McKewon: It's time for Bo to shake things up

[lo country]

I was surprised when they moved Turner to receiver after he'd broken half the Texas highschool records. I'm not trying to start a QB controversy, it just made me wonder what they're thinking down there as far as utilization of talent. Don't tell me ,...no, don't even try to tell me the other potential QB's are not as smart as Taylor. Every fan of another team that I talk to says we have an athlete at QB. Now we have Armstrong in the mix......will they decide to move him to receiver? Someone tell me their reasoning.

Marcus Mendoza................................40 yrd 4.4, 20 bench presses, 45.5" VERTICAL

There is no reason I can think of save Bo historically plays "academics" over "athletes". I am beating a personal dead horse on this, but it will speak volumes to me about Bo seeing who we field against NW and if we have changed or dumbed down the schemes on D.

 

[VectorVictor]

I'm starting to flip like a politician on this whole blackshirt thing. I may be starting to see the light. College football is a lot about psychology.

And during the 1990s, we had one of the best Sports Psychologists helping the team, and we lost him during the early 2000s to retirement during Frank's reign, if memory serves.

You're right that there is a lot of psychology that goes into college football...or sports...or life in general. I wonder if we have another sports psychologist on staff, and if we're using that resource to its full extent...or if that resource is doing an adequate job?

Dr Stark didn't retire. He left to pursue other ventures and is still heavily involved helping in NASCAR.

Huh. Figured the NASCAR boys would already have more than enough motivation thanks to what they're supposed to be bootleggin'...interesting to know. Thanks!

 

[VectorVictor]

I may be brand new to this board (somehow just now found this board) but junior4949 brought up one of my biggest stinks of Coach Pelini and his defense.

I can't stand the 2-Gap system we are using with our defensive front. The system itself only works when you have the proper personnel to run it. Suh and Crick are not walking through that tunnel. It was also a system that may work great at OU and LSU but they are able to recruit the cream of the crop from the south and Texas along the DL. You add on top of that blue-chip recruits do not want to come in and play in a 2-Gap system. It isn't fancy and glorifiying to say the least. These elite kids want to go to a 1-Gap system that will showcase their speed and pass rushing skills. As we know DT/DE's do not rush the QB in our system.

We are lucky to get the likes of Peat and Valentine but to be a big time program you need a lot of quality depth along the DL. Right now it doesn't seem like we have that and the best DL talent imo are red-shirting or still quite young. These same kids would make excellent 4-3 1-Gappers also.

One of my major gripes about Bo is his unwillingness to adapt to the personnel he has. He is so dang stubborn! I think this is the reason we have Beck and Paps as our coordinators. They may be up and coming big time coordinators that are two of our best recruiters but they are very much green in the playcalling department. They were selected and not others from the outside with much better resumes due to the fact he wanted yes men and coaches that would run exactly what he wanted.

Bo needs to make changes or he is going to lose his job. He will have no one to blame for the continual down turn of his program but only himself.

Good to see new blood, just be sure to keep posting around these parts when things go well, too!

And I agree about fitting scheme to the personnel. Supposedly we have this treasure trove of LB talent that we're not getting on the field, and there's been scuttlebutt about switching to a 3-4--why not just operate out of a 3-4 for your base defense and recruit to it going forward?

 

[JTrain]

Honestly, UCLA's crumbling season is embarrassing to us at this point. Yikes!

UCLA attacked us and figured it out. Ohio State built on that, attacked us, and figured us out. We gotta get it together, man. </jongrudenvoice>

If you don't get an opening tag on that, the first 35 posts will all read in Gruden voice, and that'll be rough for the readers.

 

[C N Red]

I think one HUGE things Bo doesn't like to do, and I feel you need to do in college football especially with QBs that can run is play more man coverage on the outside. You need to put in the guys who can play good man to man on the outside so you can have more guys on the inside and backside to play for the run and/or put more pressure on the QB.

Now, you don't need to do this for teams who don't have good running QBs. For instance, think about all the teams we have played since Bo's been here. Which ones do we usually have the best defensive games against?? The teams who's QBs can't run. We have stopped many of those offenses at the word go.

However, he tries to play that same defense against spread offenses with running QBs and it doesn't work unless your defense is full of studs and playmakers(i.e.2009 defense).

I really believe it's as easy as this. You have to play more man on the outside against teams like tOSU, Michigan, NW, etc. This leaves one more, many times at least 2 more guys to defend the run on the inside. Or am I totally missing something??