Rhoda has been a good team leader so far. He makes good decisions and is workmanlike, controlled, and efficient in his approach to the position. I do agree with other posters that they should try to make him a bit more of a threat to run just so opposing defenses can't afford to ignore him.
I wondered if we would see some defensive decline after the Claeys departure but the defense has had a much better start this year than last year. The DBs struggled a bit with Oregon State's tall (and fairly talented) receivers but the effort was there. We expected an adjustment in the defensive backfield and that's happening but the defensive backfield isn't a disaster. The pass rushing last night was one of the better efforts I've seen in game over the last few years. The tackling was good as usual.
Seems that we've seeing fewer undisciplined mistakes from this team than the Kill/Claey's teams of the last two years. The team didn't have many penalty yards in the first game. Although they had 70 penalty yards last night, some of those, like the pass interference calls and defensive holding call were understandable under the circumstances. And the iffy chop block call was a good effort that resulted in a penalty.
I wondered if we would see some defensive decline after the Claeys departure but the defense has had a much better start this year than last year. The DBs struggled a bit with Oregon State's tall (and fairly talented) receivers but the effort was there. We expected an adjustment in the defensive backfield and that's happening but the defensive backfield isn't a disaster. The pass rushing last night was one of the better efforts I've seen in game over the last few years. The tackling was good as usual.
Seems that we've seeing fewer undisciplined mistakes from this team than the Kill/Claey's teams of the last two years. The team didn't have many penalty yards in the first game. Although they had 70 penalty yards last night, some of those, like the pass interference calls and defensive holding call were understandable under the circumstances. And the iffy chop block call was a good effort that resulted in a penalty.