For those of us who aren't on TexAgs nonstop and who only see the games themselves and glance at these message boards that run wild with conspiracies and bad jokes.....is there anything close to a consensus on what the hell is the matter with this team??

Also, is there any more insight on the Premium board, or is it the same over there as every year (i.e. 'Coach is committed to reviewing the film and improving each week'...'so-and-so from the 2004 squad will join us in the studio to discuss the offensive line woes'... and 'new squat record set in weight room').

Based on my armchair analysis of this season's games, which for some reason I've watched from start to finish, main issues seem to be:
- the o-line that was advertised pre-season to be of near NFL-caliber, gets beaten by the likes of SMU and ULM and utterly destroyed by all SEC opponents thus far.
- 5-star QBs can't throw.
- 4 & 5-star WRs not named 'Speedy' can't catch.
- Running backs try, but see #1 above
- Defense is going on its 16th season of being near-worst in NCAA football. Not just in SEC, but in all 115 teams or however many there are now.
- I count three players that seem to be bothered by the current state of affairs and who seem to play with anything resembling the old 'heart/passion' cliche.

So have the coaches, or the athletic department, or the "inside reporters" on this site come up with hard factual answers, or has this site basically spent the past month basically been arguing and mocking the stuff I listed above?

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message boards that run wild with conspiracies and bad jokes...

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Staff, please set this guy straight.

definitely arguing and mocking.

OFFENSE:
The offensive line is an abomination. Running backs can't run, quarterbacks can't throw, and receivers can't catch if their is NO offensive line blocking.

DEFENSE:
A defense that could have been serviceable (see high 60s or low 70s ranked) relies on contributions from young players who aren't quite ready. Hilliard's injury was a massive setback. Old players are bad and young players still a bit small and inexperienced. Defensive scheme hopes they'll make a mistake while we're bending and not breaking as opposed to attacking. We'd attack more if we played with a lead, but that doesn't happen due to #1

Hey OP, I like my bad jokes. Thank you very much, mister.

Feng shui.

To have a great team, you must have players and coaches that work well together. A good amount of positive and confident leadership mixed with players who can be motivated by that leadership. A coach who knows how to motivate players based on their particular needs. Seeing the broader picture of the season along with the small details of each and every play. If a coach can identify each player's talents and strengths, he can assign leadership as needed. If there are players like JFF, they will be leaders and take it amongst themselves to motivate whether the coach tells them to or not. At this point in the season, Sumlin needs to micro-manage and tell certain staff and certain players to become experts in.... whatever (plays, leadership, motivation, defense, offense, opponents, etc etc).

I hope they figure it out before the end of the season.

Bout sums it up. Most of blame here is on coaches I would say. Personally I agree. The issue is the players have given up on the coaches. Only way to get em back is to make em play for each other, us against the world thing. If Sumlin can do that then he might hit pay dirt next year with new staff.

OP, you'd have a much more fun, and colourul thread going, if you let the zoo come in and play here.

Just sayin'.

Yeah the only thing OP left out is an offensive coordinator who tried to give the game away on saturday by calling three passing plays up 5 points with time on the clock. We can't be rewarding that kind of idiocy with a paycheck.

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Also, is there any more insight on the Premium board, or is it the same over there as every year (i.e. 'Coach is committed to reviewing the film and improving each week'...'so-and-so from the 2004 squad will join us in the studio to discuss the offensive line woes'... and 'new squat record set in weight room').

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Don't be mocking the stars chach. Staph will hit you down so hard. So if you still got questions about what goes on over there, better to just break out your credit card.

My gut feeling is something internal is going on. After the Mississippi State game specifically, something happened in the locker room. You don't go from destroying South Carolina and beating out a strong Arkansas team, and then play the way we have because of scheme or talent. It is all between the ears right now.

This ties to coaching obviously. Defensively, we are at where I figured we would be. But on the offensive side of the ball, something doesn't seem right with Kyle/Kenny, obviously the RB's, receivers dropping everything and not getting open, and the O line looking like swiss cheese.

I can see the defense as just symptomatic of talent not where it needs to be, all glued together by Snyder and his inability to coach basic skills. Bama was bad, but the defense is still better than last year.

The offense on the other hand hand has completely come undone. The energy and execution we saw against SC is long gone. SC has shown they aren't very good so all the hype heaped on us was not deserved. The OL has fallen down. That more than anything is the root cause. Hill is average. Our WRs not named Speedy are indeed ordinary. That Niederhofer catches so many is a clear sign. Our all world TE is not all College Station. And perhaps most of all our wonderkid offensive coordinator is being exposed week after week now as unable to scheme, call plays, improve QB play, or otherwise adapt to whatever has happened. Sumlin seems unable to reign it all in.

I too agree something is amiss in the locker room, but I really don't have a clue what it is.

A weird unscientific thought I have is that we were playing better when everyone was asking "when does Jarvis Harrison get back in the lineup?" and now that he is, our OL is crap.

Summary doesn't include lack of Trey?

You even texags lately bro?

-Our team has terrible fundamentals. They repeatedly screw up basic skills.

-Our team doesn't seem that interested in playing football. They haven't played with any heart for awhile now (59-0 and squeaking by ULM were pathetic) and, at the beginning of the season, they properly executed a lot of the basic skills that they're now screwing up. In other words, this isn't just a "they don't know how to do X because they were never taught to do X" situation. There's a fair bit of "they really don't seem to care" thrown in.

-Coaching... it's open to argument JUST how badly the coaches are doing their jobs (who knows how much is on the coaches and how much is on the players who seem to have quit?), but their performance ranks somewhere between significantly below average and horrendous.

-The SEC West. Holy God this division is good. All four of Auburn, Ole Miss (pre Treadwell injury, anyway), Miss St., and Alabama would be favored against every team in the country except for Oregon (who's back to wrecking shop now that they've gotten some injured players back and adjusted to losing some others). That's not to say that they wouldn't be favored over Oregon, but I'm not 100% sure like I am with every other team. Anyway, playing 3 of the 5 best teams in the country in successive weeks, with two of them on the road, and this after winning a physical game against Arkansas, seemed to completely deflate our team.