GDT: @ YSU Flightless Birds

[91jack]

Re: GDT: @ YSU Flightless Birds

I'm not saying every game is like this but I think the time of possession in this last game is fairly predictable.
SDSU's drive times against Youngstown State were 3:01, 3:50, 2:06, 2:08, 1:46, :07, 1:37 and the game was over. You have the ball 7 times and only hold the ball for more than 3:02 once. Your defense on the other hand plays a bend but don't break style.
Last years playoff game against NDSU was about the same way. SDSU have the ball for over 3 minutes on their first 2 drives and had it for less than 3 minutes for their last 7 drives.
There are games that aren't like this but it helps me figure out why our defense gets tired. It might be different if the offense scored about half of the times they had the ball but if you don't hold the ball and you don't score more then 25-30 points, it's not s great sign.

[CappinHard]

Re: GDT: @ YSU Flightless Birds

I'm not saying every game is like this but I think the time of possession in this last game is fairly predictable.
SDSU's drive times against Youngstown State were 3:01, 3:50, 2:06, 2:08, 1:46, :07, 1:37 and the game was over. You have the ball 7 times and only hold the ball for more than 3:02 once. Your defense on the other hand plays a bend but don't break style.
Last years playoff game against NDSU was about the same way. SDSU have the ball for over 3 minutes on their first 2 drives and had it for less than 3 minutes for their last 7 drives.
There are games that aren't like this but it helps me figure out why our defense gets tired. It might be different if the offense scored about half of the times they had the ball but if you don't hold the ball and you don't score more then 25-30 points, it's not s great sign.

If we get up on a team early, it works great, because then they have to press the issue to catch up and can't run a ball control offense. This is why the game would have probably gone completely different if Goedert hangs on to the ball and we score on that opening drive.

If the game plan going into a game is scoring early and making teams play catch up against your bend but don't break defense, that's fine. However, you have got to be willing to change your game plan during the game if things aren't going the way you wanted them to. That is my biggest problem with this coaching staff... The unwillingness to make adjustments mid game. Idk if it's being stubborn, being over confident, or what, but the best coaches are able to change things up when they need to, and this staff has shown they're not willing to.

[SF_Rabbit_Fan]

Re: GDT: @ YSU Flightless Birds

If we get up on a team early, it works great, because then they have to press the issue to catch up and can't run a ball control offense. This is why the game would have probably gone completely different if Goedert hangs on to the ball and we score on that opening drive.

If the game plan going into a game is scoring early and making teams play catch up against your bend but don't break defense, that's fine. However, you have got to be willing to change your game plan during the game if things aren't going the way you wanted them to. That is my biggest problem with this coaching staff... The unwillingness to make adjustments mid game. Idk if it's being stubborn, being over confident, or what, but the best coaches are able to change things up when they need to, and this staff has shown they're not willing to.

I really agree with the bold.

[SF_Rabbit_Fan]

Re: GDT: @ YSU Flightless Birds

Stig is a top 5 FCS coach.

SDSU has become the envy of all but a handful of FCS programs during his tenure.

But he isn't "agressive" enough, whatever that means... I can't find a stat for aggressiveness anywhere. I can find a W column, and a L column, but for the life of me can't find an A column. Can someone provide a link?

Many here seem to have taken a win at YSU as a sure thing? I'm all about optimism and high standards, but some of you folks are completely detached from reality.

Things didn't go as we hoped, and we got owned by what looks like a really, really good football team. It happens.

Win Saturday and the Stig haters will creep back into their holes until the next time things don't go perfectly. Its like clockwork. Occasionally, it happens within the same GDT, which is really entertaining.

[Bits]

Re: GDT: @ YSU Flightless Birds

It might be different if the offense scored about half of the times they had the ball but if you don't hold the ball and you don't score more then 25-30 points, it's not s great sign.

This is where I'm at and why I'm not as anxious about our defensive performance. Sure, our defense needs improvement, but all hopes and aspirations of this season hinged on a serviceable defense and a dominant offense. I don't think any of us expect to hold most quality opponents to under 10-14 points. All signs pointed to us having a prolific, possibly best in school history, offense. That means we would score points in bunches. Are any of us truly concerned about time of possession if our offense puts up 30+ points easily every Saturday? I'm not.

We (me included) have talked about how teams now have a blueprint to beat us with ball control, TOP, and keep it out of our offenses hands. But, what if our offense was truly dominant and scored on most possessions? Our oppenent scores, we take the ball, march it right back down in 3 minutes and score another touchdown. I would submit that this would put the pressure on our opponents to keep up with us, maybe take the opponent out of their gameplan if they don't score on a couple consecutive possessions. You typically don't want to shorten the game with a running clock if you're down by 2 scores.

I guess in my mind, we have 1 unit (offense) that was supposed to be the best in FCS. We have another unit (defense) that should be serviceable. We have got to be able to rely on the offense scoring points, even if the defense is giving up 300+ yards rushing and allowing 3rd down conversions at 65-70% rate. I know this makes the offenses job harder when they stand on the sideline for 8 minutes at a time. But the offense just simply cannot fail us, because our defense on most nights is not going to be dominant.

[Mr_Tibbs]

Re: GDT: @ YSU Flightless Birds

This is where I'm at and why I'm not as anxious about our defensive performance. Sure, our defense needs improvement, but all hopes and aspirations of this season hinged on a serviceable defense and a dominant offense. I don't think any of us expect to hold most quality opponents to under 10-14 points. All signs pointed to us having a prolific, possibly best in school history, offense. That means we would score points in bunches. Are any of us truly concerned about time of possession if our offense puts up 30+ points easily every Saturday? I'm not.

We (me included) have talked about how teams now have a blueprint to beat us with ball control, TOP, and keep it out of our offenses hands. But, what if our offense was truly dominant and scored on most possessions? Our oppenent scores, we take the ball, march it right back down in 3 minutes and score another touchdown. I would submit that this would put the pressure on our opponents to keep up with us, maybe take the opponent out of their gameplan if they don't score on a couple consecutive possessions. You typically don't want to shorten the game with a running clock if you're down by 2 scores.

I guess in my mind, we have 1 unit (offense) that was supposed to be the best in FCS. We have another unit (defense) that should be serviceable. We have got to be able to rely on the offense scoring points, even if the defense is giving up 300+ yards rushing and allowing 3rd down conversions at 65-70% rate. I know this makes the offenses job harder when they stand on the sideline for 8 minutes at a time. But the offense just simply cannot fail us, because our defense on most nights is not going to be dominant.

I agree in principle, but it does take some time and number of possessions for an offense to get into rhythm. Even last year with our incredibly efficient offense, we still weren't scoring every drive. I'd have to look at the season stats, but I'm guessing we came out somewhere around half of our drives or less resulting in points (Could be wrong). We just scored a lot of touchdowns and moved the ball pretty quickly down the field. Especially in the last half of the conference season, I'd guess we were under half our possessions ending up as scoring drives of one form or another. The point is, it's entirely unrealistic to assume that every time (or even most times) our offense touches the ball, they are going to get points on the board. When you only touch it 7 or 9 times a game, you aren't going to be able to do much, no matter how great or talented that side of the ball is. In order for our offense to be as potent as we think they can be, our D needs to get them the ball back. Not let YSU run for an opening 9 minute scoring drive.

For comparison, against UNI last year, the Jacks scored on 7 of 12 offensive drives by my count from the box score. That was a very complete game and was one of our better offensive games of the late regular season last year. Still around that 50% mark.

[TransAmBison]

Re: GDT: @ YSU Flightless Birds

Stig is a top 5 FCS coach.

SDSU has become the envy of all but a handful of FCS programs during his tenure.

But he isn't "agressive" enough, whatever that means... I can't find a stat for aggressiveness anywhere. I can find a W column, and a L column, but for the life of me can't find an A column. Can someone provide a link?

Many here seem to have taken a win at YSU as a sure thing? I'm all about optimism and high standards, but some of you folks are completely detached from reality.

Things didn't go as we hoped, and we got owned by what looks like a really, really good football team. It happens.

Win Saturday and the Stig haters will creep back into their holes until the next time things don't go perfectly. Its like clockwork. Occasionally, it happens within the same GDT, which is really entertaining.

I find the three bolded statements funny. I find it funny they are in the same post. I'm not trying to get all smacky after a Jacks loss, but dude...talk about with the other two statements I don't think you should call anyone out for being detached from reality.

[RabbitObsessed]

Re: GDT: @ YSU Flightless Birds

Stig is a top 5 FCS coach.

SDSU has become the envy of all but a handful of FCS programs during his tenure.

But he isn't "agressive" enough, whatever that means... I can't find a stat for aggressiveness anywhere. I can find a W column, and a L column, but for the life of me can't find an A column. Can someone provide a link?

By what metric is Stig a top 5 coach? Surely not by post-season success.

[Bits]

Re: GDT: @ YSU Flightless Birds

I agree in principle, but it does take some time and number of possessions for an offense to get into rhythm. Even last year with our incredibly efficient offense, we still weren't scoring every drive. I'd have to look at the season stats, but I'm guessing we came out somewhere around half of our drives or less resulting in points (Could be wrong). We just scored a lot of touchdowns and moved the ball pretty quickly down the field. Especially in the last half of the conference season, I'd guess we were under half our possessions ending up as scoring drives of one form or another. The point is, it's entirely unrealistic to assume that every time (or even most times) our offense touches the ball, they are going to get points on the board. When you only touch it 7 or 9 times a game, you aren't going to be able to do much, no matter how great or talented that side of the ball is. In order for our offense to be as potent as we think they can be, our D needs to get them the ball back. Not let YSU run for an opening 9 minute scoring drive.

For comparison, against UNI last year, the Jacks scored on 7 of 12 offensive drives by my count from the box score. That was a very complete game and was one of our better offensive games of the late regular season last year. Still around that 50% mark.

My bad on wording. By most I meant greater than 50%, I did not convey that clearly. I agree that it is very unrealistic to expect the offense to score on all possessions. But, IMO, not unreasonable given our talent to expect 50%.
For the YSU game - We had 7 possessions with only 1 score. If we even score field goals on 3 other possesions, (means we score 4/7 possessions) I believe that game is entirely different.

I'm not trying to play the woulda-coulda game because it doesn't matter - they beat us fair and square, time to move on. My point is that moving forward, regardless of how bad or good our D plays, we have minimal if any margin for error in most games for the O to play poorly. If the O plays poorly we will lose more than we'll win.

[CappinHard]

Re: GDT: @ YSU Flightless Birds

Stig is a top 5 FCS coach.

SDSU has become the envy of all but a handful of FCS programs during his tenure.

But he isn't "agressive" enough, whatever that means... I can't find a stat for aggressiveness anywhere. I can find a W column, and a L column, but for the life of me can't find an A column. Can someone provide a link?

Many here seem to have taken a win at YSU as a sure thing? I'm all about optimism and high standards, but some of you folks are completely detached from reality.

Things didn't go as we hoped, and we got owned by what looks like a really, really good football team. It happens.

Win Saturday and the Stig haters will creep back into their holes until the next time things don't go perfectly. Its like clockwork. Occasionally, it happens within the same GDT, which is really entertaining.

If you want to put blinders on and only look at wins and losses, that's fine. Don't get me wrong, I'm appreciative of what Stig has done and where he's taken the program. I'm not a Nebraska fan, I don't have unreal expectations, but I'm a realist and I know football and I can look past the Wins and Losses and see that there are issues that will likely prevent the program from taking that next step.

If you think all of this is just about losing to YSU, you aren't getting the point. I thought there was a decent chance we would lose to YSU. The problem is how we lost, the way the game went, the lack of adjustments that were made, not just the outcome. Also, I'm not a Stig hater, I just don't like the way he and his coaching staff do some things and I hope they make changes going forward. However, after losing to YSU the exact same way that we have to NDSU multiple times in the past and to still have nothing change, I don't have a whole lot of faith that it will happen.

[SF_Rabbit_Fan]

Re: GDT: @ YSU Flightless Birds

If you want to put blinders on and only look at wins and losses, that's fine. Don't get me wrong, I'm appreciative of what Stig has done and where he's taken the program. I'm not a Nebraska fan, I don't have unreal expectations, but I'm a realist and I know football and I can look past the Wins and Losses and see that there are issues that will likely prevent the program from taking that next step.

If you think all of this is just about losing to YSU, you aren't getting the point. I thought there was a decent chance we would lose to YSU. The problem is how we lost, the way the game went, the lack of adjustments that were made, not just the outcome. Also, I'm not a Stig hater, I just don't like the way he and his coaching staff do some things and I hope they make changes going forward. However, after losing to YSU the exact same way that we have to NDSU multiple times in the past and to still have nothing change, I don't have a whole lot of faith that it will happen.

Just last year, the program took several next steps. Autobid, first round bye, first quarterfinal appearance.

[CappinHard]

Re: GDT: @ YSU Flightless Birds

Just last year, the program took several next steps. Autobid, first round bye, first quarterfinal appearance.

[SF_Rabbit_Fan]

Re: GDT: @ YSU Flightless Birds

By what metric is Stig a top 5 coach? Surely not by post-season success.

SDSU has been in the playoffs 6 of the last 8 seasons. How many schools can say that? Here is the list:

New Hampshire - 8
NDSU - 7
Eastern Washington - 6
Sam Houston State - 6

The fact that so many on this board take playoff appearances for granted speaks volumes of the success we have had.

[Mr_Tibbs]

Re: GDT: @ YSU Flightless Birds

Just last year, the program took several next steps. Autobid, first round bye, first quarterfinal appearance.

And the way the team has played thus far (obviously things can still change in a big way), that is exactly where this little run will peak. I expect that the team will come out with fire against SIU, playing with something to prove. But the coaching AND player execution has just seemed off this whole season, and that was exposed against YSU (and MSU). The whole program needs to be all around better this Saturday.

[SF_Rabbit_Fan]

Re: GDT: @ YSU Flightless Birds

And the way the team has played thus far (obviously things can still change in a big way), that is exactly where this little run will peak. I expect that the team will come out with fire against SIU, playing with something to prove. But the coaching AND player execution has just seemed off this whole season, and that was exposed against YSU (and MSU). The whole program needs to be all around better this Saturday.

I don't disagree. We have some issues that need to be fixed.