As noted in the last thread, I’m not going to spend time thinking about these games so long as Seth Collins is running around like a chicken with his head cut off. There’s not much to think about. Jack summed that situation up nicely.

Since the game kicks off late on Saturday, I will watch it, but no more wasted afternoons watching that guy.

My feeling is the Beavs aren’t as awful as they’ve looked the past few weeks. This is based on the generality that at the lowest point, a person or team is not as bad as they appear. Nebraska, for example, went from looking awful to looking pretty good. Were they awful all along, or did they hit a bad period where everything was going against them and it snowballed? Probably the latter, or at least a mix of the two. I suspect the same is true with the Beavs, and we’ll see some better performances. Am I confident in that? No. But that’s usually how things work.

I’m not going to make a prediction on this game since we don’t even know who the QB will be (e.g. reports that Nick Mitchell is getting heavy reps). I had this marked as a win pre-season, so I’ll go with the W, but no clue on a score. I have a feeling whoever is QB will be handing the ball off a lot. My feeling is GA might start Mitchell, or have him ready to go if Collins struggles at all, and that he will go back to basics and try to jump start the run game. This would be smart for obvious reasons (keep the D rested, keep Collins involvement minimal, etc).

Per Gina.

This is an interesting development.

• I was a huge Gary Andersen fan. That cooled off quite a bit today. Gotta play the backup QB in this game and get them experience. Not only this, but he panicked and made several horrible coaching decisions.
  • Onside kick when his team gained momentum.
  • Punt fake on 4th and 2 inside the opponent’s 20.
  • These two calls alone resulted in a 10 point swing.
  • Did not give his backups valuable experience they will need down the road.
  • Not overriding Sitake and that awful 4-2-5 that was leaving gaping holes early in the game.
  • Slow to make personnel changes on defense, leaving Fred L at guard, etc.
• Seth Collins must be benched. I won’t be watching the Colorado game, or any other game, if Seth Collins is the QB. I said at the beginning of the year, this QB battle would take 6+ weeks to pan out. Here we are week 6, and it is very clear to me Collins is not a D1 QB. No other team in the conference offered him as a QB. He throws off his back foot, he runs in circles, he misses easy completions giving the WRs no opportunity for YAC, and he is now throwing interceptions (which I said, he was long overdue for and getting lucky early in the year).
• Seth Collins is dangerous — he might actually get a WR/RB seriously injured (concussions, spinal injury) or killed. It is irresponsible to play this guy. I don’t care if it’s McMaryion, Mitchell, or even VanderVeen. Someone else has to run this ship purely for safety reasons.
• This defense is awful, but in the second half when the personnel changed and Washington State gave up, they did look better, so I’d start those guys next week. I mean why not? Sure, most of that was WSU giving up, but those players were at least competing.

This team is very bad. I thought the coaching staff would be good for several wins, but now I don’t think that. These coaches…well, we are learning about them still, but I used to think extremely highly of GA. I thought he was a perfect coach, tbh. From what I saw today, they are flawed in that (a) they stick with ‘their guys’ too long but are willing to change out Riley’s guys, which is obviously going to lose the team because it’s favoritism (b) slow to make in-game changes (c) impatience/frustration that leads to hasty/risky coaching decisions (d) need to look in the mirror, because a lot of today came down to coaching (e) piss poor play calling, that GA delegates to Baldwin and then never overrides? Simply can’t have a QB running the ball 25 times.

Speaking of which, this is a FINESSE team. Holy crap, it might be the most finesse offense in all of NCAA sports. Even the two point conversion required some type of double pass, trick play. This is the anti Stanford, anti Michigan, etc. People say the Ducks are soft? No, this is soft. This is softer than Riley’s offense, if we are being honest.

Overall, this game went nothing like I envisioned. Boy was I wrong.

I’m not jumping ship on GA entirely, but I definitely need to reassess. He has some major flaws that are coming out as we go. Saying he takes accountability isn’t enough. It’s not that the Beavers lost, but how they lost, and how he managed the game and the personnel that I am so bearish on.

Go Beavs