Concerns after Illinois Game

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Sparlimb

Sparlimb

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What is with our defense taking a half to figure out what the other team is doing? I'd be telling Claeys, that after the first drive he should figure out his halftime speech and give it right then. Does it worry anyone else every single other team can surprise our defense and score a few quick tds, but our offense can't surprise a room full of infants?

Cobb was hurt today in the 2nd half, I think after the TD when he fell on his head. I hope the trainers looked at him and cleared him to play. Obviously his fumble cost us a lot, but he was trying for extra yards and that can happen.

Our OLine was awful again today, and really couldn't open a hole for the running backs to save their life.

Fruechte is our best receiver. Say that again 3 times.

Leidner will never have the accuracy to be a good Big Ten QB. He may be the best we have, and I assume we're stuck with him for 2 more years, but he'll never be considered good.

I really feel bad for Damien Wilson. He's twice as good as anyone else on the team and its really too bad we don't have more players like him. He's gotten screwed on 2 defensive tds the last 2 weeks (this week on a chicken**** call and last week on a moron being offsides).

That said, how many lined up offsides are we going to have before the coaches address the issue?

Two weeks to sit on being the laughingstock of the Big Ten. Good news is we don't have any expectations the rest of the way. Not sure we will, but would like to see us win one more game this year.
 

Hey, we play Louisville in 20 days in a sport we actually have a shot in...
 

Claeys likes to see what the offense is doing the first few drives and then reacts. This needs to stop. How about preparing your team for all possible scenarios and stopping teams early? It's great that he can adjust, but man, being down early is not something our offense handles well.
 

jaymil said:
Claeys likes to see what the offense is doing the first few drives and then reacts. This needs to stop. How about preparing your team for all possible scenarios and stopping teams early? It's great that he can adjust, but man, being down early is not something our offense handles well.
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How about come out with a gameplan that makes their offense adjust to us. That's what I'd like to see as the next step.
 

We over rated ourselves. I think our defensive line's youth is catching up with us. We have great cover guys (DBs), as we aren't giving up the deep ball, but we get absolutely killed by those short passes.
 


"Leidner will never have the accuracy to be a good Big Ten QB." Impossible to know yet, he is a Sophomore. He is also beat up.
 

jaymil said:
Claeys likes to see what the offense is doing the first few drives and then reacts. This needs to stop. How about preparing your team for all possible scenarios and stopping teams early? It's great that he can adjust, but man, being down early is not something our offense handles well.
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This is a concern. Bend but don't break has broken us early.
 

gopherjay said:
"Leidner will never have the accuracy to be a good Big Ten QB." Impossible to know yet, he is a Sophomore. He is also beat up.
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Correct. He has two years to prove me and many doubters wrong. And he shouldn't throw in the towel because some idiot on the internet thinks he sucks.
 

What exactly was the number of WIDE OPEN RECEIVERS ML7 missed? I know it was a lot and it was by a lot.
 



Concerns? 6-6 seems a lot more likely than it did before the game. I'm not even trolling...that's how deflating this loss feels.
 


Biggest concern is that the staff has been out coached for at least two games in a row and maybe 3.
Wasn't that worried about northwestern because I don't really know how good they are.
Wasn't that worried about Purdue because that coach out coached Michigan state too and the gophers still won.
Today was pretty awful IMO. First time the Illinois staff has really out coached anyone in big ten play in his tenure at Illinois.
This first concern applies to both offense and defense.


Secondary concern the health of cobb. I thought cobb looked a tad slow in the second half (slow getting up after plays, not running). He then made a huge in characteristic error. I am worried he is wearing down. If he fades down the stretch we could have serious issues.

Third concern would be quarterback play. Same concern as everyone else I would imagine.
 

FlaGopher23 said:
What exactly was the number of WIDE OPEN RECEIVERS ML7 missed? I know it was a lot and it was by a lot.
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If you listened to the tone of the ESPNU announcers, they were pretty hard on Leidner... and I agreed with everything they said. Leidner made some plays (which he's supposed to make, duh) but he also made some terrible over throws. Terrible decisions... like getting sacked when he had like 5 seconds to throw the ball or run outside of the pocket.
 



gopherjay said:
"Leidner will never have the accuracy to be a good Big Ten QB." Impossible to know yet, he is a Sophomore. He is also beat up.
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Seems a little beat-up but he's only Sophomore for eligibility purposes isn't he? Maybe he hasn't had a lot of starts, but he's had 3 years in the system. He's a Junior.
 

Anyone defending Mitch right now on this thread has to be related to him. He is unbearable to watch.

It' so scary to think that he's the best option on this team at QB.

I'm honestly not even trying to troll anyone and I understand that he's a student-athlete and not a professional athlete getting paid millions of dollars so I should take it easy on him, but my god, he is pitiful (and I've thought it all year but you can't say these things when you're winning football games).
 

Has he ever thrown the ball away, ever??? Its actually funny. His throws where he is actually trying to hit a receiver are the quality of throws he should be making before taking a sack.
RolGnav said:
If you listened to the tone of the ESPNU announcers, they were pretty hard on Leidner... and I agreed with everything they said. Leidner made some plays (which he's supposed to make, duh) but he also made some terrible over throws. Terrible decisions... like getting sacked when he had like 5 seconds to throw the ball or run outside of the pocket.
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One thing that I notice about this Coaching staff is that they are way too conservative. The coaching staff is so afraid of losing, that they find the easiest, safest way to survive a game. Example? Streveler... I'm sure he's better than his 1 completion stat, but the coaching staff was too afraid to let him pass the ball. If you look at all his attempts that game, I bet 80% of those limited attempts were on third and long. The coaches, especially Limegrover, goes into this conservative shell, and is too scared to make a mistake.
 

1. Defense, as I mentioned in another thread.

2. Quarterback play. Not much hope of this improving until next year.
 


Leidner isn't a terrible QB. His problem is consistency. He can make difficult throws look easy but then he'll sail a couple and look awful. I'm not a QB expert so I don't know if it's mechanics, between the ears, or both, but his improvement has been good enough the past few weeks that I still believe in him. It didn't help today that the run game was very inconsistent and we were stuck in 2nd and 3rd and long quite a bit.
 

Throw out the bad drops, eg the sun in the face drop, the hail mary, and Mitch had another 50% or so game. Not a great game by any means. He has to work on getting the ball out. But, this brings me to the following:

The offensive line was atrocious in all phases the first half. Some of the guys were getting beat like rented mules, leading to blown up plays, hurried throws, etc. Cobb had nowhere to go.

To me, that's more worrisome than Mitch. We need to be able to control the line of scrimmage and we didn't. Two weeks to get healthy (and figure things out offensively) for Iowa.
 

Sparlimb said:
How about come out with a gameplan that makes their offense adjust to us. That's what I'd like to see as the next step.
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BINGO. Seemed to do that against Nebraska last year, and PSU (first half only). For whatever reason, the ONLY game in 2014 in which the offenses' first couple of series of plays surprised anyone was last week against Purdue.
 

cncmin said:
BINGO. Seemed to do that against Nebraska last year, and PSU (first half only). For whatever reason, the ONLY game in 2014 in which the offenses' first couple of series of plays surprised anyone was last week against Purdue.
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He's talking about our defense.
 

RolGnav said:
One thing that I notice about this Coaching staff is that they are way too conservative. The coaching staff is so afraid of losing, that they find the easiest, safest way to survive a game. Example? Streveler... I'm sure he's better than his 1 completion stat, but the coaching staff was too afraid to let him pass the ball. If you look at all his attempts that game, I bet 80% of those limited attempts were on third and long. The coaches, especially Limegrover, goes into this conservative shell, and is too scared to make a mistake.
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You saw the last two weeks what NON-conservative gameplans can do - Purdue almost beat us, and Illinois DID beat us. In both cases, they utilized the whole of the field to keep our defense guessing, and it caught us off guard both times; arguably leading to the 1-1 record when it "should" have been 2-0.
 

jaymil said:
He's talking about our defense.
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Haha, good point, I read his first sentence as "offense [defense]" and last sentence as "...like to see [us do] as the next step." Replace "bingo with "we" and you've FMPFM.
 

FlaGopher23 said:
What exactly was the number of WIDE OPEN RECEIVERS ML7 missed? I know it was a lot and it was by a lot.
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Dude , the first half had several Minny Wr's dropping passes. If it hits your hands, you gotta catch it man. Yes he missed some quick outs or whatev, but the number of drops out numbers the misses. The only thing I saw Mitch screw up consistently was not getting rid of it soon enough.
 

RolGnav said:
We over rated ourselves. I think our defensive line's youth is catching up with us. We have great cover guys (DBs), as we aren't giving up the deep ball, but we get absolutely killed by those short passes.
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Interesting take given that we only gave up 140 passing yards.
 


Duuuuuuddddee, I agree Jones and Woli continue to drop passes that hit them in the hands or chest but we continually play them. At some point another receiver on the squad has to be used. I doubt anyone else on the squad are worse. That being said there were far more passes to wide open receivers that were just horrid throws. I mean at this level of play you have to be able to make those throws.

minibeaver said:
Dude , the first half had several Minny Wr's dropping passes. If it hits your hands, you gotta catch it man. Yes he missed some quick outs or whatev, but the number of drops out numbers the misses. The only thing I saw Mitch screw up consistently was not getting rid of it soon enough.
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