The irrational part of me thinks at times, that if it’s a lost/transition/bad season then the best thing is to get as much negative things out of the way in one year. That way things might balance out with some good breaks and luck in the next year. Despite my best efforts to think otherwise, I find my mindset has gotten to this point.
Injuries have been a big one this season. The O-line loses the two best, most experienced players, went down. Lucas Nix, is at best, a game time decision on Wednesday. By some remarkable coincidence, the O-line is now incapable of picking up a blitz.
Trey Anderson is now dealing with Tendinitis in his wrist (throwing hand), making Mark Myers the back-up and fueling more controversy (and more than a few assholes actually hoping Sunseri gets hurt/concussed).
Now Jason Hendricks injury from the Utah game has him done for the season. Taglianetti is going to be the starter at safety in his place.
As an aside for the gotta laugh at coach speak, UConn Coach Paul Pasqualoni on the Big East coaches teleconference call today:
“We anticipate seeing Tino Sunseri, who runs their offense extremely well, throws the ball well.”
Um…
Tough loss w Hendricks. He was inconsistent early but playing much better lately.
“We’ll adapt our system to fit the personnel we have,” Graham said. “And that is especially true for the quarterback position.”
REALLY? I’d hate to see what the non adapted system would look like when run by our guys.
“Across the 50-yard line, second down is first down, third down is second down and fourth down is third down,” Graham said. “We’re going to be aggressive.”
Why so many pooch punts then?
“You don’t want to change personnel because it slows you down,” he said.
How many timeouts have been called already because they couldn’t substitute in time?
Why did I torture myself with this?
But i would like the coach to pull him and sit him down.
I would like to see myers play for a whole game but that wont happen.
You may have missed it, but somewhere around Week 3 or 4, Graham also said that he had watered down (some would say adapted) his system so much that he couldn’t even stand to watch them run it and the offense looks nothing like it’s supposed to. I agree in that I’d hate to see what the non-watered down version would look like. I guess it couldn’t be much worse than 9-30 for 50 yards, though.
In weeks four & five (ND & USF) he was still running the QB read option heavily… he didn’t ‘adapt’ that at all and indeed those were the only two weeks that it was successful.
The future may be a different story I supposed, but he’s stuck right to ‘his’ offense from the opening game on.
The quote that I read was:
“I don’t think there is much more we can do simplify things offensively. It is about as simple as it can get,” Graham said. “It’s almost so simple that it’s hard to watch.”
I obviously wasn’t there for the entire interview or subsequent discussions, so I’ll certainly take your word for it on the context. On the face of it, however, to me that quote doesn’t speak to the speed at which plays were being run, but more to inability to run the plays as they were drawn up.
