1st of all very nice thread. Majority of posts are well thought out and football-intelligent.
My thoughts:
1. From a brief sample of the BW Game and the Idaho game, I said after week #1 that I thought Slade was our 4th-best RB but he was starting. That is not necessarily a knock on Slade, but more a compliment to the others. I feel at this stage our RB rotation should be JB #1 and getting a good 40-50% of the snaps, Cain #2 and getting 30-40% of the snaps, and Ford #3 getting the remainder of the snaps. I do not believe you can successfully use 4 RBs, so I'd go with those 3 and if Slade does not like it and wants to go into the transfer portal, then so be it. This is big boy D1 football and you play to win, not to be fair. In a 4-horse race you have to have a #1, and #2, a #3 and unfortunately a #4.
2. I believe Rahne needs to be squarely on the hot seat. There are just too many dynamic offenses in college football with young and dynamic coaches for us to be floundering around .... with this much talent. You look at our Offensive "skill position" players and it's nothing but big time 4/5* recruits, with tons of speed. Yet we can not get these guys off the line of scrimmage, we can not get them in open space, and we can not exploit their game breaking speed. Watch some of these dynamic offenses and they are getting their play-makers in space. We can not figure this out ?????
3. The hot seat needs to extend over to Limegrover. Here we go again... the annual broken record .... "struggling Offensive Line". I was very patient with the OL rebuild. Just in 2014 we were playing with 2 converted DTs (Gaia & Dowry) because we did not have the bodies on the OL. That was 2014. It's now 2019. We've recruited OL well the last 4-5 years and our OL cupboard is stocked with 4* recruits. I'll pose a challenge question...... name me 1 OL in the last 4 years (I believe this is Limegrover's 4th year) that Limegrover has developed and who has shown marked improvement under Limegrover's coaching. Guys like Bates, Gonzalez, Fries, McGovern came in as highly touted prospects and they stagnated under Limegrover. None of them "improved". And now I see the same stagnation with Menet. he was a 5* guy and should have the physical ability to be mentioned as an All-B1G Center, yet he is stagnating now and can not even block a DT lined up right on his nose.
4. Do we allow our practice squad to stunt in practice??? I am being dead serious. It's been 4 years now and we still can not pick up the simplest most basic high school level stunt by a DL. If you want pressure on the PSU QB, all you need to do is run a simple stunt of looping your DE and DT and I'll guarantee that at least one of them will run un-touched into our QB while our OL either block no one or they block the same guy. I am not talking sophisticated stunts, I am talking about basic "stunt 101" stuff. Yet game after game, year after year ... our OL are dazed and confused by these things. And do they know that they actually can touch a LB who is coming on a delayed blitz?? ......... Again, I am not being sarcastic, I am being 100% serious when I ask "Do we allow our practice squad to stunt and blitz during practices because our OL seem like they never see these things.
> Bottom line is that this Offensive Staff needs to be put on notice. I'll give Parker a little benefit of doubt because he is new and he is trying to erase the damages done by Corley. But even he needs to be under close watch. Things like simply getting off the line of scrimmage or creating separation are drastically lacking from our receivers. I get building confidence back can be tricky because it's "mental". But getting off the line of scrimmage or creating separation are 100% physical things and we struggle with those now.
