Solar

That's a bold strategy Cotton. Let's see if it keeps working. 52-27 3 3 398

If only ESPN would have picked up our game. I've decided I'm not going to sign up for Peacock. I don't like being blackmailed into buying things I don't want. I refuse to encourage bad behavior by business. I'll just have to follow the game some other way.

It's almost like the NCAA Lawyers are only good at enabling bad behavior of the organization they have been compensated to take responsibility for. They seem hell bent on maximizing the legal exposure of the NCAA. Maybe the lawyers know what they are doing, just making more work for themselves at the expense of a gullible organization. Billable hours baby!

So the poor blocking was as much mental as physical. We can only hope they were hung over or at least just stayed up way too late screwing around the night before to have a clear head. Terry is supposed to be this great up and coming coach, but he needs to get his stuff together and control his room and teach up the talent he has or he's going to destroy the goodwill and reputation he has earned to date. He also needs to improve recruiting, as that has been dropping off a bit too. He may not be long for this team if this becomes a trend.

LoL. I was in San Diego at my daughter's volleyball tournament, I accept none of the blame.

The coaches coach the practices, but I do wonder sometimes about the wisdom of shuffling the line to get the best 5 players in rather than just filling the one hole with your 6th or even 10th best player. It's like the US 4x100 team that loves to shuffle everyone at the last minute to have the fastest people at their fastest spot, then they jack up the handoffs and get DQ'd.

Thank very much for the research! I'm also very much in the camp of blaming the people that decided on a cloudy day to build Autzen as an east-west stadium. It seemed like Gabriel was looking into the sun on every important drive.

It perfectly explains it. James can bully his way through contact in a way Whittington can't. So if holes aren't there, it favors James.

I totally agree. I rolled my eyes every time Josh Pate brought this up. The only thing we gave up was having your season not matter half way through because you lost a second game.

That speaks more to a physical issue than a mental issue doesn't it? If they are unathletic, or all worn out from too much practice/exercise. Here's another thing to ponder. Idaho's DL didn't appear to wear down as the game went on. Some combination of their smaller size, conditioning, resting up, depth and our OL also wearing out as the game went on.

I agree Lanning has been placing reasonable bets with nearly all of these calls. And it's certainly to the benefit of the players psychology that the coach believes in them to get the job done.

Wait. Are you talking about LSU or Oregon? Woof.

Personally I think it's disingenuous to say they loaded the box to stop the run, yet covered well deep leaving only a few underneath routes at 5-10 yards. It's like they had 15 players on the field or something. The truth is more likely they knew Stein and Gabriel's tendencies and took away the run and the bird bombs leaving short and intermediate routes know Gabriel doesn't throw intermediate routes due to the risk of being picked off by some he can't see on the other side of his blockers. Has anyone watched enough prior tape to know if Gabriel targets 10-30 yard routes much?

I really appreciate your assessment Charles, and I concur as do many in the media that have evaluated how open down field receivers were. However here is what DL said the day after the game having been able to evaluate the film. I think he is lying to cover for DG for all reasons/excuses we are speculate about.. Sun in the eyes, Stein's direction, being too short to see the field, etc. Q: How much of the lack of explosive plays about not making the correct read or was it the defense they ran? Lanning: "'I'd say none of it was really him [Gabriel] not making the right read. I think they, you know, we took a shot early in the game down the field, and then they stopped playing that coverage that gave us the opportunity to take that shot. We called a lot of shot plays, and they played over the top. So I think Dylan made the smart decision with where, where he took the ball, where he got to the ball. And, you know, you don't go what 41 of 50 passing if that's not the case. So, he did a really good job of making decisions on where he could actually go with the ball given the opportunity. They just eliminated some of those opportunities to take those shots. I think more of your explosives are going to come whenever you do catch the ball in space, who's going to break a tackle, who's going to go cover up on the block downfield, and those are the things that we got to do a better job taking care of. And then being able to run the ball more effectively."

I was surprised to see that I could watch real time streamed bootlegs of some ESPN games this weekend. They were front and center in my home feed. I don't have Peacock. If I pay up just for this game and we lose, I will be extra not happy. I may just gamble here.

We typically respond well under Lanning to getting ".exposed."

In fairness to the players, it could be the attitude and hubris problem was more on the coaches' decision making. See the separate post I just made.

The funniest take on Twitter was someone with sideline access during that him and his wife believed the OL was hungover because of how worn out and lethargic they looked on the sidelines. But let me back up. Historically the spring game is the end of a long and grueling spring camp. Everyone is worn out and everyone is getting good reps. Fast forward to fall camp and many transfers noted how it was the hardest fall camp they'd ever been through. Recovery takes time, and if Lanning wasn't willing to back off much during Idaho prep, then it was intentional not to get a full recovery prior to Idaho, as it was more important to keep grinding. Especially with an OL that was having to adapt to the loss of Bedford. Then you look at who started and played a lot of snaps. It tended to be the lessor talented but presumably more deserving folks that earned playing time. Then you get into the restricted playbooks, holding out starters with minor injuries, and a pattern emerges the Lanning was very willing to treat this game against Idaho like a scrimmage, being more focused on maximizing team development for the longer term that killing Idaho. I'm sure that with the score difference of 3 points in the 4th quarter that Lanning was having some serious questions about that strategy. But for us fans, it's a valid question, just how pervasive was Lanning's decision making compromising the teams ability to perform vs. Idaho? How much did Lanning intentionally lower our performance ceiling in that game by prioritizing development later in the season? I'm not trying to cope or make excuses here, but it's definitely within the realm of possibility that Lanning saw how much improvement was still need with all the new faces, and the Bedford injury, that he decided to turn the Idaho prep and game into Fall Camp scrimmage #3, and gambled down to his last few dollars. I previously commented how we would have fared no better that 45-3 vs Georgia again last week, but we also know how well we performed the following week in 2022. I hope for the same here in 2024.

Honestly I'm reasonably certain Idaho would have beaten more than half of FBS teams the way they played. Nobody has any right to be that disciplined and dialed in for the first game of the year.

It all starts up front on offense as yesterday clearly illustrated. If you mentioned any of the OL players I would not disagree. Other than that, I would pick Tyler Turner, if we assume he isn't bench warming the next game. The only time I was aware he was in the game is when he got that critical pass interference and the time he got trucked by a blocker allowing the RB to run free on the outside for 40 yards. Honestly though, I expect Flowers to play in place of Turner next week, rotating in with #0.

I thought the title was about Jedd Fisch having one eye on the Florida job for the rest of the season..

If we were simply ranked based on game 1, no preseason rankings, we'd be borderline unranked based on the eye test. I have to say, I watched UCLA play Hawaii, and I was a bit jealous UCLA got to play a team full of tiny guys playing undisciplined, making lots of first game mistakes. Same goes for Arizona vs. New Mexico. Although I was also jealous of all the other teams playing exciting football in offense. I can't believe how incapable we were of pushing the ball down the field in the absence of a running game.

That says a lot about our O-line play, if he was the best. That's not what I saw though. He needs a lot of scrimmage/game reps to have better vision of who is coming his way from where. He just looked a half second behind with his head on a swivel and reacting after he snapped the ball. Our O-line were venetian blinds on passing downs and rarely got to their block at the second level. And don't get me started about open field blocks on the perimeter. Maybe they can move Poncho back to center Cornelius to guard and Herbert to tackle. I'm only half joking. If it's another hot day next weekend, maybe everyone needs to take a polar bear plunge before they suit up to wake up and stay fresh.

Looking ahead from here it is tough to stomach that Idaho out of the gate put the blueprint out their how to shut down this offense. Expect as similar as possible defensive scheme from BSU, until we prove we can beat it. BTW. This game ended our nation leading streak of 14 games scoring more than 30 points.

He could be forgiven for presuming our mass could move their mass for a yard. But this sequence brings up a couple things. In the past it would have been a QB sneak for Bo to find that sliver of space to shoot the ball forward for the first down. Second, there can be so much mass between our RB and the first down it turns into a traffic jame where we literally can't get out of our own way. Or in this case we literally tripped over each other.