Thoughts on 2014: Still treading water

dtd said:

RoadDawg55 said:

dtd said:

Doesn't Sark then get the credit for your NFL D-Line?

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.

Kikaha had 13 sacks last year and Shelton was a clear high level NFL talent.

Did you watch the games this season? Kikaha has 18 sacks this year. Shelton is playing at an entirely different level than last season. 9 sacks compared to 2.5 in his career before this year. Both (especially Shelton) are playing way better than last year.

The bad coaching and play calling I find comical at times.

In September, it was that our DC was an idiot and clearly over his head. Why didn't Petersen make room for Wilcox who was previously on his staff in Boise?

In October, it was that Smith was an idiot and in way over his head as a play caller. Why didn't Petersen spend more money to go get someone that actually had called plays in the conference before.

Most glossed over that in September we were playing how many true freshman in the secondary? Most glossed over that the coaches were using the early season games to try to figure out what the young kids could and couldn't do. And most importantly, the young players were broken down in those games such that they had no choice but to listen and be coached up.

In the preseason games, there was nothing that we were going to learn about the offense until we started to play conference games. We learned that Miles had significant limitations as a passer in the PAC and that missing the Spring really hurt him. We learned that we had an OL that had probably maxed out on most of their abilities (although they did get a little better the 2nd half of the year). We learned that we had RBs that during the early part of the season weren't ready for prime time with nobody ready to take over the job (very similar to what we had at the start of the 2012 season after losing Polk). We learned that Kasen wasn't fully recovered from his leg injury, Ross was limited as a WR to only a few routes, Mickens was who we all knew he was, and that outside of that our WR group was beyond pedestrian. The offense was so strong that we went through a 3-4 game stretch where we moved Shaq to RB to not only spark the offense (notice that the OL started to play better after that happened - I tend to think it is because they started believing in who was carrying the ball and that their efforts would be rewarded). We finally started to figure out what Miles could do well and all of the things that he couldn't do well.

In the end, if you look at this season as a collection of what it was, in all honesty, this is a flawed team that was more or less a .500 team in the conference. Calling out the coaching only magnifies that more was possible with little growth in areas. The easiest place to point was the coaching ... but it's misguided on what reality really was:

1) Everybody cites the fake punt call against Stanford as a play that cost us the game. There's no guarantee that had we punted there that we would have won the game. The limitations that we had on offense early in the season were magnified in that game. Certainly, that call didn't help our chances. But at the same time, you don't call that play unless you trust your defense ... and the defense proceeded to give up a long drive for a TD.

2) Miles had a concussion and missed a week of practice against ASU. A little better offensive execution would have won that game. But on the other hand, one of the benefits of Miles not playing that game (regardless of him being cleared after missing a week of practice) was that it showed to him that he wasn't guaranteed anything as the starter and that IF his performance didn't improve he was subject to being removed as a starter. The before/after play by him was night and day different.

3) The laundry list of execution mistakes that were made in the Arizona game goes way beyond Chartgate. As has been documented by many on here, the number of similar/comparable situations where coaches run the football in the exact same situations is almost universal. And even if the play wasn't the right one, the onus is on Cooper not to fumble the football there. The fumbles that Miles made in that game were 100% avoidable. The snap on the extra point is 100% avoidable. You can rail on coaching all you want, but the players still have to execute. To me, one of the hallmark of Sark coached teams are that when the going gets tough, the number of people that make plays in adverse situations isn't a large number. Talk about all the culture changes that you want, but that's one of the biggest that needs to be moved through the program.