I hope the coaches are, but as a fan base we seem to talk about virtually everything except the biggest problem I feel this FB team has... I hear people talk play calling, is Muschamp meddling in the offense, people complain about the AD, the board, our media relations, recruiting rankings/“stars”, poor conditioning.... All those are somewhat legitimate concerns and contributors to the bad season in their own ways I suppose.
But, the single biggest problem we have on this team is a LACK OF SPEED. Especially at WR and CB. We have nobody in the secondary who can run fast enough to cover good receivers and we do not have a single offensive skill player with the speed to stretch a D. Maybe Shi is fast enough to stress some teams but he has only shown flashes of it and you truly need at LEAST 2 if not 3 guys with full on game breaking speed at wideout. We have nobody that can make a defense respect the deep ball. Ryan has the arm to throw it deep and- other than the first half of the UF game- threw some pretty nice ones this season the few times we actually tried it. Edwards was the only guy who could get open downfield, he made multiple nice catches on deep balls this season but we simply have nobody left now that he is gone.
We can play tough up front on D (well we could with Kinlaw, Wonnum, Smith.. along the DL..) but our secondary gets SMOKED every time we play a team with good wideouts. Watch the clemsun game, Bama, UT... every team we played with decent receivers blew our doors off. We cannot run with those teams.
It is a concern that- as far as I can tell from the posted 40 times online of our incoming recruits- we are doing absolutely nothing to address with the current recruiting class. We need 4.3-4.4 speed and we have 4.6+ guys coming in. This staff seems to favor big bodies over speed at CB and that is a big issue IMO.
I am not saying ALL we need to recruit at any position is speed guys, my point is that we have a decent team. We do! But with an unimaginative OC calling plays and nobody able to run a deep route (or cover one on D).. it does not matter how solid your core is, we are easy to scheme against on both sides of the ball. This was what Spurrier did best when he was successful here- we had speed all over the field! Until we get that back, it will not matter how solid our DL is, who is calling the plays, what our OL can do... nobody can block against a stacked box of defenders that have you out numbered. Nobody can stop a team who has receivers running free downfield every play and no offense can score a bunch of points without a couple receivers pushing the safeties and DBs back to open the run and give them some space on short routes... You have to look no further back than the previous two seasons when we had Deebo and Edwards out wide together. The offense was not drastically different, in fact probably not as good or experienced at many positions as we were this season, but the results- both points averaged and win/loss records... were dramatically better. Why? Speed.
But, the single biggest problem we have on this team is a LACK OF SPEED. Especially at WR and CB. We have nobody in the secondary who can run fast enough to cover good receivers and we do not have a single offensive skill player with the speed to stretch a D. Maybe Shi is fast enough to stress some teams but he has only shown flashes of it and you truly need at LEAST 2 if not 3 guys with full on game breaking speed at wideout. We have nobody that can make a defense respect the deep ball. Ryan has the arm to throw it deep and- other than the first half of the UF game- threw some pretty nice ones this season the few times we actually tried it. Edwards was the only guy who could get open downfield, he made multiple nice catches on deep balls this season but we simply have nobody left now that he is gone.
We can play tough up front on D (well we could with Kinlaw, Wonnum, Smith.. along the DL..) but our secondary gets SMOKED every time we play a team with good wideouts. Watch the clemsun game, Bama, UT... every team we played with decent receivers blew our doors off. We cannot run with those teams.
It is a concern that- as far as I can tell from the posted 40 times online of our incoming recruits- we are doing absolutely nothing to address with the current recruiting class. We need 4.3-4.4 speed and we have 4.6+ guys coming in. This staff seems to favor big bodies over speed at CB and that is a big issue IMO.
I am not saying ALL we need to recruit at any position is speed guys, my point is that we have a decent team. We do! But with an unimaginative OC calling plays and nobody able to run a deep route (or cover one on D).. it does not matter how solid your core is, we are easy to scheme against on both sides of the ball. This was what Spurrier did best when he was successful here- we had speed all over the field! Until we get that back, it will not matter how solid our DL is, who is calling the plays, what our OL can do... nobody can block against a stacked box of defenders that have you out numbered. Nobody can stop a team who has receivers running free downfield every play and no offense can score a bunch of points without a couple receivers pushing the safeties and DBs back to open the run and give them some space on short routes... You have to look no further back than the previous two seasons when we had Deebo and Edwards out wide together. The offense was not drastically different, in fact probably not as good or experienced at many positions as we were this season, but the results- both points averaged and win/loss records... were dramatically better. Why? Speed.
