A few things.

[MWBATL]

Well, yeah. But when there’s no variety the masses tend to be correct. “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” I think that quote applies here. Our inside zones and counters have been highly ineffective on this continent this year. Is it blocking or defensive scheme? Probably a bit of both. The O line isn’t performing exceptionally well, but it also seems like we are putting them in a bad spot where they simply don’t have enough bodies cover defenders. Whatever it is, we seemingly aren’t doing anything to address it, as it’s been a month and we keep running into the backsides of our linemen. We can’t keep this up. The coaches need to either fix the blocking issues or scheme around our deficiencies.

This is what's bothering me. I fear that we are so determined to dominate the LOS that we're going to keep up the beatings until the morale improves.

 

[iceeater1969]

not sure it's the loss per se, but probably more the manner of the loss. and letting games get away

A few things. I’m sure I’ll get flamed by some.

I wanna start out by saying, I think it’s interesting when 90% of the posters on here predicted anywhere from 5-7 wins before the season, and most on here were predicting us to lose this game (go back and look at the prediction thread and preseason win total thread), yet when we actually lose a game we’re expected lose, people lose their minds. (We opened as a 10 point dog.)

Losing sucks. I absolutely hate losing, especially when we gifted them a couple scores, but we did in my opinion play a deeper team with superior talent at their place…who’s also ranked and undefeated and won 10 games a year ago with a title game appearance and reloaded via the portal. It wasn’t Bowling Green.

3-2 is I think where most thought we’d be at this point in the season, but when we’re actually 3-2, the sky is falling. I figured we’d be 3-2, but with the FSU and Cuse games flipped. I still think McCord is one of the top 1-2 quarterbacks we’ll face.

I know fandom can make people irrational, but after losing ON THE ROAD to pretty good Syracuse and Louisville teams, people are wondering where we’re gonna find the other wins to become bowl eligible, which, again, was kind of our target given our schedule, which all of a sudden doesn’t seem as daunting, because…

We still get to play…
- Duke (Beat terrible MTSU, Elon…and beat terrible UCONN and NW by 5 & 6 pts.)
- UNC (Seemingly terrible but gef will pull out all the stops to beat us. His Super Bowl)
- Notre Dame (Maybe not as good as we thought but will be tough. At least we don’t travel. Probably be like a home game for them though.)
- Seemingly terrible VT
- Seemingly terrible NCSU

We CAN win all of those. We also get Miami at home and you never know what can happen in COFH. We better than Kentucky? GA loses 2-4 between now and then, I can see that culture imploding.

Keep in mind Cuse and Louisville had all the time in the world to prepare for us. We were Cuse’s second game following Ohio, Louisville got a bye before us after playing Jax St and Austin Peay. We’ve haven’t rested while globe trotting. We finally get a much needed bye. We lose to Duke? Yes, we would have the green light to panic.

Having said all that. No excuses. Win every game.

***One little extra tidbit I saw on twitter yesterday. The ones moaning the loudest about coaching and play calling…most of the time don’t even know what formation we’re in, or what personnel we have out, or what coverage we’re in. The same ones who think our defense gave up 31 points yesterday. Thought that was funny. And true.

Relax, guys. We’re fine. For now.

We all want to win.

Lets be specific on a one play.

On the 4th and short at the end.

We had run utm 3 times.= Run the ballll. Who called these plays?

On 4th we again had jumbo and single back.

Looking past Key into back ground the formation had one wr and one db. The wr is Singleton - hoping to be in highly rated and get to NFL
The Qb has the highest % completion in acc. He wants to win and has won many games at the end and he also wants the ball.

King to Singleton with single coverage would be an automatic hot route. Does Key trust King and Singleton to get a slant route and make catch of get PI?

Somebody trusted the ol and a rb converted from wr to utm 4 times in a row. But they were inadequate.

We will never know if our very good qb and wr could make that play. Would have been fun.

We still would have lost imo.
Its just not the way i want to go down.

 

[stinger78]

We all want to win.

Lets be specific on a one play.

On the 4th and short at the end.

We had run utm 3 times.= Run the ballll. Who called these plays?

On 4th we again had jumbo and single back.

Looking past Key into back ground the formation had one wr and one db. The wr is Singleton - hoping to be in highly rated and get to NFL
The Qb has the highest % completion in acc. He wants to win and has won many games at the end and he also wants the ball.

King to Singleton with single coverage would be an automatic hot route. Does Key trust King and Singleton to get a slant route and make catch of get PI?

Somebody trusted the ol and a rb converted from wr to utm 4 times in a row. But they were inadequate.

We will never know if our very good qb and wr could make that play. Would have been fun.

We still would have lost imo.
Its just not the way i want to go down.

My thoughts exactly. Quick slant is a first down and maybe more in that play unless King misses him or Singleton drops it.

 

[Jerry the Jacket]

Key is building a culture of toughness. We don't deserve to win a game if we cannot make it on third and fourth down with a yard or two to gain. I hope this investment in drilling this into our players will pay off sooner rather than later, but it may be next year or even the year after that. We are not making the progress I expected so far but I think we are building toward that. Some of our guys just have to get better, play harder and develop a refuse to lose attitude. Every game is going to be a nail biter the rest of this year. We can win them all but at the same time we can lose them all if we do not take that step forward.

Go Jackets!

 

[Jacket0323]

Sometimes it's easier to get buried and lose by a ton than to get close and have your heart ripped out.

The words of a loser

 

[calvin forever]

We won 10 games under clown show in 3+ years. To go from those depths to a being a middling ACC team is not that bad, in my opinion. Sort of reminds me on 1995-97 under GOL.

Do we have what it takes to break through beyond mediocrity in the next couple of seasons? Only if we can upgrade on both lines (our 2025 commits give me hope).

 

[bke1984]

Key is building a culture of toughness. We don't deserve to win a game if we cannot make it on third and fourth down with a yard or two to gain. I hope this investment in drilling this into our players will pay off sooner rather than later, but it may be next year or even the year after that. We are not making the progress I expected so far but I think we are building toward that. Some of our guys just have to get better, play harder and develop a refuse to lose attitude. Every game is going to be a nail biter the rest of this year. We can win them all but at the same time we can lose them all if we do not take that step forward.

Go Jackets!

Maybe, but then why didn’t we go on 4th and 1/2 yard. That’s what I meant by the HC issues I’m seeing. He’s waffling and inconsistent. If all the times we went for it on 4th this was the one I really though we needed to go and score a TD - especially after we had just gone for it successfully like three plays earlier.

 

[gtee91]

Key is building a culture of toughness. We don't deserve to win a game if we cannot make it on third and fourth down with a yard or two to gain. I hope this investment in drilling this into our players will pay off sooner rather than later, but it may be next year or even the year after that. We are not making the progress I expected so far but I think we are building toward that. Some of our guys just have to get better, play harder and develop a refuse to lose attitude. Every game is going to be a nail biter the rest of this year. We can win them all but at the same time we can lose them all if we do not take that step forward.

Go Jackets!

Yes...but...college football is building a culture of instant gratification, flash, and NIL. If a good player does not want to wait a few years for his teammates to gel, then poof ...through the portal to money and possibly greener grass

 

[Southern psu fan]

A few things. I’m sure I’ll get flamed by some.

I wanna start out by saying, I think it’s interesting when 90% of the posters on here predicted anywhere from 5-7 wins before the season, and most on here were predicting us to lose this game (go back and look at the prediction thread and preseason win total thread), yet when we actually lose a game we’re expected lose, people lose their minds. (We opened as a 10 point dog.)

Losing sucks. I absolutely hate losing, especially when we gifted them a couple scores, but we did in my opinion play a deeper team with superior talent at their place…who’s also ranked and undefeated and won 10 games a year ago with a title game appearance and reloaded via the portal. It wasn’t Bowling Green.

3-2 is I think where most thought we’d be at this point in the season, but when we’re actually 3-2, the sky is falling. I figured we’d be 3-2, but with the FSU and Cuse games flipped. I still think McCord is one of the top 1-2 quarterbacks we’ll face.

I know fandom can make people irrational, but after losing ON THE ROAD to pretty good Syracuse and Louisville teams, people are wondering where we’re gonna find the other wins to become bowl eligible, which, again, was kind of our target given our schedule, which all of a sudden doesn’t seem as daunting, because…

We still get to play…
- Duke (Beat terrible MTSU, Elon…and beat terrible UCONN and NW by 5 & 6 pts.)
- UNC (Seemingly terrible but gef will pull out all the stops to beat us. His Super Bowl)
- Notre Dame (Maybe not as good as we thought but will be tough. At least we don’t travel. Probably be like a home game for them though.)
- Seemingly terrible VT
- Seemingly terrible NCSU

We CAN win all of those. We also get Miami at home and you never know what can happen in COFH. We better than Kentucky? GA loses 2-4 between now and then, I can see that culture imploding.

Keep in mind Cuse and Louisville had all the time in the world to prepare for us. We were Cuse’s second game following Ohio, Louisville got a bye before us after playing Jax St and Austin Peay. We’ve haven’t rested while globe trotting. We finally get a much needed bye. We lose to Duke? Yes, we would have the green light to panic.

Having said all that. No excuses. Win every game.

***One little extra tidbit I saw on twitter yesterday. The ones moaning the loudest about coaching and play calling…most of the time don’t even know what formation we’re in, or what personnel we have out, or what coverage we’re in. The same ones who think our defense gave up 31 points yesterday. Thought that was funny. And true.

Relax, guys. We’re fine. For now.

Exactly! Beat Duke and we’re right back on track to having a very good year. As the ole ball coach said…play the games and let’s see what happens! We’re in good shape right now. I understand the frustration because we were in position to win the 2 games we lost we just didn’t get it done on the field on a few plays when it was nitty gritty time, it happens.

 

[stinger78]

We won 10 games under clown show in 3+ years. To go from those depths to a being a middling ACC team is not that bad, in my opinion. Sort of reminds me on 1995-97 under GOL.

Yes. We forget that it took Ross and GOL both two full years to get to a 7-win season. GOL got the bowl and Ross didn’t (Peach Bowl anyone?). It was the 4 year for both that was special. CBK is still playing with house money.

 

[RamblinRed]

We are about where I expected us to be.
The Duke game is the first time this year since maybe the FSU game where I feel like we go in with some structural advantages (against FSU it was having alot of people back vs a team that had a lot of portal players). Against Duke we get to come off a bye and they come off a game against a big rival. Against UNC, you know Collins is going to want to win that so bad, but it is also their 7th straight game before a bye and they play a pretty good looking Pitt team the week before.

We have some clear weaknesses, the majority of the teams we play going forward are the same, the key is how well can you hide your weaknesses and play to your strengths. The team that does a better job of that each week is the team that wins.

In the 3 big underdog games this is how I feel about them.
Miami - I think this is going to be a really difficult game. Their offense looks really good and Ward may be the best QB we face all year. They are likely to be extra motivated based on what happened last season.
ND - Their offense has been very pedestrian, but their defense is very strong. Has given up more than 16 points or more than 1 TD in a game this season. Only one opponent has had more than 270 yds of total offense. This game feels like it will be a low scoring slugfest. First team to 20 wins.
UGA - I think we will play them very well. I expect a close game, but given their schedule this may be a game that UGA needs to win in order to secure a CFP bid. Have to see how many losses they have at end of the season.

Unlike some fans I don't feel like Syracuse was a game we were 'close to winning'. We were down three scores more than midway through the 4th quarter. It took alot of good play and a little luck to get it to a one score game. But once Syracuse got the ball back I never felt like GT would see the ball again. GT never had the ball with the chance to take the lead in the 4th quarter.

 

[AugustaSwarm]

not sure it's the loss per se, but probably more the manner of the loss. and letting games get away that were seemingly in hand.

after the safety, I thought we would improbably pull out the win.

Yea - Getting a safety is a HUGE momentum changer - points and the ball...but we failed to capitalize. Earlier in the season, we have failed to capitalize on big momentum shifts (blocked kicks, turnovers, etc). The disappointment isn't necessarily that we lost, but it's the way we lost it that makes it sting.

 

[LongforDodd]

Maybe, but then why didn’t we go on 4th and 1/2 yard. That’s what I meant by the HC issues I’m seeing. He’s waffling and inconsistent. If all the times we went for it on 4th this was the one I really though we needed to go and score a TD - especially after we had just gone for it successfully like three plays earlier.

I think it was sinking into Key that his Oline was not up to the task. I, also, think we should have gone for it one way of the other. Not going for it sent a bad signal to the team.

 

[InsideLB]

Margin super thin between Ws and Ls right now. How much better we can get will be huge.

Against this schedule we need to have a lot options for "and short" situations.

 

[billga99]

Margin super thin between Ws and Ls right now. How much better we can get will be huge.

Against this schedule we need to have a lot options for "and short" situations.

Having a decent record will be vital to hold onto our recruits and getting more out of the portal than we give up. I think a losing record would put both in jeopardy. But I still expect 6 wins and a minor bowl. Beating Duke and NC State at home and beating either UNC or VA Tech on the road. Obviously would be nice to win both away games but realistically I think getting wins against 3 of these 4 teams is the most realistic outcome.

 

[UgaBlows]

We all want to win.

Lets be specific on a one play.

On the 4th and short at the end.

We had run utm 3 times.= Run the ballll. Who called these plays?

On 4th we again had jumbo and single back.

Looking past Key into back ground the formation had one wr and one db. The wr is Singleton - hoping to be in highly rated and get to NFL
The Qb has the highest % completion in acc. He wants to win and has won many games at the end and he also wants the ball.

King to Singleton with single coverage would be an automatic hot route. Does Key trust King and Singleton to get a slant route and make catch of get PI?

Somebody trusted the ol and a rb converted from wr to utm 4 times in a row. But they were inadequate.

We will never know if our very good qb and wr could make that play. Would have been fun.

We still would have lost imo.
Its just not the way i want to go down.

Rutherford would have been money on that 4th down if he’d gotten a chance

 

[57jacket]

A few things. I’m sure I’ll get flamed by some.

I wanna start out by saying, I think it’s interesting when 90% of the posters on here predicted anywhere from 5-7 wins before the season, and most on here were predicting us to lose this game (go back and look at the prediction thread and preseason win total thread), yet when we actually lose a game we’re expected lose, people lose their minds. (We opened as a 10 point dog.)

Losing sucks. I absolutely hate losing, especially when we gifted them a couple scores, but we did in my opinion play a deeper team with superior talent at their place…who’s also ranked and undefeated and won 10 games a year ago with a title game appearance and reloaded via the portal. It wasn’t Bowling Green.

3-2 is I think where most thought we’d be at this point in the season, but when we’re actually 3-2, the sky is falling. I figured we’d be 3-2, but with the FSU and Cuse games flipped. I still think McCord is one of the top 1-2 quarterbacks we’ll face.

I know fandom can make people irrational, but after losing ON THE ROAD to pretty good Syracuse and Louisville teams, people are wondering where we’re gonna find the other wins to become bowl eligible, which, again, was kind of our target given our schedule, which all of a sudden doesn’t seem as daunting, because…

We still get to play…
- Duke (Beat terrible MTSU, Elon…and beat terrible UCONN and NW by 5 & 6 pts.)
- UNC (Seemingly terrible but gef will pull out all the stops to beat us. His Super Bowl)
- Notre Dame (Maybe not as good as we thought but will be tough. At least we don’t travel. Probably be like a home game for them though.)
- Seemingly terrible VT
- Seemingly terrible NCSU

We CAN win all of those. We also get Miami at home and you never know what can happen in COFH. We better than Kentucky? GA loses 2-4 between now and then, I can see that culture imploding.

Keep in mind Cuse and Louisville had all the time in the world to prepare for us. We were Cuse’s second game following Ohio, Louisville got a bye before us after playing Jax St and Austin Peay. We’ve haven’t rested while globe trotting. We finally get a much needed bye. We lose to Duke? Yes, we would have the green light to panic.

Having said all that. No excuses. Win every game.

***One little extra tidbit I saw on twitter yesterday. The ones moaning the loudest about coaching and play calling…most of the time don’t even know what formation we’re in, or what personnel we have out, or what coverage we’re in. The same ones who think our defense gave up 31 points yesterday. Thought that was funny. And true.

Relax, guys. We’re fine. For now.

Good post. Agree.

 

[Northeast Stinger]

Not sure exactly why but something just reminded me of the town hall meeting in Blazing Saddles.

 

[GTNavyNuke]

Key is building a culture of toughness. We don't deserve to win a game if we cannot make it on third and fourth down with a yard or two to gain. I hope this investment in drilling this into our players will pay off sooner rather than later, but it may be next year or even the year after that. We are not making the progress I expected so far but I think we are building toward that. Some of our guys just have to get better, play harder and develop a refuse to lose attitude. Every game is going to be a nail biter the rest of this year. We can win them all but at the same time we can lose them all if we do not take that step forward.

Go Jackets!

Exactly. We are better than we were last year and building. Key trusting the team to get the yard goes both ways. We didn't and need to get better. Someone has to win and L'VILLE was better.

I have confidence in Key and his people. I still think we win 6 this year. But IIWII.

 

[Augusta_Jacket]

Exactly. We are better than we were last year and building.

I have confidence in Key and his people. I still think we win 6 this year. But IIWII.

This. I said before the season started we might well be a better team this year and not win as many games as last year. I will confess I figured FSU and NCSU to be better than they have been so far and probably discounted how good Syracuse is with their new QB. At the end of the day, I see real progress in our team. We still lack consistency, both in-game between series and from game to game, , but we look more and more like we belong on the same field as our opponents. We have a real shot at winning 6 games this year, and with a lucky bounce or two might even win 7-8. Either way, I see Key and the staff making improvements and I don't think we are anywhere near to realizing our potential.