Grading the Game - Oregon State

At some point, they needed to be able to make plays in the passing game and largely were not able to. They played poorly and deserved to lose. This team can’t win by just running the ball, not with their defense.

Putting Price in was bizarre and spoke to desperation. That didn’t make any sense.

If you want to win, you need guys to step up and make a butt-load of winning plays. Heady plays, effort plays, athletic plays. And we’re not getting any. The lack was from all over the roster. Young guys, old guys, offense, defense, special teams. Nobody making plays. It’s like they’re just going through the motions, like joyless automatons.

They look whipped.

Sounds like the whole team is frustrated. A very difficult time. Sooner or later, this moment was going to show up. We will learn a lot about our young coach in the next few months.

but almost no key plays, game changers. There were a number of chances, and seemingly no success, except maybe Price on 4th and 10. I am getting so I dread third down. We never seem to come up with they play.

Inconsistant play, three steps back at times, weird losses, all are part of a rebuild. The Dawgs are not very good right now, and what you describe is part of the territory. We could clean house coach wise, get a new staff, replace the head coach, what ever, and next year will likely be similar.

I think you hit it on the head here John on the unwillingness to commit to the run. I don’t know if it’s impatience, lack of experience, or he’s just to quick to fall in love with the passing game, but Sark’s play calling in these situations is hurting us.

I go back (again) to what was promised at the end of last year and off-season: A tough, pounding run-dominated offensive philosophy. We just haven’t seen enough of that. There’s a lot to complain about from this game, including the D and the emotional intensity of the team, but I’ve come full circle to the point of thinking we need a full-time OC, and that Sark needs to be a full-time Head Coach.

We have OSU on their own one yard line and we put a four man defensive front to stop them? What is Holt thinking?

After this extremely disappointing season, which will probably end at 6 & 6 (which should have been 8 & 4), Holt needs to be jettisoned and a new, hard-charging up-and-comer DC hired immediately. In addition, a clinical sports psychologist/therapist must be brought on-board to repair this team’s badly damaged psyche’. It’s begining to resemble Tyrone B. Horn-eye 2.0.

BTW: I believe the defensive secondary really misses Adam Long. During the second half of last season, he was a real factor in pass coverage and overall defense. Anyone else agree?

Hopefully this is a wakeup call.

1) Grading for this game is Perfect…. 2) This game provided seemingly “endless” lessons to learn from…. 3) I’m “Positive” that this was the ugliest,frustrating loss of this new “era” of Sarks career!

You know, when I think about it, Sark & Holt seem to still think they are coaching all the major-studs at USC (many recruited unethicaly, if not totaly against NCAA rules). So what this means is that our coaches are just not realistic, and are being far to stubborn/stupid about it.

Let me first say that everyone is to blame in this loss, players and coaches. You said it was not the players? How the eff is a coach suppose to to make an open field tackle? Everyone says that you can call out players, well too bad. Johny Timu cannot tackle! He is terrible. The only player on our defense who can tackle is Parker. Cort Dennison is like the University of Washington’s make a wish foundation feel good story of the year. All you hear is he plays with good effort, blah blah blah. Who cares about effort I care about RESULTS!! He along with the other linebackers are not getting it done at all. Watch the game again and pay attention to all the linebackers, not just the outside ones. Dennison is just as bad. As much credit as he gets for putting the huskies into position he has to take the blame because he must be the worst player ever in making adjustments at the line. We are out of position on every play. Yes this is Holts fault as well!

Not saying sark get a good job yesterday because clearly he did not. But to say that if we run the ball more we would win is not true. If you watch the game the reason why we were running the ball so well early was because the left side of the ball was getting a strong push. We did not have success running the ball to the right side. When our LG went out and Wood came in we lost that push. Sark had to adjust because our line could not open holes any longer. Watch the game and you see the shift in game plan soon after the injury. Instead of those 7-8 yard runs we were getting 1-3 yard runs. Sark could not stick to that because we needed points as our defense could not stop OSU. I think he was forced to go away from the run due to injury. Look at the first possession. We did exactly what you wanted.

Sorry this is all over the place but I am just pissed off right now and hung over.

Sure, Holt hasn’t impressed me at all this year but last year he had the defense clicking by the end of the year. Losing a couple of our guys on defense last year might have actually hurt us a lot more than expected (Mason Foster!).

Do we really have the talent on the defensive side of the ball to match up with Pac12 teams? It seems like I’ve been disappointed at everybody on defense this year (besides Dennison). The only player on our defense who seems to be pulling his weight is an under-talented hard worker. I’m not trying to defend Holt with this but do we really have the talent, size, strength and experience to stack up against a competitive/competent offense?

I’m with you guys that Holt has pissed me off but if I’m in his shoes I don’t know what I do to make this defense better. When your D-line can’t rush the passer, shed blocks or generate enough push its gonna cause problems. When your linebackers can’t tackle, get sacks on blitzs and look lost in coverage its gonna cause problems. When your secondary is retards its also gonna cause problems.

Some of the guys have played well for a game or two but nobody has really been consistently making plays you’d expect a defense to make to keep you in games.

“I’m not trying to defend Holt with this but do we really have the talent, size, strength and experience to stack up against a competitive/competent offense?” – How does apply to yesterday, when we made one of the worst offenses of all of D1 look so very good?

Fire Holt! (when his contract is finished)

Mr. Berkowitz I agree with you on some points but it still comes down to defense the numbers are not great and the team will lose about 4 to 6 on defense next year then what will the excuse be we are still young some thing has to change.

I would like to get your thoughts on Duane Akina I would hope Sark would give him a call I think he would help stabilize the defense.

I don’t want rile up the Mora for head coach group of husky fans because I have complete faith in Sark but I think that Mora would be a good fit as our D Cord. He fits the pro style coaching that Sark likes to run a program, bleeds purple and gold, Sark seems to enjoy Mora. He would bring a lot with him as well as a whole new pool of position coaches as Mora has a lot of contacts as he has coached at a lot of places.

I think the UW D Cord position is a very good job with Sark as a HC. He allows the D Cord to basically act as the head coach of the defense which should allow us to get a big name if we want. We also will pay whatever it takes so that will not be the problem.

I don’t know if Mora is the solution but he would be a good person to look at if Holt is sent packing. Also think Sark would look to Ken Norton JR and Rocko Seto again to gage their interest.

We need a coach who players want to come and play for. It obvious to me that recruits want to come and play for sark and his offense but not sure if they want to play for Holt and our defense.

Jamora was pretty darn good. Shirley is too small for DE. He needs to be moved to LB. Timu just can’t tackle, nothing but arm grabs with his head looking down. Couldn’t Fuiamuano bump the receiver (Wheaton) when he started his crossing pattern over the middle? It seemed they were both within 5 yards of the line of scrimmage. Now we know how USC felt 2 years ago losing to us.

If Holt gets fired, highly unlikely, the defense next year may improve marginally. There are some good young players who will be a year older, stronger and smarter. There will still not be enough good playmaker types for massive improvement. As has been demonstrated this year, the Dawgs cannot depend on the incoming freshmen on defense. With the possible exception of a very athletic corner, freshmen are not ready.
If Holt stays, highly likely, the defense will improve marginally, for the same reasons. No matter who the coach is, we are still a year, maybe two, from having an upper division defense. In spite of what many of you think, you win with players, playmaking ones. We are still a ways from having enough playmakers where they are most needed.
My prediction is that those of you who are crying for Holts hide will still be crying at this time next year. Only there will be more of you than there are now because we still will not be a top flight unit.
I wish it were not so, but I have done enough coaching to know.

For those of you who thought this team was totally capable of winning more than eight games this year: You were always going to be wrong. This was an 8-4 win capped team if everything shook out well, and a team that wouldn’t go bowling if it didn’t shake out well. We had to replace key players on defense, which has hurt a lot more than Locker leaving.

My top end expectation was 8-4, with a personal low end at 6-6 when I discuss reasonable expectations. I expected several terrible blowouts. Some here overestimated this team wildly.

I’m so sick of this excuse, I’ve heard it for 4 weeks now. The excuse all started with Sark and if it were true, clearly a few more tackles or blocks would have been made. Maybe a few more OSU defenders would have wound up on their butts, maybe we would have caught a few more receptions. In my book the team appears to lack confidence, nobody is attacking, there are no swarms of purple around the ball, there is no push from the offensive line, there are no blocks made downfield by receivers. It’s almost as if someone has convinced them that talent alone makes them good. I’m sick of the missed tackles and dropped balls. The lack of pressure on the oposing QB and too much pressure on ours. We are supposed to be improving not digressing. What scares me the most is Sark clearly had no answer during his post game interview. You better find one. Get your head screwed on before you can expect that from your kids. They will always follow your example and it’s time to lead. Quit with the excuses. I heard enough of those from The Tyrone era.