Jacksonville State Post-Game Thoughts

For example, Gardner-Webb.

It’s kind of like playing some snot-nosed little asshole in Tekken at the arcade. He just starts mashing buttons and you’re all “WTF I beat this game quicker than anyone else in the leaderboards and this little shit is going to beat me by slamming his fists on the buttons” and then you hit him and then his mom calls the mallcops who call the real cops and everything just goes downhill from there.

I guess what I’m trying to say is, we will probably play with a little more ferocity come Thursday.

We also played our 3rd string QB that game as well as many backups at other positions. And from what I saw, we did that some in the game Saturday as well. Dwyer was out before the half ended, as Nesbitt was out by the end of the third iirc (might have to go back and check the game log on that one). Regardless, I saw a lot of rotating players in and out. CPJ seemed to be getting a lot of backups some time, maybe to help in case of injuries.

While the above comment was suppose to be in response to Dane’s comments, here are my full game thoughts.

Dwyer isn’t missing a step from the end of last year. I can’t wait to see what he does in a full game’s action. Nesbitt is making better reads, but still has a tendency to try to do too much on his own. I saw a few runs where he kept it when the gain would have been much greater if he had pitched. Overall the running game looked fine.

The passing game however, is lacking. Lots of dropped passes and bad throws by all involved. The good side to this is that it looked really more of a timing thing than anything else. Maybe the A backs could have ran better routes, but overall I think once the system gets into a rhythm the timing will be better and we will see a much improved passing game.

Welcome back Tarrant! The return game is solid, especially the PR. Tarrant has amazing field vision and speed. The offense will be happy with an increase to their average starting field position and I look forward to many a great return from Tarrant. I didn’t notice anything about the punt game, so maybe that’s a good thing, but Blair needs to work on some things. Travis Bell he is not, but he needs to be better than this.

On defense, the line wasn’t horrible and I think it will continue to improve throughout the year. Morgan is going to create problems and opposing teams will have to assign another body to him, hopefully opening things up for the others. The linebackers looked good, although a little quiet. And the secondary looks quite solid, so overall I think things will shape up fine for us.

Like I said, it was week 1 and there was a lot of rotation so some sloppiness is to be expected. This game allowed everyone to get those anxieties out so that we can move on to playing some real football come Thursday against Clemson. And, a win is a win is a win.

From my viewpoint in L224…here are my observations:

1) I was horrified at the holes in the defensive line
2) It is amazing at how open our receivers were on EVERY play. They were consistently 5 yards past the secondary on every pass play that I can remember (I mean I had a few Maker’s before walking in…)
3) We do play to our opponent. If you saw any of CPJs interview that was on the news yesterday, he said something like—“the first play was the only one where we got JSUs defense on their heels. The rest of them we were just kinda messing around.”
4) Julian Burnett needs to be a starter.
5) The new screen kicks some serious ass…and the new sound system with it would be great in my living room.

The bottom line is that when I was at the game, I was seriously worried. Worried as in…I’m 16 and she’s late worried. But as I got home and thought about it/sobered up, I realized that Diesel only carried the ball 7 times, we rotated a TON of players in/out to keep em fresh for Thursday, and that I’m sure we didn’t show all of our cards.

Will be at the game Thursday and am looking forward to seeing the starters play the whole game.