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Thoughts on 2014: Still treading water
Auburndawg
Member Posts: 362
In 2009 Sark immediately took the program from 0-12, to 4-5 in the conference, 5-7 overall. Since then the only “improvement” has been due to playing a weaker non-conference schedule. We usually beat the bad teams and usually lose to the good teams. We continued to tread water in mediocreville this year.
I thought Petersen would bring immediate improvement. Why didn’t that happen? Let’s look at our 5 losses.
Oregon is what it is. We weren’t ready this year to win in Eugene
The defense let us down against UCLA, but that night Kikaha was hurt, Shaq was playing offense, and we had just lost Peters and the defensive backfield was a mess. I would love to play UCLA again now.
The defense shut down Stanford, ASU, and Arizona, but the offense scored one TD against Stanford, one FG against ASU, and their mistakes completely cost us the game against Zona.
Bottom line: the offense definitely cost us three games. The defense was excellent almost every game. In this era of high scoring, our D held 9 of 13 opponents under 25 points (and we should’ve held Arizona to under 20).
Why did the offense struggle? It was clearly a combination of two things:
Bad QB play:
Miles has certainly improved, but his inability to throw on timing cost us a lot and made us one dimensional in some of our losses. And when Miles was out, Lindquist and Williams completely failed to move the team.
Mediocre Oline play:
The Oline was dominated by Stanford and ASU, and they were never the dominant force I thought they would be, given the depth and experience we had.
What caused these problems? Now we get into speculation:
Bad Oline recruiting. Hatchie is our only 4 star linemen. Tanigawa, Atoe, and Shelton were all 2 stars
Oline injuries and changes. Riva was out the whole year. Charles was hurt a lot. And the Tanigawa/Criste shuffle at center was not helpful.
Miles missed Spring practice. That had to set back his development
Miles missed two games. Playing against Hawaii would have given him another game to develop. And would we have beaten ASU if he had played?
Bad player development by Sark. Why wasn’t Miles more developed? Why weren’t our linemen better?
Bad coaching/play calling by Petersen/Smith. Clearly the coaches struggled to find an identity for this offense. The play calling was highly questionable at times. Execution was often sloppy; too many fumbles, too many penalties.
We all feel good now because we beat the Beavs and Cougs, (and no blow outs or 3 game losing streaks) but 4-5 is nothing to celebrate. Given how well coached the defense was, how much improvement we saw, and how hard the team played, I lean towards trusting Petersen, and blaming Sark for this year’s mediocrity. I still think Petersen is going to be the next great Husky coach, but there were enough coaching issues this year to create uncertainty. We are just going to have to be patient
Next year we lose 6 starters on defense, and 5 of our top 8 Olinemen. We are probably going to be too young to see a big breakthrough. One more year treading water is likely; but after that there must be a big leap forward.
I thought Petersen would bring immediate improvement. Why didn’t that happen? Let’s look at our 5 losses.
Oregon is what it is. We weren’t ready this year to win in Eugene
The defense let us down against UCLA, but that night Kikaha was hurt, Shaq was playing offense, and we had just lost Peters and the defensive backfield was a mess. I would love to play UCLA again now.
The defense shut down Stanford, ASU, and Arizona, but the offense scored one TD against Stanford, one FG against ASU, and their mistakes completely cost us the game against Zona.
Bottom line: the offense definitely cost us three games. The defense was excellent almost every game. In this era of high scoring, our D held 9 of 13 opponents under 25 points (and we should’ve held Arizona to under 20).
Why did the offense struggle? It was clearly a combination of two things:
Bad QB play:
Miles has certainly improved, but his inability to throw on timing cost us a lot and made us one dimensional in some of our losses. And when Miles was out, Lindquist and Williams completely failed to move the team.
Mediocre Oline play:
The Oline was dominated by Stanford and ASU, and they were never the dominant force I thought they would be, given the depth and experience we had.
What caused these problems? Now we get into speculation:
Bad Oline recruiting. Hatchie is our only 4 star linemen. Tanigawa, Atoe, and Shelton were all 2 stars
Oline injuries and changes. Riva was out the whole year. Charles was hurt a lot. And the Tanigawa/Criste shuffle at center was not helpful.
Miles missed Spring practice. That had to set back his development
Miles missed two games. Playing against Hawaii would have given him another game to develop. And would we have beaten ASU if he had played?
Bad player development by Sark. Why wasn’t Miles more developed? Why weren’t our linemen better?
Bad coaching/play calling by Petersen/Smith. Clearly the coaches struggled to find an identity for this offense. The play calling was highly questionable at times. Execution was often sloppy; too many fumbles, too many penalties.
We all feel good now because we beat the Beavs and Cougs, (and no blow outs or 3 game losing streaks) but 4-5 is nothing to celebrate. Given how well coached the defense was, how much improvement we saw, and how hard the team played, I lean towards trusting Petersen, and blaming Sark for this year’s mediocrity. I still think Petersen is going to be the next great Husky coach, but there were enough coaching issues this year to create uncertainty. We are just going to have to be patient
Next year we lose 6 starters on defense, and 5 of our top 8 Olinemen. We are probably going to be too young to see a big breakthrough. One more year treading water is likely; but after that there must be a big leap forward.
Comments
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Yup.
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So you're saying The Football Team Doesn't Suck?
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So you're saying 2016 is going to be special?
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STAY!
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Pretty good post Aubbie. I mostly agree with it.
Positives: The team played in a lot of close games and was competitive in every game but two. The team improved the last 3 weeks of the season. Player development looks to be pretty good. Every single starting DL made big strides. The secondary was much better than expected after the Eastern game. Even the offense was much better the 2nd half of the season.
Negatives: 8-5 with this schedule is bad. 1-3 at home in conference is unacceptable. This is hopefully the last time Petersen loses 3 games at home in a season. We didn't make winning plays in the close games.
The season was pretty blah. It was truly a transition year. The transition was rockier than I expected. The coaches fucked up because of unfamiliarity with the players, and the players didn't always play to their best ability. There was a lot of thinking going on during games, not just from Miles. With time, that will certainly get better.
On the whole, I like what Petersen is doing. Recruiting the lines, emphasizing fundamentals. I have no doubt we will have solid teams under his watch. I'm still unsold if we will be great under him. We will find out in time. I do agree that 2016 is THE year of judgment, but I don't think we will be as bad next year as I initially thought. Young lines will probably hold us back from truly contending, but I think we will be better this year. -
Doesn't Sark then get the credit for your NFL D-Line?
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Most of it goes to Petersen and the new coaches. Shelton was the most improved player on the team. He went from pretty good run stuffer to dominant DT. Kikaha went from good to great as well. Andrew Hudson went from non existent to very good. I even thought Evan Hudson got better.dtd said:Doesn't Sark then get the credit for your NFL D-Line?
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Kikaha had 13 sacks last year and Shelton was a clear high level NFL talent.RoadDawg55 said:
Most of it goes to Petersen and the new coaches. Shelton was the most improved player on the team. He went from pretty good run stuffer to dominant DT. Kikaha went from good to great as well. Andrew Hudson went from non existent to very good. I even thought Evan Hudson got better.dtd said:Doesn't Sark then get the credit for your NFL D-Line?
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Sark recruited some great players, no doubt. But where are the 3 and 4 star Olinemen? Why did we have to play freshmen DBs? Where are the DBs from the classes of 2011, 2012, and 2013?
