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I went over my season prediction in the thread below... and it turns out a lot of the questions I had heading into the season from that thread might be even bigger than I initially realized.
I'm a glass is half full guy, so I have to be honest that in the transfer portal era, I think a lot of teams are starting off slow just trying to figure out what they are. So we are 1-0 and we shouldn't get too nitpicky. I also believe that Cincy is going to be a pretty good team, their QB and NG gave us fits all night.
-I don't understand the people that are mad that we didn't show a downfield passing game. Cincy ran Cockeye State's 3 high safety look, so it was either checkdowns or running the ball.
-The real concern is that our OL wasn't able to open lanes for EJ to run the ball against a favorable box. Typically you audible to a run if there are 2 safeties back there, Cincy had 3 with corners over our WRs. We couldn't run very effectively. We overcame it against Cincy, will we be able to against Michigan?
-In the thread I linked, I talked about how absolutely thin our RB room is. I had healthy debates with people on why we switched Mozee to RB, and it wasn't because he's just so good he has to be there. It's because we truly don't have anyone besides EJ back there. While I don't think Ives is the answer, maybe he can give us some options once he returns 100% from his hamstring injury. But things just didn't look great, and Nelson while serviceable, is just too young and not explosive. I also made reference that EJ is a nice piece for our room, he's a good back, but he's not a gamebreaker and isn't changing games. He can do everything Holgo wants offensively with catching balls out of the backfield, but what we need is a back that makes you pay if our WRs aren't able to stretch the field vertically and a team is playing coverage like Cincy did.
- I am a fan of our TE room, I like Lindenmeyer, and Haarberg/Nelson give us an added dimension. But one of the reasons we couldn't run the ball effectively IMO was we don't have that second guy like Boerkircher would have been to get in some heavy sets. HH and Nelson just can't move the pile like another Boerkircher/Markway could have, and that's why you saw Lenhardt get a snap or two. Don't be surprised if you see some shuffling there to find another big body to help.
-OL was the disappointment for me, as I thought if Cincy did what they did we would be able to drive their DL off the ball and just get 4-5 yards at ease. I do understand their NG was a dude, but that's one guy. It was also disheartening to hear during the Alabama game that the Crimson Tide "had real struggles at tackle last year, so they made some upgrades in the portal getting rid of a guy to Nebraska and bringing in more talent" considering how much we paid that guy. Further, we aren't even playing him. Evans-Jenkins had his hands full with their NG, I liked what our OGs did, but tackle I think we are in trouble until we find our 2 dudes.
-DL was disappointing to me, but I kind of knew what was going to happen. We are super small compared to last year, so Butler is having to create movement to create pressure. Last year, Ty and Nash could just eat up 3 or 4 blockers just them two, and it made it so our LBs could play free and filling the hole was super easy. Now we have guys that can't hold up the line and to get penetration we have to get them moving, so when they get pushed off their line it creates massive holes that our LBs/DBs have to try and fill. You saw some real trouble tackling because of this. Against teams like Michigan coming up, this is going to be really tough to deal with.
-Our secondary shut these guys down, that was great to see. I'm hoping guys like Van Poppel and Jeudy can play a bit more against some B1G opponents to make the reads more easy for our guys behind our front DL.
-On another note, the timeout when we had Cincy on 4th and 7 was completely ridiculous. We had them scrambling for a play, our crowd was into it, the announcer even came with "this is going to be the loudest it's been all night" while Cincy was out of ways to stop the clock, and for some reason Rhule/Butler gift them the chance to think about things and get in a different formation than what they came out in to convert the 4th down.
The next two weeks are going to give us a chance to feel much better about ourselves luckily. I'm sure our RB room will look much better against Akron and Houston Christian, our OL will move people much better, we will get behind their DBs. And our defense will make some of the plays we struggled with, and morale will be high heading into September 20th. But Michigans OL and rushing attack with a mobile QB has me VERY worried after what I saw this past weekend.
I feel like I should be ok with how the game played out due to the fact that what I thought were issues are really our only issues, but I think the fact that they looked as bad as they did (RB room and DL inexperience/size) coupled with our OL not being able to be dominant as I thought have me very worried about my over 7.5 bet. With that said, let's go glass is half full again, and the goal of week 1 is to come out with a 'W'. We found out maybe what some of our weaknesses are and what we need to get better at, so it gives us a couple weeks to get those things right heading into B1G play.
I'm a glass is half full guy, so I have to be honest that in the transfer portal era, I think a lot of teams are starting off slow just trying to figure out what they are. So we are 1-0 and we shouldn't get too nitpicky. I also believe that Cincy is going to be a pretty good team, their QB and NG gave us fits all night.
-I don't understand the people that are mad that we didn't show a downfield passing game. Cincy ran Cockeye State's 3 high safety look, so it was either checkdowns or running the ball.
-The real concern is that our OL wasn't able to open lanes for EJ to run the ball against a favorable box. Typically you audible to a run if there are 2 safeties back there, Cincy had 3 with corners over our WRs. We couldn't run very effectively. We overcame it against Cincy, will we be able to against Michigan?
-In the thread I linked, I talked about how absolutely thin our RB room is. I had healthy debates with people on why we switched Mozee to RB, and it wasn't because he's just so good he has to be there. It's because we truly don't have anyone besides EJ back there. While I don't think Ives is the answer, maybe he can give us some options once he returns 100% from his hamstring injury. But things just didn't look great, and Nelson while serviceable, is just too young and not explosive. I also made reference that EJ is a nice piece for our room, he's a good back, but he's not a gamebreaker and isn't changing games. He can do everything Holgo wants offensively with catching balls out of the backfield, but what we need is a back that makes you pay if our WRs aren't able to stretch the field vertically and a team is playing coverage like Cincy did.
- I am a fan of our TE room, I like Lindenmeyer, and Haarberg/Nelson give us an added dimension. But one of the reasons we couldn't run the ball effectively IMO was we don't have that second guy like Boerkircher would have been to get in some heavy sets. HH and Nelson just can't move the pile like another Boerkircher/Markway could have, and that's why you saw Lenhardt get a snap or two. Don't be surprised if you see some shuffling there to find another big body to help.
-OL was the disappointment for me, as I thought if Cincy did what they did we would be able to drive their DL off the ball and just get 4-5 yards at ease. I do understand their NG was a dude, but that's one guy. It was also disheartening to hear during the Alabama game that the Crimson Tide "had real struggles at tackle last year, so they made some upgrades in the portal getting rid of a guy to Nebraska and bringing in more talent" considering how much we paid that guy. Further, we aren't even playing him. Evans-Jenkins had his hands full with their NG, I liked what our OGs did, but tackle I think we are in trouble until we find our 2 dudes.
-DL was disappointing to me, but I kind of knew what was going to happen. We are super small compared to last year, so Butler is having to create movement to create pressure. Last year, Ty and Nash could just eat up 3 or 4 blockers just them two, and it made it so our LBs could play free and filling the hole was super easy. Now we have guys that can't hold up the line and to get penetration we have to get them moving, so when they get pushed off their line it creates massive holes that our LBs/DBs have to try and fill. You saw some real trouble tackling because of this. Against teams like Michigan coming up, this is going to be really tough to deal with.
-Our secondary shut these guys down, that was great to see. I'm hoping guys like Van Poppel and Jeudy can play a bit more against some B1G opponents to make the reads more easy for our guys behind our front DL.
-On another note, the timeout when we had Cincy on 4th and 7 was completely ridiculous. We had them scrambling for a play, our crowd was into it, the announcer even came with "this is going to be the loudest it's been all night" while Cincy was out of ways to stop the clock, and for some reason Rhule/Butler gift them the chance to think about things and get in a different formation than what they came out in to convert the 4th down.
The next two weeks are going to give us a chance to feel much better about ourselves luckily. I'm sure our RB room will look much better against Akron and Houston Christian, our OL will move people much better, we will get behind their DBs. And our defense will make some of the plays we struggled with, and morale will be high heading into September 20th. But Michigans OL and rushing attack with a mobile QB has me VERY worried after what I saw this past weekend.
I feel like I should be ok with how the game played out due to the fact that what I thought were issues are really our only issues, but I think the fact that they looked as bad as they did (RB room and DL inexperience/size) coupled with our OL not being able to be dominant as I thought have me very worried about my over 7.5 bet. With that said, let's go glass is half full again, and the goal of week 1 is to come out with a 'W'. We found out maybe what some of our weaknesses are and what we need to get better at, so it gives us a couple weeks to get those things right heading into B1G play.
