What actually happened during the psu game

[cole256 17,084]

For the more objective guys you can see where this is going.....Let's talk what really happened this game without all of the emotion.

QB play: Well it depends how you look at this right? If you go by where he was at I'd say he's improved. But talking strictly this game he's a very average mediocre QB. But I feel like I'll need at least one but maybe two more games and I'll tell you everything you'll need to know.

As far as this game he's not a star or a high level performer. He may never be able to push the ball down field. Everybody saw the one throw that could have lost us the game early, but if you watch closely he had two other throws that were precursors to that play. There were two other passes that are picks to good corners.

I'm going to get to the wr's but I've seen a few people blame the wr for the play where he can't track the ball......that ball wasn't even in play, get real. If you look at the last minute stupid call on 4 th and 2 that ball wasn't going to be where the play could've possibly be made.

We're playing trying to hide the QB or in spite of instead of the QB winning it for us. That's THIS PARTICULAR GAME.

You see this is the base line, I told people there would need to be time to try to improve, when the game got ancy you saw Bo go back to the off balance, back foot QB. Like I said it takes reps. It's more than having a coach come in and say don't do that and viola it's fixed. 

Bo may have been hurt but as stated he doesn't have the arm strength to make the throws off his back leg. What you watched was to be Sean white playing but with less accuracy.

QB play is better but it's very underwhelming. And he certainly shouldn't get singled out for any blame but at the same time the overzealous fan boy should stop trying to make him a world beater off single plays or mediocre opponents as well. You can't have your cake and eat it too. You certainly can't say the QB play was good enough but these other guys suck! QB is the most important spot on the field, if you have a play maker here or a guy that can carry a team instead of a guy who everything has to be just right for you'd have different results.

 

HB: The stars of the team. It's a shame you take the ball out of their hand, after they gave you so much. They are the key to Bo actually being able to play QB.....

TE. Did his job, if he was more of an athlete we aren't in the 4th and 2 situation but he's giving you everything he has

WR: I think it was Audevil but somebody wrote how #0 isn't a number 1 receiver. That's the best assessment I've read. We don't have a number 1 guy. Imo opinion our fan base don't take into everything a number 1 guy goes thru and certainly didn't appreciate SW. But here you go, you didn't like the way he demanded the ball.....now you have incompetent play....how do you like it? We had some drops but when they had balls they could actually make plays on they mostly came thru. The rainbow throws are horrible to try to make plays on. 

We had a td play the very beginning of the game but we couldn't get the ball to him. You just can't get me to believe that canion and capers wouldn't be better. If you had a super accurate QB maybe the other guys would work better but with Bo there's no way having some big guys who can make plays or at least offer bigger targets with bigger catch radius isn't better.

O line. They had some good plays, they had some bad plays. They are pretty average too. You can win with them but you have to help them with mixing up the run and pass. They aren't a line you can just expect to dominate and your QB never has any pressure. They were actually above average in run blocking.

I'm just going to say defense in a group. I wrote about this game we'll see if we actually have a pass rush and nobody talked about that......We don't. You can see that we placed our bets that the QB couldn't carry them and beat us. You see the point of a zone is to wait for a mistake. There are holes but can the QB go the entire game and find them without a mistake or drop. We didn't think their QB could but he did. People were calling for blitzes and as soon as we did they hit us for big plays every time.

 

Now the thing to see is if we make the same mistakes or do we get better. When we had adversity we had two different results. We had the one drive where we marched down with the running game. We had that 3 and out series where we got ancy and threw the horrible passes. Let's see what this team do more times than not.

Edited September 19, 2021 by cole256

[DAG 33,997]

Coaching over thinking.

Defensive coaching needs to adapt badly to personnel

We still was put into position to win with proper execution

Bo has looked much better than last year, but he just does not impress me with his passing, especially deep balls. Scheme around him and this team can be very successful but it will take a village. He is not going to win you games and won't lose them either

RBs are amazing. The lights did not seem to big for them. 

I was very impressed with our TEs. Shenker is as cool as a cucumber

WRs are far too inconsistent. Sometimes you got to go up and make a play on the ball. You got to catch balls that hit you in the hands, etc. With that being said, some of those throws were just not good. No playmakers in this bunch IMO. SW and Flash really made us forget.

Defensive line...We got to get better. Fair was showing out though at times

 LB play hard and they are aggressive. A little suspect in pass coverage

DBs asked to stay in their zone due to limited pass rush. I do think the zone makes them a lot less aggressive. They just don't have active hands. They are always responsive versus initiating.

Offensive line did adequate and that is all I ask.

Edited September 19, 2021 by DAG

[cole256 17,084]

Oh and I can't believe we called that play at the end of the game

[JMassie11 1,610]

The 4th down play I really think the WR shortened the route. Still not a fan of the call but I do think the ball was place in the correct spot just poor execution 

[aubearcat 2,137]

4 minutes ago, cole256 said:

Oh and I can't believe we called that play at the end of the game

I saw a tweet that compared that situation with the NE v Seattle Super Bowl where Carroll passed instead of feeding Marshawn Lynch. Quite similar. 

Edited September 19, 2021 by aubearcat

[aubearcat 2,137]

Very good and forensic breakdown of the game. 

[DAG 33,997]

8 minutes ago, cole256 said:

Oh and I can't believe we called that play at the end of the game

We didn't call the play if I am reading the tea leaves correct. It was a play with multiple options and based on what is read, the QB gets to choose. It is what it is. If it were me, I would've said give the ball to tank, but maybe they want to give more autonomy. Who Knows..

[CleCoTiger 1,957]

16 minutes ago, JMassie11 said:

The 4th down play I really think the WR shortened the route. Still not a fan of the call but I do think the ball was place in the correct spot just poor execution 

On the replay it looked to me like the pass was going to be out of bounds. No chance for the WR to make the play even if he hadn't gotten tied up with the DB. Could be wrong, but that's what I thought I saw.

[jptiger 481]

Very good assessment of this game. 

[Eagle-1 3,821]

We ran the ball surprisingly well for a team that is just not a threat to beat you through the air. Bottom line is that we will come up short in several more games without a viable down field passing attack. I have been a defender of Bo Nix for the past couple of years, because he was our best option in Malzahn's limited offensive system. Cole is right, Bo just doesn't have the arm strength, nor the deep accuracy to put the game in his hands. It is what it is. All the coaching in the world is not going to change that fact 

Edited September 19, 2021 by Eagle-1

[Quietmaninthecorner 1,945]

What I saw.

slight improvement across the board except at WR.  I am frustrated  when I see other teams' WRs   make  diving one handed circus catches while our WRs drop balls that hit them in the numbers.  

 

DL:  was manhandled most of the game.   Ran some numbers through my head during the game (so it is not real accurate),  and the PSU QB had about 5+ seconds on average before having to get rid of the ball.  That is not good!

OL:  could not stay on blocks.   Nix had an average of around 2.3 seconds to get rid of the ball or run.   (compare to 5+ seconds for PSU)

 

Nix:  Looked a lot better to me.   Still has some throwing issues that are exponentially compounded by our WR's   problems catching easy throws,  and inability to make that "circus catch" when needed to make up for rushed or  poor throws.  They also don't seem to fight very hard for contested balls. 

 

RBs:   AUsome!   I wish we would have seen our bruiser,  Sean Jackson, early in the game to soften up PSU's aggressive LBs.   Hunter is going to push Tank.  We could have used Shivers speed.   

Coaching:   all things considered ,  I am happy with coaching.  There were a few bonehead offensive calls,  but anyone who has ever coach anything knows that in the heat of battle you don't always make the right decisions.   Sometimes an idea pops in your head that seems right at the time  but turns out to be , well,  not so good.   Overall, I didn't see any more bonehead calls than any other coach.   Far Far less than a Gus directed plan!    Defense needs some work but are close to being elite.    LB's need to work on pass coverage.

If's and buts:   any ONE of a multitude of things would have given us a win.  If this game was a home or neutral site game.  If our WR made ONE circus catch, etc..

 

I am proud of the way we fought.    The cards were stacked against us with adversity.  New coach/system that is still being implemented  vs coach that has a fully implemented system and has all "his type" players.     A talent gap at some key positions.   Traveling FAR to a top 10 teams house with a loud and intimidating fan base.   the White out.  College gameday adding to the PSU hype and energy.  Negative things that happened during the game. Mccreary, Papoe. etc.

And yet, we walked into a top 10 team's house and showed we belong.  We didn't win the game,  but we had PSU's ball sacks shriveled up for most of the game. 

 

I am confident we will continue to get better.

 

WDE  

  

 

 

 

 

 

Edited September 19, 2021 by Quietmaninthecorner

[JMassie11 1,610]

16 minutes ago, CleCoTiger said:

On the replay it looked to me like the pass was going to be out of bounds. No chance for the WR to make the play even if he hadn't gotten tied up with the DB. Could be wrong, but that's what I thought I saw.

I just thought the play was meant to be in the back corner of the endzone. 

[AUGunsmith 666]

We haven't seen much rainbow from bo, I wonder if his shoulder is hurt

 

[AUBwins 10,075]

All in all, only once did I feel the crowd got to us,  the false start near the end of the game. Very very impressed by how business like we looked in a very hostile atmosphere.  Really wish we leaned more on the RBs here.  Tank would have gone 150 if we had.  That 15 play drive was the best drive Auburn had executed in years,  probably since Cam at Kentucky to win the game.  I think we should have run left more.  We went weak side and right too much.  Became predictable a bit.  Jarquez needs to continue to get ample opportunities.  He was a spark.  Man he's good.  Excited.   We were just a few miscues away from winning the game.  Better execution and we do.  The fade was the worst option with this personnel.  Talk about a buzz kill of a call.  With Seth, I'd consider it if the pass was better.  If that pass was catchable, maybe we get a PI, but we had no shot at it.  I actually wish we would open SEC play next week instead of another SB team.  Whatever we see next week won't answer if we've improved IMO.

[WeaglWeaglWDE 599]

9 minutes ago, AUGunsmith said:

We haven't seen much rainbow from bo, I wonder if his shoulder is hurt

 

If you watch the replay there was absolutely a shot of him wincing and him rotating his shoulder around like something wasn't right. The floaters were after that. He's never been great on the deep balls but he looked off even for him there for a while.  Hopefully he just came down on it wrong and it will be fine. 

[McLoofus 35,182]

1 hour ago, cole256 said:

SW.

I normally don't do this but MY GOD SETH YOU SHOULD HAVE STAYED. Can you imagine.

[cole256 17,084]

19 minutes ago, AUGunsmith said:

We haven't seen much rainbow from bo, I wonder if his shoulder is hurt

 

I literally pointed out how most all his balls are lobs, jump balls. I brought this up last year

[AUGunsmith 666]

2 minutes ago, cole256 said:

I literally pointed out how most all his balls are lobs, jump balls. I brought this up last year

We've seen him use too much air, but these balls were something else. I've seen punta not go that high. 

[WeaglWeaglWDE 599]

1 minute ago, AUGunsmith said:

We've seen him use too much air, but these balls were something else. I've seen punta not go that high. 

Was worse than normal for sure. 

[cole256 17,084]

The thing that gets me most about this board and Bo is how many hype him to be something he's not then get upset when he's critiqued as such. I've seen many posts saying he's good enough to pull it out, or he's improved to where he throws check downs.

And that's cool but don't compare him to the best and heisman stuff if you want him to use a bunch of excuses. Pretty much stop trying to franchise him and say he's decent and can win in the right circumstances and I don't think he'll be held to the high standard

[cole256 17,084]

4 minutes ago, AUGunsmith said:

We've seen him use too much air, but these balls were something else. I've seen punta not go that high. 

I'll give you that,a couple were wtf

[Brad_ATX 13,654]

1 hour ago, aubearcat said:

I saw a tweet that compared that situation with the NE v Seattle Super Bowl where Carroll passed instead of feeding Marshawn Lynch. Quite similar. 

I was at that Super Bowl sitting with friends who are Seahawks fans.  We were all slack-jawed.

[CCTAU 3,334]

3 minutes ago, cole256 said:

The thing that gets me most about this board and Bo is how many hype him to be something he's not then get upset when he's critiqued as such. I've seen many posts saying he's good enough to pull it out, or he's improved to where he throws check downs.

And that's cool but don't compare him to the best and heisman stuff if you want him to use a bunch of excuses. Pretty much stop trying to franchise him and say he's decent and can win in the right circumstances and I don't think he'll be held to the high standard

“BO SUCKS” is not a critique. 
And that’s what you get from most of these guys who have never put on a helmet. 
Bo is a good QB. The problem is that folks don’t understand what “good” entails. 

[fishepa 1,906]

1 hour ago, DAG said:

We didn't call the play if I am reading the tea leaves correct. It was a play with multiple options and based on what is read, the QB gets to choose. It is what it is. If it were me, I would've said give the ball to tank, but maybe they want to give more autonomy. Who Knows..

Bingo. I think Bo made the wrong call and Harsin is covering for his QB. He certainly isn’t, or shouldn’t, throw Bo under the bus telling everyone was his call to make. Oh well maybe we’ll make better decisions next time. 

[Brad_ATX 13,654]

Bo was mediocre.  He did seem to have his happy feet more under control, but still made some mind-numbingly bad throws and reads.

O Line was better than I expected them to be.

RBs are great.

TEs looked pretty solid and it was nice to see them utilized.

WRs need work, but as has been stated, some of that is on Bo.  Still too many catchable balls that were dropped for my taste.

DL needs to generate a pass rush badly.

LBs were largely fine 

Secondary was disappointing.  Some of that was scheme, but just felt like we let too many easy completions happen.

Harsin's game management needs work.  Burning that timeout early in the 4th quarter chapped my ass and cost us later.