2Cents

[Mcho40]

I do agree with you that Collins does not seem to be the best game day coach. But our defensive line is still woefully undersized from the PJ era. And that is the main reason we lost—- even NIU was able to run the ball down our throats.
Collins has recruited some big time players on defense. They’re still young. Give them time to grow and we will finally have a defense that can give us a chance to win.

Im not sure that we can blame any one part of the team for this loss? Overall execution wasn’t great. The only positive I took away was the lack of penalties. Some questions/considerations though:

- is the defensive line undersized vs NIU? I understand that CPJ never did emphasize a large line… but NIU? We should at least be comparable.

- From a defensive perspective, I thought we just had no scheme/plan. Players often looked confused and out of place, I think I saw a few arguing after looking at the side line. We hardly ever got set in time for whenever they went tempo. There was no exotic blitz package or really and blitz packages. Honestly with NIU running the ball so heavily, idk why we didn’t commit more to stopping the run and challenge them to throw. I think this points more toward a coaching issue.

-I think our biggest issue is offense. Our defense actually held for the early part of the game, but our offense hardly made any plays and constant mistakes for the first half. I don’t ever like to single out players, but Sims was fairly cold. What I don’t like though, is with a cold QB we kept giving him medium / long pass plays. Why not give him some short passes, get the TEs involved (did they even catch a pass on the game?). Get him into a rhythm and warmed up! And if that doesn’t work give him some support with the run game. Don’t call a pass play on 2nd and 8 and 3&8.

- Special teams needs work….why oh why would you not fair catch a punt inside of your own 20 with 3 opposing players in your face? Our punter seems to have a good leg… but always kicks it out the end zone? Need some control. Field goals have just been bad. Blocking seems better on the field goal unit line… but kicking consistency is bad. But also why give your kicker no opportunity to get into a rhythm? The controversial 4th down time out and change to go for it… that was a manageable kick. Why have him kick from 51 and another at 60 for his 2/3 kick attempts? Those are Butker kicks. Someone who not only has talent but an opportunity to grow in the program. Putting in a freshman for a 1second remaining Hail Mary kick is not how you develop a kicker.

 

[PM Gold]

"Does not seem to be the best game day coach". Ummm...OK...pretty big understatement.
Our D should be able to stop NIU any day of the week. But if you hold an opponent to twenty-two points you should win. Our "Fighting Patenauds" have scored more than twenty-eight points twice in two years.

 

[vapspwi]

Im not sure that we can blame any one part of the team for this loss? Overall execution wasn’t great. The only positive I took away was the lack of penalties. Some questions/considerations though:

- is the defensive line undersized vs NIU? I understand that CPJ never did emphasize a large line… but NIU? We should at least be comparable.

- From a defensive perspective, I thought we just had no scheme/plan. Players often looked confused and out of place, I think I saw a few arguing after looking at the side line. We hardly ever got set in time for whenever they went tempo. There was no exotic blitz package or really and blitz packages. Honestly with NIU running the ball so heavily, idk why we didn’t commit more to stopping the run and challenge them to throw. I think this points more toward a coaching issue.

-I think our biggest issue is offense. Our defense actually held for the early part of the game, but our offense hardly made any plays and constant mistakes for the first half. I don’t ever like to single out players, but Sims was fairly cold. What I don’t like though, is with a cold QB we kept giving him medium / long pass plays. Why not give him some short passes, get the TEs involved (did they even catch a pass on the game?). Get him into a rhythm and warmed up! And if that doesn’t work give him some support with the run game. Don’t call a pass play on 2nd and 8 and 3&8.

- Special teams needs work….why oh why would you not fair catch a punt inside of your own 20 with 3 opposing players in your face? Our punter seems to have a good leg… but always kicks it out the end zone? Need some control. Field goals have just been bad. Blocking seems better on the field goal unit line… but kicking consistency is bad. But also why give your kicker no opportunity to get into a rhythm? The controversial 4th down time out and change to go for it… that was a manageable kick. Why have him kick from 51 and another at 60 for his 2/3 kick attempts? Those are Butker kicks. Someone who not only has talent but an opportunity to grow in the program. Putting in a freshman for a 1second remaining Hail Mary kick is not how you develop a kicker.

Fair points, although the first two FG attempts were by a senior transfer kicker and the last was a guy that was here last year.

I’ll give the punter a pass - kicking it out of the end zone is OK for a freshman in his first game, and hopefully he’ll grow into being able to place it when needed.

JRjr

 

[cincytechie]

Wasn’t that what UCS was doing in his post-game hugfest with his players?

I like the UCS moniker. I kept trying to come up with something appropriate for CGC, like Constantly Generally Confused. UCS is much better.

Brian Kelly wins a game today then threatens to execute his entire team in the post-game interview. Different style than UCS's hugfest.

 

[GTLiebs]

Im not sure that we can blame any one part of the team for this loss? Overall execution wasn’t great. The only positive I took away was the lack of penalties. Some questions/considerations though:

- From a defensive perspective, I thought we just had no scheme/plan. Players often looked confused and out of place, I think I saw a few arguing after looking at the side line. We hardly ever got set in time for whenever they went tempo. There was no exotic blitz package or really and blitz packages. Honestly with NIU running the ball so heavily, idk why we didn’t commit more to stopping the run and challenge them to throw. I think this points more toward a coaching issue.

-I think our biggest issue is offense. Our defense actually held for the early part of the game, but our offense hardly made any plays and constant mistakes for the first half. I don’t ever like to single out players, but Sims was fairly cold. What I don’t like though, is with a cold QB we kept giving him medium / long pass plays. Why not give him some short passes, get the TEs involved (did they even catch a pass on the game?). Get him into a rhythm and warmed up! And if that doesn’t work give him some support with the run game. Don’t call a pass play on 2nd and 8 and 3&8.

The defensive thing about being so slow to get ready for the snap is maybe the single most worrying thing I've seen. Was definitely a problem last year too.

For the TEs, but if memory serves I think some of our problem there is we're still working off of the guys we had to grab at the last second for the 2019 class to have any TEs at all. Could be poor development on our part but not sure how much there was to work with.