Tequilla
Active poster
The revisionist history to me screams of anchoring to prior thoughts and opinions ...
There's no doubt that we lost a lot after last season ...
We THOUGHT that there were suitable players waiting in the wings to take over for them.
It's easy to perform a backup over limited opportunity ... much harder to perform when the lights are shining on you and you have to perform on a consistent basis.
We knew Sankey was a huge loss. We expected that between Coleman and Washington one of them would step up as the "next man up" just like Sankey did when Polk left. Neither of them has stepped up to embrace the opportunity and instead the RBs that we have are proving that more than anything else that they are JAG with the possible exception of Cooper who I'm not sure is trusted in a full workload week in and week out.
While ASJ wasn't a huge factor in the passing game last year, his run blocking ability was a concern in replacing. Perkins being in and out of the lineup has hurt from a receiving standpoint. We still have not replaced the blocking that ASJ provided.
The WRs is an area where I think that there's some revision to the revision happening. A lot were concerned about Kasen coming back from injury and said that him coming back healthy was a key. I don't think anybody thought that Kasen would be what he has been this year - but a non elite Kasen was a concern. Mickens hasn't shown any real growth in his game other than being a scat WR. Campbell is JAG. Hall is a Mickens JAG. Ross is the big question mark as many wonder why we can't get him the ball more whereas others openly wonder if Ross does enough things well to help him get the ball. Just because he's fast doesn't mean you can just give him the ball in various spots and just say "here you go." A lot of people IMO are discounting the idea that Ross may not be a very good WR (see Hester, Devin).
Then there's the QB position where Miles has underwhelmed considerably versus what was expected. The loss of Spring Practice hurt for sure. The argument about tailoring an offense around what Miles does well I just shake my head at. The offense is super vanilla. That tells me that there's not a lot of trust in Miles to do much of anything well. They've tried to find ways to help Miles be successful and they show up from time to time. But there's nothing about playing the QB position that Miles does at a PAC average level on a consistent basis. And the sad thing is that he's the best QB on the roster. Not sure how you can really change the offense in a manner that really highlights more of Miles' strengths other than quite possibly asking him to run the ball more - which is an opportunity for disaster waiting IMO. And even if you could find an offense that Miles could run, it's such a different offense from what is trying to be installed that you run the risk of having to reteach an entire new offense in the offseason. Is it worth the extra 1-2 wins in the short term that would result from compromising your identity and what it is that you are trying to do long-term in the program? It's a tough question.
The bottom line is that normally some things happen better than you think while others underperform. Normally in the end they wash for the most part. Every once in a while everything goes better than expected and sometimes they all go worse than expected. This year, everything that we looked at before the season on offense has gone worse than expected. Few players have shown any growth year to year. Few have stepped up during the season (returning players). It just kind of is what it is and tells you that going forward the guys that were inherited on the roster on the offensive side of the ball aren't going to be strong parts of the solution on offense.
There's no doubt that we lost a lot after last season ...
We THOUGHT that there were suitable players waiting in the wings to take over for them.
It's easy to perform a backup over limited opportunity ... much harder to perform when the lights are shining on you and you have to perform on a consistent basis.
We knew Sankey was a huge loss. We expected that between Coleman and Washington one of them would step up as the "next man up" just like Sankey did when Polk left. Neither of them has stepped up to embrace the opportunity and instead the RBs that we have are proving that more than anything else that they are JAG with the possible exception of Cooper who I'm not sure is trusted in a full workload week in and week out.
While ASJ wasn't a huge factor in the passing game last year, his run blocking ability was a concern in replacing. Perkins being in and out of the lineup has hurt from a receiving standpoint. We still have not replaced the blocking that ASJ provided.
The WRs is an area where I think that there's some revision to the revision happening. A lot were concerned about Kasen coming back from injury and said that him coming back healthy was a key. I don't think anybody thought that Kasen would be what he has been this year - but a non elite Kasen was a concern. Mickens hasn't shown any real growth in his game other than being a scat WR. Campbell is JAG. Hall is a Mickens JAG. Ross is the big question mark as many wonder why we can't get him the ball more whereas others openly wonder if Ross does enough things well to help him get the ball. Just because he's fast doesn't mean you can just give him the ball in various spots and just say "here you go." A lot of people IMO are discounting the idea that Ross may not be a very good WR (see Hester, Devin).
Then there's the QB position where Miles has underwhelmed considerably versus what was expected. The loss of Spring Practice hurt for sure. The argument about tailoring an offense around what Miles does well I just shake my head at. The offense is super vanilla. That tells me that there's not a lot of trust in Miles to do much of anything well. They've tried to find ways to help Miles be successful and they show up from time to time. But there's nothing about playing the QB position that Miles does at a PAC average level on a consistent basis. And the sad thing is that he's the best QB on the roster. Not sure how you can really change the offense in a manner that really highlights more of Miles' strengths other than quite possibly asking him to run the ball more - which is an opportunity for disaster waiting IMO. And even if you could find an offense that Miles could run, it's such a different offense from what is trying to be installed that you run the risk of having to reteach an entire new offense in the offseason. Is it worth the extra 1-2 wins in the short term that would result from compromising your identity and what it is that you are trying to do long-term in the program? It's a tough question.
The bottom line is that normally some things happen better than you think while others underperform. Normally in the end they wash for the most part. Every once in a while everything goes better than expected and sometimes they all go worse than expected. This year, everything that we looked at before the season on offense has gone worse than expected. Few players have shown any growth year to year. Few have stepped up during the season (returning players). It just kind of is what it is and tells you that going forward the guys that were inherited on the roster on the offensive side of the ball aren't going to be strong parts of the solution on offense.
