1. We are not a winning program anymore. Losing at home to Colorado is low. Losing to Colorado three times in a row is low. Colorado is dead last in all of Power Five football in terms of the fewest winning seasons in the last 14 years (ONE!). If we can't beat them at home - or at all in half a decade! - we have lost our right to the kind of appeal to history/track record Shaw would like to hang his hat on. I myself have often tried to put Shaw's success in perspective but there's another part to this perspective: as @StanMBAfan said, the stats the media cites about the sweep of Shaw's success have to go further and further back to make it sound good. Since beating Oregon in 2017 we are 17-17. Over the last 1,115 days - more than three years - we have lost more than we have won. We're not winners anymore.
2. We played Oregon closer than the final score indicated, but this time the final score paints a misleading picture of how competitive this game was. The bottom line is more or less the same for both games - we were moderately competitive but didn't deserve to win, first against the cream of the conference and then against one of the worst programs in the Pac-12. As usual, we get moral victories out of the team's resilience and fight, but close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades. Not only do we now have a losing streak against the long-time hapless Buffaloes, but we arguably played them less competitively than lowly UCLA despite the final margin. We gave up more yards per play to Colorado (6.3) than UCLA did (5.7) and had much fewer yards per play (5.2) against Colorado than UCLA did (7.4).
3. It was very disappointing to see the run game be ineffective after the excellent run game last week. I posited during the week that, while I have infinitely more confidence in Mills than in West, it is possible that being forced to simplify the game plan and rely more on the run game may have allowed us to establish the run and extend drives that otherwise would have stalled with a few missed passing connections. It seems like sometimes the passing game gets out of sync and we are forced to punt when just one play doesn't go our way. However, I'm not sure whether yesterday's drive chart supports my theory or not. It seemed like some of the ineffectiveness was due to missed connections in the pass game and some was due to lack of traction in the run game and some was due to boneheadedness (the Sanders gimmick package/delay of game). We were pass heavy from the get-go - 60/40 run pass ratio in the first half before becoming very unbalanced in the second half as we tried to catch up - but it's hard to disentangle how much of that was game plan and how much was a reaction to lack of early traction in the run game.
4. By the second half, this turned into one of those games where we abandoned the run for long stretches of football and Mills ended up with a massive amount of pass attempts. I liked the urgency and pace more at that point, but the offense's execution left me underwhelmed. Mills ended up with 5.8 yards per pass. Really, really, really bad. Of course when we throw 56 times we are going to have some passing yards and some big plays, but this was a super ineffective passing attack. Shaw talked a bit about how the super unfortunate/unfair for Stanford situation with Mill being held out from the game last week and from practice this week contributed to a lot of rust and I don't think we should minimize that. On the design of the offense, I went to bed prepared to comment this morning on use of personnel, as I find it very frustrating to see so many snaps go to Fisk, Heimuli, and Symonds. However, when I checked the snap counts this morning I was surprised - the skill position snap distribution was 56 percent to WRs, 21 percent to RBs, 19 percent to TEs, and 5 percent to FBs. That is indistinguishable from the kind of heavy use of WRs and restrained use of TEs I had advocated this offseason. If we used personnel more or less how I wanted, what went wrong? We can't sugarcoat bad execution. Michael Wilson, who otherwise had a very good game, dropping a touchdown pass was killer (in fact the difference in the game by scoreboard, as it turned out). The Mills misses @fborg81 broke down are ones he needs to make. We play TEs less because they're not very good, but that still leaves 35 snaps for Fisk and that's 35 snaps where we have a very bad player on the field. I like all the snaps for WRs, but the fourth and fifth guys (Higgins and Tremayne) didn't get open very often.
5. But it's not just execution. As many others have noted, our WRs run free much less often than other teams' WRs. Notably, that's even with 56 percent of the skill snaps going to WRs, meaning we have a lot of WRs for the opposing defense to cover, and even with three of the WRs being very good. The bottom line for the offense is what it consistently has been for many years - we get less than the sum of the parts from our offense. According to PFF, the top 12 offensive players in snaps all graded average or better. Mills, Sarell, Dalman, Bragg, Wedington, and Harrington were all good yesterday according to PFF. How do you get a QB, OL, and multiple skill position players to grade well and end up with 5.8 yards per pass? It would be a conundrum if we hadn't seen this for years. For whatever reason, we get less out of the offense than all the individual performances should add up to. We have an ethos that every man has to do his one eleventh on every play, but then they do and it's not good enough.
6. The story on defense isn't quite the same as talent is seriously lacking but some of the same dynamic is at play. @MCOOK2953 and some others have had some excellent breakdowns of Robinson's robotic play - not going beyond a limited assignment, waiting to be blocked, etc. The sum total of our guys on defense doing their one eleventh means that most guys do their job on most plays but nobody is really making plays. PFF told a similar story here. With the exception of Reid and Williamson, who had rough games, the guys on defense were adequate. Yet we gave up 6.3 yards per play and once again gave up 35 points. It kills us that guys don't make plays. The Fox hurry leading to the Antoine interception was a beauty, but we don't make plays generally - sacks, tackles for loss, pass breakups. Among the 125 teams in the nation, we are one of two that has yet to have a sack this year. We are 112th in tackles for loss per game. We are 102nd in passes defended per game. It's a defense that Robinson typifies, making tackles but not making plays.
7. In particular, despite my efforts to kick the horse to death, it keeps coming back to life and shitting all over the place: we cannot defend the pass. It is absolutely brutal. We actually defended the run pretty effectively yesterday, giving up 3.9 yards per carry (UCLA gave up 4.5 yards per carry). But we got roasted through the air, as usual. We gave up 10.6 yards per pass (UCLA, which was 127th in the country in this last year, gave up 7.9 yards per pass last week against this same Colorado team). 10.6 yards....per....pass. Against a Colorado team missing its star receiver. Our pass defense is absolutely horrendous. The quintessential plays were Dimitri Stanley running right past Williamson and Antoine for the 55 yard touchdown and Jerry Rice's kid getting the 34 yard touchdown with nobody in particular covering him, but McGill also struggles and Reid got abused by Laviska Shenault's brother. The observation I have is the same as last year: when I complain about our team's pass defense, it is not about cornerback play, or even DB play generally; rather, we have a holistic problem where the defense can't stop the pass and DL and LB take at least equal blame for contributing to the sad state of affairs.
8. Holistic problems on defense. That about sums it up. The inability to recruit difference makers leads to a talent problem. The refusal to recruit as many defensive players as offensive players leads to a depth problem. Every level of the defense contributes in its own way to the lack of plays. No coach is safe in this critique. But the buck stops with Anderson and the trajectory of his defense over the last half decade plus is damning. Specific to this season, we have had two weeks in a row in which we were within a score at halftime and then gave up 14 points in the third quarter. Both times we appeared not to make halftime adjustments, and I believe Antoine explicitly said as much post-game yesterday. Our defense is rotten.
9. Game balls: Foster Sarell (trusting PFF on this one as they had Sarell as the second highest grade after Mills), Dalyn Wade-Perry (five tackles within three yards of the line of scrimmage makes him the obvious player of the game on either side of the ball, the best game of his career), Jet Toner (truthfully Sanborn was probably better but a 48 yarder is no gimme and the psychological bounce-back for Toner is important), Pete Alamar (solid bounce-back game for special teams)
10. We are not a winning program anymore, and I now expect us to lose (competitively, with fight, but losing) to solid teams. I just fear we've lost winning habits and mentalities. A six game losing streak speaks volumes. A win against Washington State would be a surprise just because it's been so long since we've won. But on paper this is an eminently winnable matchup and there is nothing at all scary about Washington State. We have a common opponent in this short season and both our offense (7.2 yards per play compared to 6.4 yards per play for the Cougs) and defense (we gave up 7.5 yards per play and the Cougs gave up 8.8 yards per play) did better against Oregon than the Cougs did. If we lose this it sends the same message as yesterday, that we can't even beat bad Power Five teams. If we win it won't tell us much, but at least we'd be off the schneid.
2. We played Oregon closer than the final score indicated, but this time the final score paints a misleading picture of how competitive this game was. The bottom line is more or less the same for both games - we were moderately competitive but didn't deserve to win, first against the cream of the conference and then against one of the worst programs in the Pac-12. As usual, we get moral victories out of the team's resilience and fight, but close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades. Not only do we now have a losing streak against the long-time hapless Buffaloes, but we arguably played them less competitively than lowly UCLA despite the final margin. We gave up more yards per play to Colorado (6.3) than UCLA did (5.7) and had much fewer yards per play (5.2) against Colorado than UCLA did (7.4).
3. It was very disappointing to see the run game be ineffective after the excellent run game last week. I posited during the week that, while I have infinitely more confidence in Mills than in West, it is possible that being forced to simplify the game plan and rely more on the run game may have allowed us to establish the run and extend drives that otherwise would have stalled with a few missed passing connections. It seems like sometimes the passing game gets out of sync and we are forced to punt when just one play doesn't go our way. However, I'm not sure whether yesterday's drive chart supports my theory or not. It seemed like some of the ineffectiveness was due to missed connections in the pass game and some was due to lack of traction in the run game and some was due to boneheadedness (the Sanders gimmick package/delay of game). We were pass heavy from the get-go - 60/40 run pass ratio in the first half before becoming very unbalanced in the second half as we tried to catch up - but it's hard to disentangle how much of that was game plan and how much was a reaction to lack of early traction in the run game.
4. By the second half, this turned into one of those games where we abandoned the run for long stretches of football and Mills ended up with a massive amount of pass attempts. I liked the urgency and pace more at that point, but the offense's execution left me underwhelmed. Mills ended up with 5.8 yards per pass. Really, really, really bad. Of course when we throw 56 times we are going to have some passing yards and some big plays, but this was a super ineffective passing attack. Shaw talked a bit about how the super unfortunate/unfair for Stanford situation with Mill being held out from the game last week and from practice this week contributed to a lot of rust and I don't think we should minimize that. On the design of the offense, I went to bed prepared to comment this morning on use of personnel, as I find it very frustrating to see so many snaps go to Fisk, Heimuli, and Symonds. However, when I checked the snap counts this morning I was surprised - the skill position snap distribution was 56 percent to WRs, 21 percent to RBs, 19 percent to TEs, and 5 percent to FBs. That is indistinguishable from the kind of heavy use of WRs and restrained use of TEs I had advocated this offseason. If we used personnel more or less how I wanted, what went wrong? We can't sugarcoat bad execution. Michael Wilson, who otherwise had a very good game, dropping a touchdown pass was killer (in fact the difference in the game by scoreboard, as it turned out). The Mills misses @fborg81 broke down are ones he needs to make. We play TEs less because they're not very good, but that still leaves 35 snaps for Fisk and that's 35 snaps where we have a very bad player on the field. I like all the snaps for WRs, but the fourth and fifth guys (Higgins and Tremayne) didn't get open very often.
5. But it's not just execution. As many others have noted, our WRs run free much less often than other teams' WRs. Notably, that's even with 56 percent of the skill snaps going to WRs, meaning we have a lot of WRs for the opposing defense to cover, and even with three of the WRs being very good. The bottom line for the offense is what it consistently has been for many years - we get less than the sum of the parts from our offense. According to PFF, the top 12 offensive players in snaps all graded average or better. Mills, Sarell, Dalman, Bragg, Wedington, and Harrington were all good yesterday according to PFF. How do you get a QB, OL, and multiple skill position players to grade well and end up with 5.8 yards per pass? It would be a conundrum if we hadn't seen this for years. For whatever reason, we get less out of the offense than all the individual performances should add up to. We have an ethos that every man has to do his one eleventh on every play, but then they do and it's not good enough.
6. The story on defense isn't quite the same as talent is seriously lacking but some of the same dynamic is at play. @MCOOK2953 and some others have had some excellent breakdowns of Robinson's robotic play - not going beyond a limited assignment, waiting to be blocked, etc. The sum total of our guys on defense doing their one eleventh means that most guys do their job on most plays but nobody is really making plays. PFF told a similar story here. With the exception of Reid and Williamson, who had rough games, the guys on defense were adequate. Yet we gave up 6.3 yards per play and once again gave up 35 points. It kills us that guys don't make plays. The Fox hurry leading to the Antoine interception was a beauty, but we don't make plays generally - sacks, tackles for loss, pass breakups. Among the 125 teams in the nation, we are one of two that has yet to have a sack this year. We are 112th in tackles for loss per game. We are 102nd in passes defended per game. It's a defense that Robinson typifies, making tackles but not making plays.
7. In particular, despite my efforts to kick the horse to death, it keeps coming back to life and shitting all over the place: we cannot defend the pass. It is absolutely brutal. We actually defended the run pretty effectively yesterday, giving up 3.9 yards per carry (UCLA gave up 4.5 yards per carry). But we got roasted through the air, as usual. We gave up 10.6 yards per pass (UCLA, which was 127th in the country in this last year, gave up 7.9 yards per pass last week against this same Colorado team). 10.6 yards....per....pass. Against a Colorado team missing its star receiver. Our pass defense is absolutely horrendous. The quintessential plays were Dimitri Stanley running right past Williamson and Antoine for the 55 yard touchdown and Jerry Rice's kid getting the 34 yard touchdown with nobody in particular covering him, but McGill also struggles and Reid got abused by Laviska Shenault's brother. The observation I have is the same as last year: when I complain about our team's pass defense, it is not about cornerback play, or even DB play generally; rather, we have a holistic problem where the defense can't stop the pass and DL and LB take at least equal blame for contributing to the sad state of affairs.
8. Holistic problems on defense. That about sums it up. The inability to recruit difference makers leads to a talent problem. The refusal to recruit as many defensive players as offensive players leads to a depth problem. Every level of the defense contributes in its own way to the lack of plays. No coach is safe in this critique. But the buck stops with Anderson and the trajectory of his defense over the last half decade plus is damning. Specific to this season, we have had two weeks in a row in which we were within a score at halftime and then gave up 14 points in the third quarter. Both times we appeared not to make halftime adjustments, and I believe Antoine explicitly said as much post-game yesterday. Our defense is rotten.
9. Game balls: Foster Sarell (trusting PFF on this one as they had Sarell as the second highest grade after Mills), Dalyn Wade-Perry (five tackles within three yards of the line of scrimmage makes him the obvious player of the game on either side of the ball, the best game of his career), Jet Toner (truthfully Sanborn was probably better but a 48 yarder is no gimme and the psychological bounce-back for Toner is important), Pete Alamar (solid bounce-back game for special teams)
10. We are not a winning program anymore, and I now expect us to lose (competitively, with fight, but losing) to solid teams. I just fear we've lost winning habits and mentalities. A six game losing streak speaks volumes. A win against Washington State would be a surprise just because it's been so long since we've won. But on paper this is an eminently winnable matchup and there is nothing at all scary about Washington State. We have a common opponent in this short season and both our offense (7.2 yards per play compared to 6.4 yards per play for the Cougs) and defense (we gave up 7.5 yards per play and the Cougs gave up 8.8 yards per play) did better against Oregon than the Cougs did. If we lose this it sends the same message as yesterday, that we can't even beat bad Power Five teams. If we win it won't tell us much, but at least we'd be off the schneid.
