Grading the Game

Offensively there is no identity. Are we a one back team, shotgun spread team, speard read team, 2 back team…what is the identity. Without a clear vision, you get these nonsense formations and a lot of bells and whistles with no clear focus. This offense has no continuity.

Defensively, we are bend but dont break. that leads to 5-6 win seasons. our offense isnt good enough to carry the load. 3rd and long and we dont bring any pressure is terrible game planning. If we had a monster DE who could get it done on his own, then fine, I get the idea, but we dont. WR’s of that caliber will get open if given that amount of time. The QB cannot have that kind of time to let the WR’s get to 15-20 yds. Either way, I tired of watching these UW defenses give up big play after big play. Where were all the athletes!?

I don’t recall him missing a single throw the whole game. They weren’t all perfect but every ball he threw was catchable. As for the defense, a lot of our experienced players kept getting themselves knocked out of the game and Shirley was absolutely BLOWN UP on kickoff coverage. Ducre definitely struggled filling in at the other corner and the young linebackers were out of position often. The defense will fare a lot better against running teams and with the return of Richardson but what concerns me the most is the atrocious play of the offensive line and the fact that Hawaii is a significantly better passing team than Eastern. Fortunately for us Hawaii is coming across the Pacific a week after playing Colorado on their turf and they have to play at 12:30PM here. Hopefully they’ll forget to wake up in the morning because their passing attack will shred us if we’re out of position this badly.

Anyone remember any that penetrated the Eastern line? Any tackles or hits that would make you go ewww? Shouldn’t Meda be going through blockers and not around them? Its a head scratcher.

He was last seen getting manhandled by offensive linemen much smaller than him. Word on the street is that he might show up in Husky Stadium next week. That is an unconfirmed report.

At what point to you just say Nick Holt is not getting the job done. This defense is only slightly better than when he took over and they were pathetic.

Price has a slower, lower delivery than Tebow… yikes. He was poised, but seemed to lock on to his first read about 90% of the time and doesn’t have nearly the get away that Jake did from a sack (does anyone not think Jake was incredible now?).

The o-line was heinous… Kohler was atrocious.

Receivers were okay, but the problem I have is that our best receiver is not as good as their best receiver. Worrisome.

Our kicking game on special teams… why can’t we get the ball into the end zone regularly? We give up 10 yards most of the time (they start on their own 30 too often).

Defense was really, really, really, really scary. I think we’re screwed when we play Stanford, Oregon, USC and probably Cal and Utah too. Trufant was clownstomped by #1. if I was coaching EWU I’d have simply thrown every single pass towards Trufant and they would have won the game.

Overall, I think our play selection was decent to warm up Price, but after the first 8 minutes of the first quarter I thought our play calling wasn’t good enough.

Final analysis: We are in for a long year.

That it seemed like Sark had little confidence in having Keith send the ball down field, except for that one route to Kevin Smith which he should have caught for a TD. The rest of the intermediate passes were all dropped by our supposed deep receiving unit. I hope he takes the training wheels off next week and makes ASJ and Hartvigson a little more involved. If anything, he should be passing to them as a safety blanket.

FCS teams can often either beat or give a good game to more than a few FBS teams every year. Remember V. Tech last year? It happens, and we were facing the very best that the FCS has to offer. The fact that it was a game was not all that shocking.

Does it absolve them of their poor performance? No. But neither is this a signal that this team is doomed. We have seen this sort of stuff before. Worse FCS teams win games against better modern teams, and superior FCS teams such as eastern would do competently well in the lower rungs of the FBS.

Grade for the game? F. But I’m not going to overreact and suddenly declare the season olver and this a team destined to not go to a bowl and to eat the feces of other teams all year long.

Maybe that is a good thing but if I were to try to find footage of the game what is the best spot to find it?

Our kicking game on special teams… why can’t we get the ball into the end zone regularly? We give up 10 yards most of the time (they start on their own 30 too often).

I recall a couple kickoffs well into the end zone, and considering we only kick off after a score, I think that is pretty good of Folk since he scored 3 times on a school record 53 yarder, then a 47 yarder, then a 40 yarder! You kick a 53 yard field goal then 30 seconds later have to kick off, I’d say he did just fine.

Rasp also did great, 5 punts (too many) for a 47 yard average with a long of 55.

its that the pac 12 overall looked fairly weak. oregon lost yet another marquee non conference game, usc squeaked by minnesota at home, ucla lost at houston, colorado wasn’t really competitive against hawaii, wsu lost tuel for the year, and oregon state embarrassed themselves against an fcs opponent. the only team that really beat expectations was cal soundly beating fresno state, but cal typically starts strong and fresno hasn’t been quite as good the past few seasons. a lot of other fans around the conference are feeling the same way as us

I do think we match up against Nebraska better than EWU or Hawaii. Watching the highlights from their win last night, they obviously like to run the ball with Martinez and I do believe that a solid run defense is going to be one of our lone strengths. Please, lets just get past Hawaii first with a W but I am optimistic about that match up.

(God this post may come back to haunt me…….)

Well that wasn’t much fun to watch, was it? I usually scare my family out of the room during most UW football broadcasts, but this was brutal. In a rip-off of the Ted Miller and ESPN approach to each team’s season prospects, I’ll offer up two possible, brief, and general explanations of what happened at Husky Stadium against the Eagles.

Best Case: Eastern is a really good and experienced team. 2010 FCS National Champions, and ranked #1 coming in to this year, they played with confidence, and played inspired football. Their skill players are in fact quite good, and the team overall played above their heads. During the course of the rest of this year, we will see them continue to win, and dominate Division 1-AA opponents. They would have beat Oregon at Autzen yesterday.

UW, on the other hand, did not get up for this game, and came out over-confident, with little emotion. Believing in a relatively easy victory, and wanting to give the team this opportunity to develop chemistry, the coaches kept the game plan simple on both sides of the ball, with conservative play calling and defensive schemes. By the time players and coaches realized they were in a real game, it was too late, and neither was able to rally their bodies and minds to overcome the Eagle’s confidence and skill. The much-improved play of the special teams, and turnovers at key points in the game helped the Dawgs pull this one out.

Worst Case: Despite the stated strategy to return to a power running game, and tough defense, Sark keeps returning to slinging the ball around and relying on the passing game. He is unable to conceive and implement a coherent offensive strategy based on the opponent. This last point goes double for Holt – except he doesn’t have the excuse of being distracted by head-coaching duties. He is overrated as a DC, having succeeded at USC only because of NFL-level talent, and Pete Carroll’s behind-the-scenes control of the defensive strategy. Holt’s fiery persona and intensity are nothing more than a mask for his incompetence. Both Sark and Holt cannot make adjustments on the fly, and continually react to game situations instead of developing and adjusting game plans in any innovative way. They couldn’t out-maneuver my son’s Middle School team.

As for the players, the OL and DL are over-sold. With few exceptions, they’re just not that big, strong, and fast. Polk is our only skill player we can rely on, with Price playing adequately for his experience level. The receiving corps are just OK – nothing special. On defense, with the exception of Dennison, our LB’s are inexperienced, with little speed, and consistently out of position. The defensive backfield continues to be over-matched, unable to play strong, physical man coverage.

Special teams, even in the worst case, showed good development, and helped save this game through Folk’s accuracy, punt coverage turnovers, and decent return yardage.

So which is it? As is often the case, I think it’s a mix of both. As much as my heart wants to believe more in the best-case scenario, my head tells me what happened yesterday is closer to the worst case. I give Eastern credit – I think they’re a good team, and will likely be a contender again for the FCS National Championship. I also think UW has the talent level, properly employed, to compete at the National level with most FBS teams. I fear our OL is not as strong as I hoped, and I’ll leave the jury out on the DL. In my opinion, the success or failure of those two groups will drive the performance of the team this year, subject to strategy. Our RB’s are solid, Price looked fine, and I think the pass-catching will get there. As for the LB’s and DB’s, I believe and hope it’s the coaching, and not the talent that had them appear over-matched against Eastern. Lastly, I like what I saw on special teams yesterday – definitely improved play across the board.

I lay most of the blame on the coaches. On offense, I was looking for a pounding running game, with a few screens, throws to the tight-end, and an occasional shot down field. Isn’t that consistent with the strategy we’ve been hearing all off-season? We should have been able to wear down Eastern’s front line, and control the tempo and clock. There was too much passing yesterday, when a run was the right call. I still believe in Sark as the HC, but he absolutely must give up the OC duty.

On Defense, I just can’t believe what I saw yesterday. Eastern’s spread offense is more of a run-and-shoot strategy, based mostly on timing. We never made an effective effort to disrupt the timing, either through well-conceived blitz packages, or jamming the receivers at the line of scrimmage. Our corners gave far too much cushion to their WR’s. Watching the TV at the start of each play coming down the stretch, my head was about to explode seeing us line up 10+ yard off the wide-outs. The same goes for a 3-man rush on 3rd and 26. Disrupt the timing – adjust the strategy! Take a chance with the talent you have.

I’ve always been suspect of Holt’s ability. Most people who carry themselves like he does are compensating for a lack of knowledge and skill. Over the last two years, his defensive schemes and rationalizations supported my suspicion. I wanted to believe I was wrong after the Holiday Bowl last year. I think he’s clearly over-paid, and has to go. Unfortunately, he’s going to be here at least through the remainder of this season. Are there any 2012 HC openings in Idaho for a raging, bald defensive tough guy?

- Nick Holt should be fined $100,000 every time a team can pass for over 400 yards against us.

- The EWU Eagles have a solid program, and a very good team. They came to play, and they played very well.

- We did not lose. This is the best that I can say about the dissaster I watched yesterday. And now, it is time to move on…….

Field goals of 53, 47, and 40 yards. That’s the way to start a season off hot.

I was pumped up during the preseason. Then the early games really got me jacked up. U$C ( or is it USB) limped past MN at home. ND looked like Irish Mickey was playing, Michagan not much better. UCLA had a pulse in the second half, but no defense. These teams weren’t ready…..UW would look great.

Then EW kicked off and we soon learned that the teams ready to play were EW, LSU, and Boise State. Hopefully we suffered from playing a veteran team with a bunch of extra playoff games the prior year. We need to sharpen up and remove the vanilla plays this week. We didn’t see the smash mouth yesterday, I hope we see it next week

years ago I sat in Husky stadium and watched Arizons State pass the ball for about about 500 yards against UW. It could have been more had they wanted to run up the score. The following week Don James and Jim Limbright created the “attack defense”and a new era was born. They made a decision to rush the quarterback and play the wide recievers one on one. They decided that their defense was not going to sit back, play soft and let some guy throw the ball all over the field on them. They decided that the quarterback was going to pay a price for his completions, and they did. Just ask Sark about that. It appears that UW has gone back to the pass defense they used againt ASU years ago. A big mistake in my opinion. Perhaps Nick Holt should call Jim Lambright.

We all hate to use this excuse, year after year, but it’s still true. And young teams generally have ragged starts.

It’s almost impossible (or at least highly imprudent) to try to duplicate game intensity and exhaustion levels in a practice environment. Coaches can yell and scream and throw things around all they want, but there’s still no substitute for actual game film as a teaching tool. And this EWU film should be worth its weight in solid gold.

Once you’re been in a game, and seen yourself wandering around aimlessly on the film, giving up plays and hurting your team, you come out the other side as a different, and presumably far more coachable player. Nothing focuses the mind nearly so well as the fear of failure.

the ball looks bigger in Keith’s hand than it looks in Grinold’s hands in that Need It Sold ad

I hope we look better in the future. If we play like that against other teams the rest of the season it is gonna be ugly.

I think we can all agree on that.