Good lord you about quoted me during the game, I kept yelling "he's not Braxton Miller!" with the designed runs. Brown is clearly QB2, but I still support the approach to giving both guys a chance and honestly I think it will be beneficial to have Brown get the snaps he did in case of injury. But this is Kyle's team now, hand him the keys and let's settle in with him before ND.
Only scoring 35 points against YSU with our offense is embarrassing. But the refs legit took two scores off the board, and 49-7 doesn't sound nearly as bad. We made a ton of mistakes that added up to a game that doesn't look like a blowout in the box score, but was a more commanding win if you watched it live. That said, here goes my initial thoughts:
- Burke is back, don't care about the competition this far...he is playing like he did initially.
- Our DL is utterly unimpressive. Should be a strength and yeah teams are throwing the ball quickly, but they're really not plugging running lanes or getting pressure without additional blitzers. This group better get it together quick. ND's OL will beat their ass into the ground if our DL looks like the first two games. Specifically, Sawyer really needs to step up.
- Secondary as a whole looks great so far, but Martinez just shouldn't be out there. Roll with Ransom, Styles, Proctor and Carter.
- Simmons is a problem at LT until further notice. Costly penalties, missed assignments...and my worry is that it won't get sorted out before it matters. I still think he has the talent and measurables, but I think he is a year away from playing at the level we need him to. Really my biggest fear coming to fruition.
- Henderson looked fantastic today and a lot of it was his freakish ability, but loved seeing that.
- I would've preferred Stevie Wonder over these refs, good lord it was horrible. Really too many examples to list each one on my phone, but there should be jobs lost after that one. They wiped at least two TDs off the board.
- Knowles remains firmly in the hot seat. Yeah, gave up just 7 points. But to a D2 squad and couldn't get the defense off the field to get the ball back. Gambles in the wrong situations and just the lack of situational awareness is really a problem. We have all the talent in the world, Knowles just doesn't know how to use it. I hope I'm wrong on this guy because I like him with the media and his overall mentality, but I can already feel the implosion coming like last year.
- Finishing with a positive note. We treated this game as a glorified scrimmage in the sense that we wanted to figure out our QB situation and other position battles. We play McCord all game and it's a true blowout imo. Between that and awful officiating, the score looks bad but it wasn't as bad as it would seem. I'm not thrilled at all by any means, but I would rather figure out our squad now than trying to figure it out Week 4. Kind of like figuring out your golf game on the range rather than in the round, not really sexy but it's the smart approach. I'll go with that anyways, maybe we're just in for a rough year.
