On being a consistent Top 25 team
- Thread starter Raising Heel
- Start date
Damn. 4 out of 5 were national champions during that same time as well. That's almost unbelievable.
No, it's easy and we only don't achieve that feat every year is because Fedora is a worthless used car salesman. Duh!
Your point is valid, but here is another valid point: Clemson did not have 5 consecutive Top 25 teams under Tommy Bowden because TB could not so deliver - but Dabo could deliver.
I think the dissatisfaction with Fedora would be less if we could win a bowl - and beat any SEC team. SoCar sucked rotten eggs last year, and still beat us.
Woad, I was being sarcastic and mocking the negativity of others on this board, re: Fedora.
We had one of the best offensive teams we've had in a long time this year. Yet we lost to Georgia, got slaughtered by VT, lost to very mediocre d00k and State teams, then once again lost a very winnable bowl game to a Stanford team without their best player and after knocking out their starting QB.
Hard to justify that kind of underachieving. Forget the NCAA investigation and it's hindrance to our recruiting. We had the talent in place this year to beat every team we lost to. If we hadn't lost to our in state rivals, had finished 7-1 in the Coastal and played Clemson for the ACCC, I would have been happy. But we wet the bed big time down the stretch. There's no way to sugarcoat it. And we're losing a ton of talent so next year may be even worse. Hard to be enthusiastic about that.
And I'll be rooting hard for the Heels next year, as I have for 55 years since I was about 7. But my preseason expectations are going to be lower, much lower. But I had very high hopes for this year and once again saw my team underachieve. It's become the norm.
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**Blank stare, followed by perplexed facial contortions**
there are three aspects to coaching: recruiting, player development, and x's and o's (game planning and play calling). if a coach is stronger in recruiting but weaker in talent development and x's and o's you will see an underachieving team. if a coach is stronger in talent development and x's and o's with less impressive recruiting classes you'll get an overachieving team. fedora needs to hire two excellent coordinators and let them run our x's and o's. then we'll have the best of both worlds and no more losses to underdog rivals.
If a coach is weak in an area , then he needs to make hires who have those strengths. I know it is easier said than done. I think fan support is the first leg of recruiting.
This. Our offense was significantly worse than the 2015 team's offense, but don't let that get in the way of your argument.
Teams have caught up defensively to the hurry up schtick. Add to that a serious lack of talent and depth on our defense and u get last seasons results. I'm happy with the job coach fed has done so far. But to get to the next level is gonna require a serious infusion of talent defensively.
Clemson may disagree, but that's just a hunch.
Right. I saw an stat the other day that said Alabama was 1-8 since 2005 against teams that ran 81+ plays in the game. Not sure how many of those games precede Saban's arrival in 2007 but thought it was interesting nonetheless.
Furthermore, pundits pretty much universally agree -- and even if you don't trust them, you could see it for yourself -- that Clemson wore Alabama's defense down because of the number of plays. I believe Clemson ran 91 plays.
What's interesting is. . . we didn't even come close to running 91 plays in a game this year (correct me if I'm wrong on that), and yet our offense "looks" way faster than Clemson's. Our offense looks good when it's rolling, but it does look too fast when it isn't working.
I don't know how Clemson does it, but their tempo is faster than ours, yet it looks slower. Of course, it did help them that their defense got lots of stops.
Answered your own question. Even with the improvements in total yards and pts against, our defense has still been near the bottom of the country in terms of plays defended the past two years, which has also led to our offense being near the back end of the country in terms of plays run. Ideally, those figures would be reversed lol.
That's the exact reason. We can move slightly faster on offense, rush to the line a little more, etc. but if we're not getting first downs on offense, or if the other team is driving down the field consistently on our dog-tired defense - we're not going to be getting as many plays in.
Exactly. The dookies ran 89 plays to our 60 (+29). Moo ran 77 plays to our 65 (+12). We outgained dook 6.7 yards per play to 5.2 yards per play and matched Moo at 6.4 yards per play, but it didn't matter because our defense couldn't get off the field.
This is why it's imperative for our run defense to improve. Until we start consistently putting teams in 3rd and long, or at least medium, all the pressure is on the offense to score, score, score.
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