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For those that aren't in the area I made a point to catch coach Brandon's usual 1470 interview this afternoon. They jabbered on about baseball and parity in college football for awhile, but the few times they really discussed BG just bugged the crap out of me. Thought I'd share a few thoughts...


Norm asked what happened to the defense on Saturday.

-- Brandon's reply was that well, we got down by 23 (no mentions of WHY we were down by 23), when we scored a TD. Then they fumble the kick return and we don't come away with the ball, then we blew a coverage and it was 30-7. He went on to blame this on kids trying to do too much and not playing within their scheme.

Norm later asked if we needed to get the running game going against KSU.

-- Brandon says he knows we can run the ball if we want to, but Tyler had so much success earlier in the year, & that's what we are. We're a passing team and we're going to pass the ball.



Yet again, just like year's past. We won't make any adjustments during the year because his schemes couldn't possibly be the problem, it's always kids not executing. Not naming names, but still putting the blame on the players rather than any soul searching. Very frustrating to say the least...

That's interesting. I'd have to agree that those comments are frustrating. "We know we can run the ball if we want to." Well, then friggin' prove it. I don't think it's a matter of wanting to run the ball, we NEED to run the ball and mix things up.

As much as I wanted to believe it given the first few games this year, the man hasn't changed, and he's not going to. It is was it is, and it's not very good. I was in the crowd that thought we were going to be more balanced in MAC play, and possibly shake the big-MAC-game motivation problems that have plagued us the last few years.

I was sadly mistaken, it seems.

Yes we can run the ball, but one of the problems with the running game now is that 95% of the time we have a RB in the backfield beside Sheehan we run the ball. Why shouldn't the defense stop it?

Redwingtom wrote:Yes we can run the ball, but one of the problems with the running game now is that 95% of the time we have a RB in the backfield beside Sheehan we run the ball. Why shouldn't the defense stop it?

As I've said countless times, and it was reaffirmed in that book by Brandon/Stud themselves, our running game relies on the deception of the QB being a legit running threat. There is just no way that a 5 man OL can consistently block all of the DL & LBs if you're only running with the RB. That level of deception by having the QB be a rushing threat is very important to our ability to run the ball.

It's only compounded by the fact that the only times we ever have a RB even in the backfield is on the running plays.

All I know is that this scheme is really ugly right now.

Back in 2004 I stated that it appears as though the current Head Coach refuses to learn from experience/mistakes. I have never had an instance when I had to reconsider those words.

Just saying.

I didn't hear the Wamer interview...but in the press conference audio on the Blade site Brandon attributed the loss to a couple of things primarily...they capitalized on our mistakes, we didn't capitalize on there's early on (missed int that would have been six, didn't recover the KO fumble when we were down 23-7). The other factor had to do wtih players trying to do too much outside they system (putting on a cape and thinking there's an "S" on your chest) and that lead to some bigger problems...

That's a bit different than simply saying "the kid's didn't execute" Granted, both instances are problems with execution, but saying that the game got away because guys started pressing and trying to do too much is a bit more realistic and ...for lack of a better phrase...connected to a reality than simply saying in so many words, I coached good but they played bad.

O'Dro hyperextended his elbow...the talk at the game was he broke it, so he might be back. There's a good chance Davis will be back on a limited basis...they're fitting him with a knee brace. Mack is back at DT because he came to the coaches and volunteered to move back to defense to help the team.

I'd certainly welcome seeing a TE line up and have the I formation with Winny leading the way for Bullock, Geter and Macon. Winny loves to whack LB's.

I don't know if we still list a TE on the 2 deep...we don't use the TE at all.

Flipper wrote:I didn't hear the Wamer interview...but in the press conference audio on the Blade site Brandon attributed the loss to a couple of things primarily...they capitalized on our mistakes, we didn't capitalize on there's early on (missed int that would have been six, didn't recover the KO fumble when we were down 23-7). The other factor had to do wtih players trying to do too much outside they system (putting on a cape and thinking there's an "S" on your chest) and that lead to some bigger problems...

That's a bit different than simply saying "the kid's didn't execute" Granted, both instances are problems with execution, but saying that the game got away because guys started pressing and trying to do too much is a bit more realistic and ...for lack of a better phrase...connected to a reality than simply saying in so many words, I coached good but they played bad.

Flip, the problem I still have is that Brandon doesn't address how, in fact, we came to be down 23-7. He says at that point the players started pressing and playing outside the system. OK. So what happened before that when they were playing in the system? We were still getting our butts kicked. I'm more interested in hearing what went wrong from the start then hearing about how it got to be as bad as it did.

He did...kind of...he said they capitalized on our errors and moved ahead, we didn't capitalize on theirs (missed int that would have been 6 and the fumble we didn't recover on the KO).....it might not be the best answer in the world, but it's an answer.

Flipper wrote:He did...kind of...he said they capitalized on our errors and moved ahead, we didn't capitalize on theirs (missed int that would have been 6 and the fumble we didn't recover on the KO).....it might not be the best answer in the world, but it's an answer.

Yeah, that was his answer.

It's not the right answer, and it shows a total lack of understanding of what actually happened. Or more likely, a refusal to admit the truth. But sure, it is an answer.

That game Saturday had VERY little to do with errors and the ability to capitalize on them. Sure they recovered our fumble early, we didn't recover their fumble or hold onto that INT. That stuff didn't matter that much in my view.

I wanna know why our defense parted like the Red Sea for Moses whenever they ran a running play. I wanna know why we couldn't protect our QB. I wanna know why they seemed to have 2 guys on every one of our receivers whenever we threw the ball.

I'm sorry, but a few errors didn't lose that game. We got physically punched in the mouth by a team that showed up ready to play. Miami's powerhouse offense was able to dictate their will on our defense. If they wanted to run they did, if they wanted to pass they did, and they didn't get stopped until they hit the goalline. This team played with no heart & no intensity Saturday and it had very little to do with whether or not we recovered a fumble after we were already down by more than 2 TDs.

Flipper wrote:He did...kind of...he said they capitalized on our errors and moved ahead, we didn't capitalize on theirs (missed int that would have been 6 and the fumble we didn't recover on the KO).....it might not be the best answer in the world, but it's an answer.

OK, but the fumbled KO was to start the second half when we were down 30-7 so that doesn't really matter. I want to know WHY he thinks we didn't capitalize, or WHY he thinks they were able to. They were obviously doing soemthing right or we were doing something wrong. What was it? Did we have a bad plan/scheme? Did players make bad decisions? Did we not execute? Bad play calling against the defense they played? Give me something more concrete so that I can at least hope, as a coach, you know what specific issues need to be addressed in order for this to never happen again.

hammb wrote:This team played with no heart & no intensity.

And to me, that is the telltale sign the the players have lost all respect for the coach. It happened last year. If we play another awful game this Saturday, I can't fathom having to go through a whole 'nother year and a half with Brandon leading this team.

Warthog wrote:

Flipper wrote:He did...kind of...he said they capitalized on our errors and moved ahead, we didn't capitalize on theirs (missed int that would have been 6 and the fumble we didn't recover on the KO).....it might not be the best answer in the world, but it's an answer.

OK, but the fumbled KO was to start the second half when we were down 30-7 so that doesn't really matter. I want to know WHY he thinks we didn't capitalize, or WHY he thinks they were able to. They were obviously doing soemthing right or we were doing something wrong. What was it? Did we have a bad plan/scheme? Did players make bad decisions? Did we not execute? Bad play calling against the defense they played? Give me something more concrete so that I can at least hope, as a coach, you know what specific issues need to be addressed in order for this to never happen again.

No...they fumbled both the kick off on 30-7 and 23-7...Look, I don't think it was the best answer in the world either, I'm just trying to point out that saying he didn't address that issue at all isn't a fair statement.

My biggest problem with all of his comments is the idea that players were trying to do too much outside of the system. Personally, I think doing something outside of the current scheme is our only hope for success. I know that's probably not what he meant, but to say that our system by the book is a formula for success at this point... I don't know about all that.