J-MAGIC

You don't get to sign three four-star quarterbacks in back-to-back-to-back years and keep them all. Simple as that.

National media and opposing fans (and Chris Heady weirdly) really having a field day with this one

I'm not going to be mad if they don't sign him or anything, but I would very much like to sign an incredible athlete from our backyard who recruiting services say would be our second-best commit!

We finished 33rd in post-season SP+ and Minnesota finished 35th, so even teams. The COVID stuff hurt their depth so that gives them points, but we also had starters out so I don't see how that's super impactful. To call it one of the worst losses of the last two decades (or even worse than Illinois this year and Purdue/Colorado last year) is very overdramatic.

If we're gonna talk COVID excuses, Minnesota got three weeks off beforehand and we were playing our sixth conference game in a row. That seems like a much bigger factor than them having some backup defenders sitting out.

I mean, you don't have to have a cannon to be a good QB. McSorley was a great quarterback for PSU and I wouldn't say he has even a remotely good arm; he just made good decisions quickly, threw it accurately and was a good athlete who could hurt people with his legs. Based on the games, Adrian seems like the much-better option right now, but just because Luke was bad a freshman doesn't mean his QB career isn't salvageable. If our coaches think he should stay at QB, then I trust them. But I also think Luke should realize he can get on the field as a receiver right now and try to help the team while he waits to take over for Adrian.

Lotta people who were the loudest critics about dumb/meaningless stuff from our coaches are going to be the loudest cheerleaders if/when this thing turns around.

I'm down with keeping him at QB long-term if our coaches, who see him every day, think he has a future there. But just based on the games it's very clear Adrian is the better option for next year and possibly the year after, so if he can't make a push this spring why would he not try to get on the field as a WR?

Calling plays is always collaborative so I wouldn't make all that much of this. Lubick and Walters would have always had input into the play calls and situational responsibilities.

This play was a close first down and the dive was necessary to get the first down. Both fumbles in that game I really wasn't that angry about. He had the ball high and tight on both and some combination of the sleeves and the defense making two good plays resulted in the fumbles. He wasn't Michael Vick'ing the ball or anything. The picks were both pretty egregious though.

If he cleans up the fumbles and we give him receivers who can get open, a line that can consistently pass pro/snap him the ball, and backs who can take the rushing burden off of him, I truly think Adrian is an all-conference quarterback. He is extremely talented.

Sorry, that chart was from after the 2019 season. I don't believe the 2020 has been released, but at least from the eye test I'm assuming the underneath numbers improved this year.

Last season Adrian was a very efficient deep passer and it was "Adrian needs to stop trying to hit a home run every play and learn to take the singles that are there." Now that he completed 70 percent of his passes and showed real growth in reading coverages, it's "Adrian can't throw deep." He needs to take better care of the ball, but this dude can't win with some of you.

We were the only P5 school to offer him as a QB, correct? I can't imagine that's changed with what he's put on film.

If he told Luke, "Hey, we gave you an honest-to-god shot at quarterback, but it's not working out and we could really use you contributing to this team at another position where we think you could really excel" and Luke bails, then that's not really on Frost and I'm not that mad. It will still deeply suck, but you have to be able to have honest convos with players about where they stand for better or worse.

To'oto'o' is one of the best linebackers in the country. If he wants to come here I'll buy him a car (just kidding)

I thought the most interesting part of the Sherman interview was Rutledge basically saying that Cerni and some other injuries/departures drastically affected how they were doing on ST. What position guys got hurt that would have made that big of an impact?

People who think our coaches don't care about special teams or aren't trying to improve them are clueless. These are a lot more difficult, complex and time-consuming problems to fix than just telling your punt returner to make sure he catches the ball, but for some reason fans think systemic and long-running problems get fixed by snapping your fingers. It's fair to criticize them for certain aspects of the ST's performance, but these are problems of organization/talent/depth, not our coaches being like "let's not practice any punts this week, who care about that lol".

When you're consistently outgaining teams and losing, that would point to your main systems being fine to even good, but needing to improve on the "hidden stats" like field position, turnovers, red zone scoring, etc., which I think most fans would agree we've been really bad at under Frost. That's why I really don't think we're as far away or struggling as much as people here like to say we are. Young teams are bad at that stuff and improve with experience. We've had young teams that are about to turn into veteran teams. And then hopefully we are able to "stay old" after that.

I'm not disputing that we need to do something different with gameday special teams. But that doesn't mean Frost needs to be the guy in the huddle telling them which kickoff coverage to run or whatever. We didn't hire Frost to be a CEO coach; we hired him because he is a great offensive mind and that's what we should want him to be spending a majority of his time working on. He should be directing big-picture stuff with defense and special teams during the week, but he doesn't need to be involved with their minutiae on gameday and should be delegating that to competent assistants. Special teams need better organization/assistant performance on gameday, not a head coach sacrificing his best skill to make a performative point. Mecole drops a punt every week but Chiefs fans aren't like, "I think Andy Reid should stop calling plays and go tell the punt returner to make sure he catches the ball." You hire head coaches for specific attributes and you should want them utilizing those attributes as much as they possibly can.

From a family perspective he had to do what he had to do and that's perfectly understandable. I do think from a football perspective he is going to regret this though.

Kentucky is one of the few P5 schools he could have gone to that had a worse passing offense than us.

Why are so many of our fans obsessed with getting our coach to stop doing the thing he's best at. He's regarded as one of the best playcallers in cfb by people who know what they're talking about. We should want him to call plays!

Every offense other than, like the single-wing needs WRs of all sizes and skillsets to succeed. Frost has used big wideouts and small wideouts equally at every stop he's been. Big, physical wideouts who can win one-on-one downfield, block well and body people in the redzone were a hole in our roster so they have been the priority as of late, and it was probably assumed that Wandale would be the primary Duck-R for the next two years. Acting like this is indicative of a big change in strategy is reading too much into a small sample.

You can definitely say that about Wandale leaving. But beyond that we're losing two linemen who were here for four and five years and probably both have a good shot to be drafted, an OK tight end who had been passed on the depth chart, and a 24-year-old running back. They would be nice to have back but I don't see how any of those cases are an indictment of Frost or his system or a sign we need change.