I didn't intend to come across as pessimistic. Rather, I'm trying to point out where I think the Cats need to improve significantly if they want to win the conference, let alone go deep into the playoffs. I agree, this is a very good football team; however, they have not even played close to their potential in my opinion.CatFamily wrote:First of all BleedBlGld... why such pessimissm? Sounds like you have already given up the ship. This is still a very, very good football team with more untapped potential than any team in the BSC. Given they have struggled on D... but the O is solid. A ball control passing offense similar to what we have gone to is just as effective as a run controlled offense. Better if both were working ... no doubt. But I choose to be more optomistic and believe that our D will perform opposite of what they did last year! 4-0 is very achievable with this team.
Shoemaker... you gotta be on something to thing the chances of the Bobcats losing are better than UM's this weekend. PSU will give the Friz all they want and maybe more... but I am still pulling for a Friz win. The Cats have to play well... no doubt.... and they will.
I never thought that our version of the 3-4 would be able to stop the opponents rushing game, and I thought we'd have gone back to the 4-3 by the start of the conference schedule. We just don't have the depth on the DL to do that - thus, this is the horse we have to ride, as ineffective as it is. Ironically, because we are last in stopping the run (giving up almost 200 yd/game), we are first in pass defense. However, a closer look at these numbers reveals the fact that we really don't defend the pass very well either, because we are last in 3rd down defensive efficiency.
I disagree that a ball-control pass offense is as effective as a run-controlled offense...especially come November and December. Lulay is our leading rusher - that's not a good sign. I think Bailey needs to give our OL more of chance to open some holes. Maybe he is doing that and Travis just checks out of those plays a bunch - I have no idea. But, you can't expect the OL to suddenly become dominant run blockers in the 4th quarter when you've only let them run block for 10 plays prior to that. Krames said we're going to live and die by passing. To me that either means our OL misses assignments on running plays, they simply can't win the battles on run plays, or our RBs simply don't go where they are supposed to go. Maybe it's a combination of all of the above - I don't know.