midranger wrote:I think the preseason expectations created a bit of this. They were wholly unrealistic based on Hornibrook’s outlier performance in the orange bowl. This should have been self evident to most, but once all the bad news started coming out of summer camp (key injuries, suspensions, and guys just up and leaving the program) you had to have the sense that this would be a bad year. I was comparing it to 2000 with the expectations+bad news/vibe= terrible season before the games started. I honestly think this year goes further down hill from here.
I thought it would primarily because of the defense, but the offense has also disappeared. What I did not expect was for Chryst to be badly outcoached on the whole all year. He been truly awful managing games this year. Not sure how much say he has on play calling, but it has no rhythm or pace. Just lousy all around.
Kinda where I was getting last night. Agree with most of this with maybe a few differences.
Chryst lacked urgency early against BYU and had some terrible punt decisions in recent weeks. You’re not suggesting firing him or anything but obviously this is good and bad of him. I think he might learn from some of these punting decisions unless he’s like McCarthy and you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.
Team is kinda just a limp team sitting about 20th best and SHOULD win a handful of easy ones. Chalk Penn State up as a loss and Ohio State (or Michigan again) if we get there. Could see Purdue or Northerstern getting tricky. If these injuries keep adding up on defense I could definitely see another upset slip in.