roadkill
Helluva Engineer
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Here’s what he said:
He screwed up. This is why you have coaches--to coach a player, to teach him to have game awareness.
Some of the posters here want to burn the player, but it looks obvious that the coaches don't have a plan B for when Sims goes down, and Gibson was the guy who had to go out and make the best of it.
We put a player on the field when he wasn't ready for it. He's taking a lot of heat for it, but it's the coaching staff's job to have the players ready, and to have the backup ready.
It's the player's responsibility to be ready too, but it looks like he wasn't getting many reps in practice. He started the game with almost no timing between him and his receivers, and his timing got better as the game went along.
I also understand why a backup wouldn't get many reps. When Payton Manning played for the Colts, the reporter asked the OC why the backup never got any snaps in practice. The OC answered "If Payton goes down, we're losing the game". We may be in the same position. (I'd love to have Manning's passer efficiency here, though)
Earlier in the year and over the summer, there were a lot of people here saying that he'd push Sims for starting time. A former player said he'd just be holding a clipboard and calling in plays--and that looks like what he was readier to do.
Now, we also want to put in the transfer from Clemson (Taisun Phommachanh). If Gibson wasn't ready, how ready do you think the players that the coaches DIDN'T put in are?
Last year, we had a gutsy kid in as backup. He didn't have the right "measurables" but he played his heart out when he got in. There was a huge amount of griping from some people here about whether he deserved a roster spot. He transferred out. Now, it doesn't look like we have a ready backup at all.
Now we gotta figure out what to do.
Zach was asked specifically about this in the post-game interviews. According to him, he "got a lot of practice with the 1's", and "had two great weeks of practice". He also said they "had a lot of plays that were there, we just didn't execute."
Based on his statement it appears that our coaches knew he might have to go in for Sims, and did what they could to prepare him. It obviously wasn't enough.