React/Respond: Miami – Good Bull Hunting

If I have to ruminate about this then you do to!

• By
  
  stringsays
  
• on September 11, 2023 10:22 am

I feel like my therapist would be proud of me in that I know there is a difference between reacting and responding. Reacting is an emotion-driven thing. It’s quick and based in the moment and not always suited to long-term solution-based strategies. Responding is the opposite…it’s thoughtful, careful, and bigger picture-oriented. There’s value in discussing both which is what I’m going to do here.

I’m gonna try and do this type of quick hitter piece after every loss and I hope I dont have to do this often but if I’m called to do it often I’ll probably lose interest and not write anymore because again I want my therapist to be proud of me.

React

Ah shit. Here we go again

Self explanatory. Week two disappointing loss and now the team has to come together/stay together/stay focused and get past this to fulfill some level of expectations.

Come on Durkin

Nothing Miami did was fancy on offense. They killed us with simple spread concepts and we just couldn’t do anything to stop it. We couldn’t get pressure, couldn’t cover, couldn’t do anything effectively.

Conner/Evan

Are ballers. Heisman/Biletnikoff-worthy ballers. Incredible players who have the potential to be historical figures at A&M.

Respond

Week 2

Jimbo is now 1-5 in week two. I’ll give him the first three years given that we went Clemson/Clemson/Bama…but over the last three, we’ve gone Colorado, App St, and Miami—with disappointing performances in each. 1 time is an issue 2 times is a coincidence 3 times is a trend and this is a concerning trend. Similar to our issues coming out of halftime, this is something worth addressing from a programmatic level

Durkin vs. Durkin

Durkin is a 3-3-5 guy who right now for a variety of reasons is choosing to run a base 4-2-5 and caught in this weird gap of “Oh man we can’t just rush 3 because then we get no pressure and our run defense is ass plus we’ve got all these DL” and “oh man we’re not getting home with 4 guys and why aren’t we blitzing more”

I don’t know what’s going on there but I remember Ole Miss Durkin whipping our ass with blitzes coming from everywhere against a decent enough/well-coached OL in 2021. I want that Durkin back and if that means going to more 3 man fronts then so be it.

Protection

I’m not an OL expert but all night long we struggled with the corner blitz. It was the same thing every single time and I don’t know whose responsibility it is to pick it up…whether it’s the OL’s job to see it, the RB’s job to chip someone, or Conner’s job to see it coming but we never fixed it. That’s on coaching and scheming. Run it until they stop you and we never stopped it.

Moose

Our offense is more productive when Moose is on the field. Him only seeing 13 snaps this weekend is an issue. I think that we’re trying to force a TE on the field when right now our TEs are too young to really impact the game the way we should. Why not a base 2 back set with Ainias in the backfield and Moose/Evan/Noah out wide?

Miami

I don’t know how good Miami is because we played so awful but that’s the mark of a good team is that they make you look awful. Maybe Miami is really good and we’ll be fine. Unfortunately with their next two opponents being Bethune-Cookman and Temple, we won’t find out four a while.

The season isn’t over as long as we don’t let it be over. Plenty to fix and all of these things are fixable. But can we consistently fix them? Can we fix them and have them stay fixed or are they just who we are?

We’ll find out soon enough. BTHO ulm.

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