Let me preface all of this with the fact that I wasn't satisfied with Saturday's effort no more than the rest of you guys. With that said, 1-0 is always better than 0-1 even though it felt like a loss almost.
Now, I'm not of the same mindset that the sky is falling and we're staring down the gun of a 3-9 season like some of you, but I think we have some areas for concern.
My biggest issue with Saturday was that we didn't impose ourselves on Albany. I get that we kept it vanilla across the board and that our mindset probably wasn't in the right place (which is a completely different issue in itself), but it's a COMPLETELY different level of football and we didn't just physically push them around. I was disappointed in that. Scheme obviously plays part in that and what I mean by that is that.....if they stack 7-8 guys in the box and have 1-2 extra defenders then it simply becomes a #'s game.
Contrary to popular belief, I thought Fancher played a fairly clean/good game. I get it.....He didn't throw the ball 40 yards downfield all game long, but he didn't have to. In Rakeem Cato's four seasons at Marshall, he averaged 7.6 yards/attempt. Fancher averaged 7.1 on Saturday. Am I saying Cam is Cato? No. I'm simply saying that you can stretch defenses in a variety of ways. I know he threw up the INT, but if you go back and look at the film, there was something going on with that play. After the previous play, the offense rushed back to the LOS and never looked to the sidelines for signals (like every other play). What I'm getting at is....I believe that play was a designed play that was signaled in with the previous play. That or the staff gave them some kind of quick snap play. Either way, it was a one-read play and he was throwing it deep no matter what the look was. That's how I saw it during the game and after re-watching the game. Again, he has a TON of room for improvement, but anyone that couldn't see he's much more comfortable in the QB setting simply wasn't paying attention.
I 100% believe we left a ton of gas in the tank Saturday. We only ran 61 plays on Saturday which is 12 less than Huff's average over the last two seasons. Now, it almost bit us in the ass on Saturday, but we also beat ourselves in a number of ways (that are generally expected in Game # 1). Bryan Robinson's holding on Ali's long TD. Driskell's holding on a 1st down run at mid-field. Ali fumbling the ball on 3rd down on what would've been a 1st down run. Throwing the ball on a 4th & 1 on Albany's 14 yard line. The list goes on and on.
The good thing is, these were all fixable mistakes.
I'll stand by my 8-4 to 9-3 prediction as I've seen us be effective with things that were missing on Saturday.
Like others have said, this weekend will be interesting to see how we respond on the road to a poor performance at home.
Now, I'm not of the same mindset that the sky is falling and we're staring down the gun of a 3-9 season like some of you, but I think we have some areas for concern.
My biggest issue with Saturday was that we didn't impose ourselves on Albany. I get that we kept it vanilla across the board and that our mindset probably wasn't in the right place (which is a completely different issue in itself), but it's a COMPLETELY different level of football and we didn't just physically push them around. I was disappointed in that. Scheme obviously plays part in that and what I mean by that is that.....if they stack 7-8 guys in the box and have 1-2 extra defenders then it simply becomes a #'s game.
Contrary to popular belief, I thought Fancher played a fairly clean/good game. I get it.....He didn't throw the ball 40 yards downfield all game long, but he didn't have to. In Rakeem Cato's four seasons at Marshall, he averaged 7.6 yards/attempt. Fancher averaged 7.1 on Saturday. Am I saying Cam is Cato? No. I'm simply saying that you can stretch defenses in a variety of ways. I know he threw up the INT, but if you go back and look at the film, there was something going on with that play. After the previous play, the offense rushed back to the LOS and never looked to the sidelines for signals (like every other play). What I'm getting at is....I believe that play was a designed play that was signaled in with the previous play. That or the staff gave them some kind of quick snap play. Either way, it was a one-read play and he was throwing it deep no matter what the look was. That's how I saw it during the game and after re-watching the game. Again, he has a TON of room for improvement, but anyone that couldn't see he's much more comfortable in the QB setting simply wasn't paying attention.
I 100% believe we left a ton of gas in the tank Saturday. We only ran 61 plays on Saturday which is 12 less than Huff's average over the last two seasons. Now, it almost bit us in the ass on Saturday, but we also beat ourselves in a number of ways (that are generally expected in Game # 1). Bryan Robinson's holding on Ali's long TD. Driskell's holding on a 1st down run at mid-field. Ali fumbling the ball on 3rd down on what would've been a 1st down run. Throwing the ball on a 4th & 1 on Albany's 14 yard line. The list goes on and on.
The good thing is, these were all fixable mistakes.
I'll stand by my 8-4 to 9-3 prediction as I've seen us be effective with things that were missing on Saturday.
Like others have said, this weekend will be interesting to see how we respond on the road to a poor performance at home.
