The last two games we've seen ~20 handoffs to backs vs 40+ drop backs/runs for Reed, and the offense is very hit and miss because of it. EJ and Owens were averaging a combined 4.5 yards per carry against Texas, so it's not like the run game wasn't working. But the default was to drop back anyway. Chunking it 30 yards down field on 3rd & 2? Handing off 3 times on 18 first quarter plays for 0 points? There are a ton of data points to share from the last two SEC games. I see two possibilities for why this is trending to a Reed dependent offense:

1. Coaches were trying to give him that Heisman moment. Coaches have vocalized their support for Reed's Heisman campaign, so consciously or subconsciously, they were trying to give him the best chance to go win the game and put on a show.

2. Coaches have slowly drifted into making Reed the reason we win or lose, essentially running into the problem LSU had of putting the win solely on Nuss's shoulders.

I hope the problem is #1, as that won't follow us into the playoffs. But if the problem is #2, it's very concerning. This isn't a knock on Reed, as I think he's played very well this season overall. But putting the offensive production squarely on his shoulders is very concerning. Very few college QBs are or have been capable of routinely winning when over 66% of the time it's a throw or QB run.

TLDR: We need to get back to handing the ball off again and winning as a team instead of making the QB the hero.

Hopefully get Moss back at full strength, would go a long way. His vision and anticipation is difficult to replace.

Klein is way too pass happy, so if that's what you mean by overreliance on Reed, then I agree.

I love Marcel as a team leader and face or our program. He is a great young man. but he is not a great passer. He is OK, but not great and he certainly cannot carry this team with his arm against top 10 opponents. Klein has to find another way if we have any hope of going forward in the playoffs.

Im pretty sure our one loss came from Marcel's injury 5 mins in.

Amazed he powered through it but we do not have a viable backup

The Banned said:

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The last two games we've seen ~20 handoffs to backs vs 40+ drop backs/runs for Reed, and the offense is very hit and miss because of it. EJ and Owens were averaging a combined 4.5 yards per carry against Texas, so it's not like the run game wasn't working. But the default was to drop back anyway. Chunking it 30 yards down field on 3rd & 2? Handing off 3 times on 18 first quarter plays for 0 points? There are a ton of data points to share from the last two SEC games. I see two possibilities for why this is trending to a Reed dependent offense:

1. Coaches were trying to give him that Heisman moment. Coaches have vocalized their support for Reed's Heisman campaign, so consciously or subconsciously, they were trying to give him the best chance to go win the game and put on a show.

2. Coaches have slowly drifted into making Reed the reason we win or lose, essentially running into the problem LSU had of putting the win solely on Nuss's shoulders.

I hope the problem is #1, as that won't follow us into the playoffs. But if the problem is #2, it's very concerning. This isn't a knock on Reed, as I think he's played very well this season overall. But putting the offensive production squarely on his shoulders is very concerning. Very few college QBs are or have been capable of routinely winning when over 66% of the time it's a throw or QB run.

TLDR: We need to get back to handing the ball off again and winning as a team instead of making the QB the hero.

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Elko has said before than we install a game plan based on the strengths and weaknesses of the opponent. Texas was ranked 100+ in the country in pass yards per game. We should have been able to throw it around with relative ease. Texas is top 10 in rush defense, so I'm guessing we made a calculated bet that the pass game would unfreeze at some point, rather than becoming too reliant on the run game. It obviously didn't work, but I can understand the logic.

No Moss means more MR plays
College Football is a QB game

The QB has ti make plays and limit mistakes Vandy's Pavia is the most obvious example and hopefully MR with one more year can be almost that good

How ll the hell is Klein going to prove how clever and innovative he is if we keep handing the ball off?

Annexation of Puerto Rico

Klein needs to take a HC gig

Off_The_Wood said:

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The Banned said:

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The last two games we've seen ~20 handoffs to backs vs 40+ drop backs/runs for Reed, and the offense is very hit and miss because of it. EJ and Owens were averaging a combined 4.5 yards per carry against Texas, so it's not like the run game wasn't working. But the default was to drop back anyway. Chunking it 30 yards down field on 3rd & 2? Handing off 3 times on 18 first quarter plays for 0 points? There are a ton of data points to share from the last two SEC games. I see two possibilities for why this is trending to a Reed dependent offense:

1. Coaches were trying to give him that Heisman moment. Coaches have vocalized their support for Reed's Heisman campaign, so consciously or subconsciously, they were trying to give him the best chance to go win the game and put on a show.

2. Coaches have slowly drifted into making Reed the reason we win or lose, essentially running into the problem LSU had of putting the win solely on Nuss's shoulders.

I hope the problem is #1, as that won't follow us into the playoffs. But if the problem is #2, it's very concerning. This isn't a knock on Reed, as I think he's played very well this season overall. But putting the offensive production squarely on his shoulders is very concerning. Very few college QBs are or have been capable of routinely winning when over 66% of the time it's a throw or QB run.

TLDR: We need to get back to handing the ball off again and winning as a team instead of making the QB the hero.

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Elko has said before than we install a game plan based on the strengths and weaknesses of the opponent. Texas was ranked 100+ in the country in pass yards per game. We should have been able to throw it around with relative ease. Texas is top 10 in rush defense, so I'm guessing we made a calculated bet that the pass game would unfreeze at some point, rather than becoming too reliant on the run game. It obviously didn't work, but I can understand the logic.

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I agree with both of the above posts. It is disappointing that we didn't seem to adjust to what was actually taking place during the game, particularly after the half.

We lost a game so we need to blow everything up and start over.

rootube said:

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We lost a game so we need to blow everything up and start over.

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On the contrary, we lost a game because we changed everything up from what was working. I'd like to go back to what we were doing.

Sterling82 said:

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Off_The_Wood said:

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Elko has said before than we install a game plan based on the strengths and weaknesses of the opponent. Texas was ranked 100+ in the country in pass yards per game. We should have been able to throw it around with relative ease. Texas is top 10 in rush defense, so I'm guessing we made a calculated bet that the pass game would unfreeze at some point, rather than becoming too reliant on the run game. It obviously didn't work, but I can understand the logic.

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I agree with both of the above posts. It is disappointing that we didn't seem to adjust to what was actually taking place during the game, particularly after the half.

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Agreed. I know Texas' rankings made the passing attack look good on paper, but they've trended in the opposite direction the past couple weeks. Plus the real time game feedback in the 2nd was showing that we could have success on the ground. At least enough to try and run it more in the 3rd. We finally started running at the end of the 3rd and it worked until the stupid false start on 4th. Had we done that in the first two drives we could have shortened the game and maybe taken the pressure off of Reed a bit.

The Banned said:

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rootube said:

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We lost a game so we need to blow everything up and start over.

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On the contrary, we lost a game because we changed everything up from what was working. I'd like to go back to what we were doing.

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This. We lost our identity. Grind it out in the second half. That's what we were doing to teams and we've gone away from that all of a sudden. We were in position to win that game and our offensive philosophy changed. Also, our first half d was fine but we out schemed ourselves in the second half. We tried to use Howell as a spy in the second half and got torched when we did

We lost the tu game at the line of scrimmage on both sides of the ball.

The reason for that game plan is because sip is good against the run and bad against the pass. We made them look outstanding in pass coverage!

Marcel is 117th in uncatchable pass rating per PFF! 25% of his passes are rated as uncatchable. That's bad!

He should be using his feet more.

halfastros81 said:

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We lost the tu game at the line of scrimmage on both sides of the ball.

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No we didn't. We had 2 sacks, they had 1. We have 10 TFLs, they had 2. Wiser had 3 big runs and Manning had 1, and that was the difference. They kept handing the ball off despite all those TFLs and popped a couple big runs because of it. We kept dropping back to pass.

We let a team that wasn't successful running the ball most of the yr run the ball and we didn't run the ball well. We were 50 ypg rushing under our avg per game. They wee 80 ypg above their avg. it changed the way their secondary played us. Marcel also made some bad decisions throwing into coverage when he didn't have too

rootube said:

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We lost a game so we need to blow everything up and start over.

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We've played 2 good teams this season.
Won the first thanks to the opponent's botched PAT and a 4th down miracle TD pass.
Lost the second in embarrassing fashion, getting dominated in every aspect of the game.

Hopefully he has a rough film session.
Seems he's getting lax in reads and progressions, pretty much already deciding where he's throwing it before the ball is ever snapped.

Take what the defense gives you, and get the first downs. Doesn't have to be sexy to be effective.
But then don't be afraid to make the sexy throw either, if the defense opens the door for it.

NoahAg said:

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rootube said:

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We lost a game so we need to blow everything up and start over.

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We've played 2 good teams this season.
Won the first thanks to the opponent's botched PAT and a 4th down miracle TD pass.
Lost the second in embarrassing fashion, getting dominated in every aspect of the game.

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LOL, "dominated".
We weren't dominated. We shot ourselves in the foot with unprecedented frequency (for this year), but we weren't "dominated".

When we play the run correctly, we stop them for short gains, no gains, or even negative yard plays. But when we completely F up, they squirt loose for big gains on the ground.

When we blow coverage assignments, they get wide open targets.

When we don't make the correct reads/progressions, we don't move the ball very well thru the air. But we had guys open and available.

When a QB chooses to throw a deep ball on a 3rd and 2, despite having other targets wide open for an easy 1st down, that kills the drive.

That's just a lot of stupidity, not being dominated.
Dominated is 0-77, which could have easily been 0-120.
Dominated is Utah coming to Kyle and sparking the Torbush wow.

The Banned said:

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The last two games we've seen ~20 handoffs to backs vs 40+ drop backs/runs for Reed, and the offense is very hit and miss because of it. EJ and Owens were averaging a combined 4.5 yards per carry against Texas, so it's not like the run game wasn't working. But the default was to drop back anyway. Chunking it 30 yards down field on 3rd & 2? Handing off 3 times on 18 first quarter plays for 0 points? There are a ton of data points to share from the last two SEC games. I see two possibilities for why this is trending to a Reed dependent offense:

1. Coaches were trying to give him that Heisman moment. Coaches have vocalized their support for Reed's Heisman campaign, so consciously or subconsciously, they were trying to give him the best chance to go win the game and put on a show.

2. Coaches have slowly drifted into making Reed the reason we win or lose, essentially running into the problem LSU had of putting the win solely on Nuss's shoulders.

I hope the problem is #1, as that won't follow us into the playoffs. But if the problem is #2, it's very concerning. This isn't a knock on Reed, as I think he's played very well this season overall. But putting the offensive production squarely on his shoulders is very concerning. Very few college QBs are or have been capable of routinely winning when over 66% of the time it's a throw or QB run.

TLDR: We need to get back to handing the ball off again and winning as a team instead of making the QB the hero.

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I think Reed was playing hurt.

I'll concede tu didn't dominate the entire game, but certainly the 2nd half. And they were better in every component of the game. They hadn't had a 100 yd rusher all season until they played us. And we made Wisner look like Ricky Williams.

Wisconsin_Ag said:

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Klein needs to take a HC gig

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There is value in continuity and risk in pairing MR (assuming he comes back) with a new OC his final year. My bet is we see Klein for at least one more year. He won 10 games this year. Hard to imagine we cut bait coming off a 10 win season and CFP birth.

And, he won 10 games this year and we are in the CFP...

halfastros81 said:

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We let a team that wasn't successful running the ball most of the yr run the ball and we didn't run the ball well. We were 50 ypg rushing under our avg per game. They wee 80 ypg above their avg. it changed the way their secondary played us. Marcel also made some bad decisions throwing into coverage when he didn't have too

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Our RBs were averaging 4.5 per carry. That isn't far off our season average. What was off was the number of hand offs. We simply didn't hand it off and kept having Marcel drop back. Marcel dropped back over 40 times. Our RBs got 19 handoffs and WRs got 2. I don't think being .5 yards off our average should have changed things that much, or qualify as getting dominated.

Their RBs were only "successful" running the ball on 5 or 6 plays. We phyiscally dominated them most of the game. We just did what we've been doing all year: had brain farts and didn't fill the gap. Teams will get big runs off of us. The key is being up by enough that they abandon the run, and getting up by the much isn't gonna happen if we make it the Marcel show.

Sterling82 said:

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Off_The_Wood said:

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The Banned said:

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The last two games we've seen ~20 handoffs to backs vs 40+ drop backs/runs for Reed, and the offense is very hit and miss because of it. EJ and Owens were averaging a combined 4.5 yards per carry against Texas, so it's not like the run game wasn't working. But the default was to drop back anyway. Chunking it 30 yards down field on 3rd & 2? Handing off 3 times on 18 first quarter plays for 0 points? There are a ton of data points to share from the last two SEC games. I see two possibilities for why this is trending to a Reed dependent offense:

1. Coaches were trying to give him that Heisman moment. Coaches have vocalized their support for Reed's Heisman campaign, so consciously or subconsciously, they were trying to give him the best chance to go win the game and put on a show.

2. Coaches have slowly drifted into making Reed the reason we win or lose, essentially running into the problem LSU had of putting the win solely on Nuss's shoulders.

I hope the problem is #1, as that won't follow us into the playoffs. But if the problem is #2, it's very concerning. This isn't a knock on Reed, as I think he's played very well this season overall. But putting the offensive production squarely on his shoulders is very concerning. Very few college QBs are or have been capable of routinely winning when over 66% of the time it's a throw or QB run.

TLDR: We need to get back to handing the ball off again and winning as a team instead of making the QB the hero.

---

Elko has said before than we install a game plan based on the strengths and weaknesses of the opponent. Texas was ranked 100+ in the country in pass yards per game. We should have been able to throw it around with relative ease. Texas is top 10 in rush defense, so I'm guessing we made a calculated bet that the pass game would unfreeze at some point, rather than becoming too reliant on the run game. It obviously didn't work, but I can understand the logic.

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I agree with both of the above posts. It is disappointing that we didn't seem to adjust to what was actually taking place during the game, particularly after the half.

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Yep, if they are dropping 7, run the ball. Also blitz more in half 2 from different points.

You take the field with the team you've got.

NoahAg said:

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I'll concede tu didn't dominate the entire game, but certainly the 2nd half. And they were better in every component of the game. They hadn't had a 100 yd rusher all season until they played us. And we made Wisner look like Ricky Williams.

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From "domination"? Like the DL getting rocked back 5 yds, the LB's getting pancaked, and all tacklers getting trucked like Laffy Taffe vs the Arkansas RB last week?

Or was it more from a collection of WTF mistakes that led to those yardage opportunities?
Our LB's are serviceable, barely. And when they F up, it's magnified because they don't have the athleticism (mainly speed) to recover. When we played Arky in Fayetteville earlier this year, that's what was happening. A lot. And in the 2nd half, it was happening again.

The Banned said:

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halfastros81 said:

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We lost the tu game at the line of scrimmage on both sides of the ball.

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No we didn't. We had 2 sacks, they had 1. We have 10 TFLs, they had 2. Wiser had 3 big runs and Manning had 1, and that was the difference. They kept handing the ball off despite all those TFLs and popped a couple big runs because of it. We kept dropping back to pass.

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The other thing that changed in the second half is sip started running on the edge instead of tackle to tackle. I think that worked better against us with their oline.

Elko said as much post game.

"We need to look at what we are asking the kids to do and have a real discussion as to whether they can actually do it."

We are guilty for overselling ourselves on Marcel's ability to sit in a pocket and dominate a defense. We are guilty for not making reads easier on him. We are guilty for falling in love with Reuben's home run talent instead of the abillity of EJ to grind two yards. We are guilty of switching around the oline instead of finding the 5 guys most capable of moving the pile 4 yards. We are guilty of unleashing Cassius to rush the passer at all times instead of the traditional Elko gap responsibility that his defenses are known for. Finally, we ask way more of Taurean York than he can physically do.

The best version of our team was the one that made people quit for three straight home games. The best version of our team has Marcel making decisions on zone option closer to ten times a game. It runs passes off that read and allows our speed at WR to win in the RPO Game (Craver needs a few weeks off, He clearly is knicked up). The best version makes you fight all the way down the field and doesnt give up multiple big plays in the run game every game.

Let Marcel make his reads in the run game rather than requiring him to read 4 guys in the pass. Our special skill on offense is his legs. And finally put your fastest LB out there next to Taurean to spy and zone and let Taurean do what he does best, read before the play, identify everything, and get his butt downhill to make plays.

We are fine guys. This is a special team, but success in spite of bad habits just makes bad habits worse.

This guy knows ball!

We struggled on the edge because York was worried about QB run all day and is not the Edge Cooper level of guy who can handle both. And howell was 8 yards up field trying to get a sack.

Horn dropped 7 and 8 its not like horn DC isnt as good as Elko--he is! He knew their weakness as well and expected Ags to exploit it. Klien didnt

Marcel has dropped back 40+ times in 3 games (against actual competition) this year:

ND- had a great game, but even then was 17 for 37.
SCar- Half the game he was ass my dude, the other half he was lights out
texas- Did not play well at all

Every other game was in the upper 20s to mid 30s, and each of those games were consistent offensively. Even Auburn was a good offensive game yardage wise. It was penalties and missed FGs that kept us from hanging 30+ on them, and they are a solid defense.

The concern is the last two games we've put the game squarely on his shoulders. He's proven he CAN do it, but he can also fail miserably ala Nussmeier. When we run a more balanced offense and take the pressure off his shoulders, he plays really well.

Establish a run game with our stable of RBs, get REED into some RPO/Play Action for some shorter yard passing (such as our very reliable TEs). Klein has shown this in play calls in past games and not sure why he didn't call this against t.u.