were defending our offense that way. The coaches weren't dumb enough to force those shots.
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Totally fair point and that was definitely the case at times. I'm confident 2023 wasn't the only year teams decided to play 2 high safety looks on us tho.
 
#72,745
#72,745
Who had Squirrel White has our hands down best option at WR in the preseason?

The OL took a minor step back and I think the WRs took a major one from last year.

Joe's stats don't tell the whole story as far as his performance. Joe had a very respectable stat line against Mizzouri. And yet we scored 7 points and lost by 29. I think after TAMU, the staff accepted they were never going to put him in a position to be anything other than a game manager. I really don't believe we won any games that we couldn't have won with Nico. And for the record I really don't think we lost any games that we would have won with Nico.

The fact that we won't look back at the Milton year as a JG level disaster is a credit to the staff, really. I don't think Joe has what it takes to make it at the next level. I think he will be a turnover machine in the NFL. But Levis is doing alright. What do I know... Nothin'.
 
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#72,746
#72,746
JT3 said:
I totally disagree it would be identical to last year. As in #1 scoring offense and total offense? With our oline and group of WRs the way the season played out with injuries etc, we would have been better with Hendon, no question. Same as last year, hell naw lol.
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But you were arguing that Joe and HH were mirrors? Now you're arguing that the problem is OL and WR? Not play calling?

HH would move the ball just fine and the play calling would look very much like last year. Would they have been number 1? Probably not, but close, which is why I said "virtually". Believe it or don't.
 
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#72,747
#72,747
SSVol said:
But you were arguing that Joe and HH were mirrors? Now you're arguing that the problem is OL and WR? Not play calling?

HH would move the ball just fine and the play calling would look very much like last year. Would they have been number 1? Probably not, but close, which is why I said "virtually". Believe it or don't.
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No no no no no I'm not. Lol. You would have had to be there from the beginning to understand why I said that about the stats.

Yall must really hate mirrors lol.
 
#72,748
#72,748
JT3 said:
I'm saying ALL of those factors along with the WRs and Oline played a role. Never said Heupel isn't as good as Golesh. Not sure where you got that from. Did we miss his input? I believe we did.
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You were arguing that the play calling was not as good with Heupel, but was great with Golesh. What other explanation would you offer for that if not that Heupel isn't as good as Golesh?
 
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#72,749
#72,749
SSVol said:
You were arguing that the play calling was not as good with Heupel, but was great with Golesh. What other explanation would you offer for that if not that Heupel isn't as good as Golesh?
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If anything I'm saying Hazle is not as good as Golesh. The game plan, play design, etc is from the OC.

Edit: Golesh > Hazle is understandable seeing that this was Hazle's first year in that seat.
 
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