First off, apologies for Kafka-ing into Mike Parker. Those refs got to me. Period.
Beavs got out-physicaled..again. Two times now, so it’s a pattern, but they did look slightly better tonight than versus Michigan.
Speaking of patterns, I said the QB situation would take at least six weeks (maybe all season) to shake out. The pattern with Collins is he runs all over D2 and low level D1 teams, but can’t run on legit D1 defenses. He can throw a slant. He can throw a decent deep ball. He can’t throw much else. Awful spirals, which could explain the drops. So the offense is one step forward, two back with him. Each drive seems to have a wasted down due to his inefficiency. It’s hard to win with 2 downs per drive. Subject to change, but if we’re being blunt, that’s what this guy is, despite the flashes of brilliance people want to cling to. Potential means little unless it’s realized. Consistently good performance > inconsistent great performances. E.g. I’d take Hogan in a heartbeat over Collins. He’s consistently boring and good, rarely if ever great. Collins’ body language on the sideline has become concerning…it looks like moping, as a commenter pointed out.
Bolden continues to make mistakes. He rebounded to a degree and had an okay game, but he’s the Seth Collins of the WRs — a great play here, an awful play there. Just no consistency.
Ryan Nall looked great. Then he didn’t play much the rest of the game. Why?
Again no TE involvement in the offense. For an offense like this to run, there has to be work over the middle and check downs. Can’t throw a slant or fly pattern every pass play.
Beavs D is subject to being pushed around. Again, mental and physical toughness is a problem. I wasn’t paying extremely close attention, but I saw some 3-4, which makes little sense vs. Stanford. Huge gaps/holes for those Stanford RBs. What were Mageo’s final numbers? People were raving he’s a stud. I didn’t see him doing much — every tackle by a LB seemed to be 6-8 yards downfield. I wasn’t impressed with anyone on D tonight. Stanford’s OC called a great game and had them off balance all night.
The Pac-12 really needs to look into the referee situation. It’s a real problem to have refs determining games. Ultimately they probably didn’t tonight because the Beavs wore down, but you never know how things could have been different if they get that proper call.
Overall, the most frustrating game of the year so far. Looking at my list, I had Weber and San Jose as wins, and Michigan and Stanford as loses, so we’re right on track. You’d like to see good loses where the team looks close to making a break through. Beavs didn’t look close in either loss.
I’ll be taking a vacation starting Monday, so I’ll have a general thread up through the bye until I get home. Beavs get a bye at a great time and have a lot of time to get better.