2020 Schedule

KrunkJuice said:

PS - The playoff locations next year are the Rose Bowl and Sugar Bowl. If Skinny comes back we will be playing in the Rose Bowl.

Any talk of Eason coming back is crazy. Every quarterback regresses the longer they're in this offense. He'd have absolutely nothing to gain.

It's hard to predict next season when I'm the idiot who thought the team was going to be good this year. Why?

1.) Eason's arm would allow for a complete NFL playbook, unclog the box, and open running lanes.

...Big gap between reason 1 and every other reason...

2.) The offensive line would return five starters, with two of them earning prior all-conference honors and another being Kirkland, who looked like a fucking stud in the making last year.

3.) [Retard Alert] Receivers would come off redshirts and push the seniors, with an improved outcome either way.

4.) [Retard Alert] The defense would be even better than the previous year, for the reason listed below:

5.) Player development/reloading. The biggest improvement from players more often than not comes between their first year of playing time and the second. You see flashes of something their first year, then they come out the following season with a better understanding of what they're doing and play faster and with more confidence. They're also just stronger and better conditioned. Think redshirt-sophomore Victor, sophomore Adams, Center, Vita Virta, Gaines, Sydney Jones, etc. Some positions take longer on average for a player to get "fully there," but there's almost always a big jump in one offseason, and that jump usually happens pretty early in the career and usually coincides with some actual game action to condition their brain/body.

Losing eight or nine defensive starters or not, I thought this would be that year for a number of players. Who wasn't excited about Tryon's trajectory at the end of last season? Or Keith Taylor, who was a fucking animal in limited action in the rover position late in the season? Or Molden getting full starter minutes? Who didn't have a sweatpants boner for Tuli and Taki plugging up the middle, fresh off of a year of Socha's rhino cum program? With Onwuzurike next to them, one-gapping and embarrassing o-linemen like he was at the end of last season? I know @Doog_de_Jour had a sweatpants boner, ammirite, Pup? Linebacker was the only position I was really worried about, but Wellington looked really good in relief of BBK last year at the end of the season, and there'd be like a half dozen young four-stars to choose from to play next to him, plus the move of Ngata inside was intriguing.

Even on offense, who wasn't expecting exactly what we've been seeing out of Otton and Bryant? Who didn't think the young receivers wouldn't provide a sizeable bump, especially with Eason throwing to them? The only area where I thought we'd see a painful drop would be losing Gaskin, because it's just hard to replicate what that guy brought to the offense in the clutch.

6.) The schedule couldn't have been more favorable from a home/away standpoint. I had Stanford pegged as the only sure loss, but that's when I expected Stanford to be actually good. How this season has played out--for a number of teams in this conference--just doesn't make sense to me.

Enough with the reasons; this season has shaken some fundamental beliefs I had about this program. I thought 2019 was a near-sure return trip to the conference championship game because I thought Eason would more than compensate for the loss of Gaskin and the defense would be fine because trust the coaches--"this staff is one of the best in the country at evaluating and developing talent, and this strength and conditioning program is the best in the country, and that mustachioed prolapsed anus to the south can eat a dick with his rubberband curls."

This season tells me those beliefs were wrong. The "amazing S&C program" being the most obvious and laughable, as this is clearly a team that's only good for about two and a half quarters, and Douchestache is laughing his way to a conference championship. As for being master developers, the offensive line is no better than they were, the receivers are just as shitty only now suddenly can't even catch either, the linebackers are the worst position group on any team in the conference, and the secondary is a mess. I thought Tryon would be all-conference, but he spent the first half of the season looking like he had no idea what he was doing. Onwuzurike went like four games before I even heard his name. Wellington... no comment. Keith Taylor became a double amputee who can't tackle. Molden is at best a wash with where he was last year. McKinney can't even get on the field over a couple of skinny freshmen. And what the fuck happened to Hampton being this giant lockdown corner who's impossible to complete a pass against?

Eason's been exactly as advertised, and yet there are only three players on the whole fucking team who actually look like they improved in the offseason, and that's Dick Newton RIP, Myles Bryant, and Ryan Bowman. And that's how you get to 5-4.


So next year? Fuck it, I don't know. Zero confidence at this point. Goodbye Skinny, hello random quarterback lottery. Hello redshirt freshman linebackers, but I no longer have any faith in the staff's ability to have them ready. I used to think the one thing you could count on was the steadiness of the program under Petersen, but this year broke that. I'm not confident in a great season next year at all. LIPO.