It seems to me watching these games that Marshall missed a TON of reads this season, and not just at the beginning either. I'm not even sure how much of our offense he was able to execute, how much true triple-option we were even able to run this year? Maybe some of the Triple-O gurus can chime in...
I wonder how much of this is an issue because we finished 5-6?
Warning: I'm going ramble.
In 2009 against Clemson in the ACCCG, a highly-experienced Joshua Nesbitt missed several reads, to the point where after he missed yet another read on the triple Johnson glowered at Nesbitt and made the "PULL" motion with his hands at Joshua (it happens in the 4th quarter and was caught by the ESPN cameras). Yet we won and nobody groused about how much of the offense Joshua could run.
In 2015 people on this board were up in arms about how selfish Justin Thomas was and how he was trying to do too much. Then 2016 happened and nobody really complained about his "selfishness".
Let me give you an analogy of what I think happened in the Tennessee game. Let's say you're a basketball player. You're 16-20 shooting with 40 points. You've gone 8-8 from 3-point range. Your team is down 2 with 5 seconds left and you're coming out of a timeout. The coach draws up a play for you and tells you, "Catch the ball, if you're open, shoot, if not, pass it to #20, he'll be open in the corner." You catch the ball off the inbounds pass and dribble to your right. Your defender is sagging off of you and you're 3' behind NBA 3-point range. You jack the shot up.
And I think *that* one play has compounded the problem: both on Taquon's side and on ours.
I don't know that I would say that Taquon has missed "TONS" of reads. That makes it sound like 75% of the time he's failing which is definitely not the case. I'd have to review all the games (I wasn't able to catch them all) but in the ones I did catch Taquon did "OK" (PJ-speak) on the first phase of the triple, other than that dadgum Bud Foster C-Stunt/Mesh Charge switchup which, surprise, every GT QB has struggled with at times.
As for the pitch phase of our option game, again, I wonder if Tennessee was an eye-opener for both fans and Taquon. Every missed read is magnified when we have to punt, and every missed read is vilified when we lose.
I'd have to check and see if Taquon is missing more reads than Joshua or Tevin or Vad or Justin, but my gut tells me that he really isn't; it just seems that way because we're 5-6.
