Mark Hudspeth seeks more fire from team

[NewsCopy]

MOBILE — It might be the final regular-season football game for Louisiana, but there's nothing anticlimactic about Saturday's game with South Alabama. The Cajuns have a chance to win an outright Sun Belt Conference championship and re .

The rest of the story .

[ULGrad@HOU]

More fire needed is right, and why do they keep calling Haack a sophomore, he's a redshirt freshman.

[RedCajun]

More fire needed is right, and why do they keep calling Haack a sophomore, he's a redshirt freshman.

*also it is listed as Tv: none

details aren't important to Mr Ardoin evidently

[bigearl]

Still better than the advertiser.

[campo118]

We have a team full of _______. End of discussion

[campo118]

And a defensive philosophy that ain't worth a rat's ___. Sick to my ficking stomach

[Hammer58]

Our D looks like it thinks it's scrimmaging an offense that is all wearing no contact jerseys.

[Gueydanmayor]

Hud needs to learn how to teach and coach defense. He's a great motivator, offensive coach, but appears either too stubborn or too uniformed to put a decent defense together. No excuses. Sick of this awful defensive scheme that just gives and gives and gives and gives without putting any kind of pressure on the QB. Completely unacceptable. A good junior high defensive coach could do no worse!

[CajunRed]

I had forgotten about that article.

I'm an eye witness that "more fire" was not present last night.

[Just1More]

Hud needs to learn how to teach and coach defense. He's a great motivator, offensive coach, but appears either too stubborn or too uniformed to put a decent defense together. No excuses. Sick of this awful defensive scheme that just gives and gives and gives and gives without putting any kind of pressure on the QB. Completely unacceptable. A good junior high defensive coach could do no worse!

What? You don't like our "8 men lost in space" defense?

An additional problem with it, besides it pulling a vacuum from the start, is that it's regressive. I can take good assignment players and place them in zone coverage for specific situations and make an argument for it. When on every given Saturday (or game day) you implement platoon coverages, and fail to place assignments that you can continue to coach up as the season progresses, everyone drifts away from the role that could make them effective. I can't for the life of me understand where this became the defacto standard for the entire year. Being burned deep. or noticing that one or two DBs are going to have trouble in man coverage. is never answered by any other program with this defensive scheme.

Ironically, we are a dominating offense (with TB) and no defense we face in the SBC (a conference that isn't packed with perfect talent at every position) ever gives us the automatic big play. No one ever gives us a wide open WR. No one ever gives us an unassigned receiver sprinting across the middle, without anyone near him. No one gives our QBs all day long to look around for a wide open target. Why is that?

You hit the nail on the head with this post. We only exposed this defense in these last two games to the fans at large. Many didn't grasp that we were massively overcompensating with a really solid offensive attack. What none of us completely understood. until last night. was how drastically dependent we may be on Terrance Broadway. And with Elijah out. our staff has more than their hands full with Tulane.

[CrazyCajun]

One trick. TB and he is the the thoroughbred

[ZoomZoom]

Much has been said how we have not looked right after the stAte win. Simple. We for years were the hunter. Hud coached them that way. After the stAte game, we all knew we were in the driver's seat. We became the hunted. Closer games. A few we had to try, others, just turn it on. ULM and USA didn't allow us to do that, they were better than the others. They got us, pure and simple, no excuses.

It's time to own our successes and live up to being the hunted. Anything less, well, look at Saturday. Players, coaches, admin, fans.everyone! Step up!

[Bandwagon King]

Much has been said how we have not looked right after the stAte win. Simple. We for years were the hunter. Hud coached them that way. After the stAte game, we all knew we were in the driver's seat. We became the hunted. Closer games. A few we had to try, others, just turn it on. ULM and USA didn't allow us to do that, they were better than the others. They got us, pure and simple, no excuses.

It's time to own our successes and live up to being the hunted. Anything less, well, look at Saturday. Players, coaches, admin, fans.everyone! Step up!

,

Give this post a cookie. Someone understands the nature of winning, and true price of success.

[Fais do-do]

I'll give you a hint:He didn't find it!

[Just1More]

I think our last two games came down to Terrance Broadway. At ULM, he had a bad game. At USA, he couldn't play. Other than that, I saw nothing different. I saw nothing unexpected. ULM would have been a close win for us with Terrance being on. USA would have a been a battle royal, but allowing a very good defensive team to focus almost entirely on stopping the run. gave us little chance of doing what we do. move the ball the length of the field for scores, eat up clock, kick off to give the opponent the full length of the field hoping they sputter out against our "you can have the short to middle but cannot go all the way" defense. When you couple those absolutely easily defined attributes to our team in the last two games. against two teams we need to stop being so disrespectful toward. you get the losses.

That was it. Plain and simple to me. No conspiracy. No difference in attitude. No coaching taking the day off. No players taking the day off. If our offense doesn't operate. we are in deep trouble.

Now. what about the bowl? I'm skeptical not whether TB will dress out. I'm skeptical he'll be capable of being TB with this injury still healing. That said. do I think we can still beat Tulane with one or two of our backup QBs? Yes. without a doubt. I even think if McQuire is unavailable, our run game can do it.

I'm also not concerned about which backup QB gets the nod first. If the coaches are willing to see this as a "let's see which guy looks comfortable and gets into a rythmn". we'll find the guy to take most snaps. Alonzo Harris. IMO. is going to need to take this game over. He is going to have to be the best he's ever been. And the other backs are going to get their work as well. I see the WRs having to step up like never before. Robinson, Surgent and Butler. in particular. are going to have to do what I think all three can. out athlete their defender and do whatever it takes to make the catch. I also believe we have to use the RBs and TEs to provide short route underneath dink passes to give our QBs some quick option relief and also to frustrate pass rushing and double teaming upfield.

Defensively. I don't know what to say. We trained our defense under this "everybody scatter downfield" approach, concerned over the "big play". With our offense without all of the high octane components, I doubt our coaches are going to switch into an aggressive assignment style for the bowl. I wanted them to slide into more and more assignment football over the season, but without having done it up to this point, I don't look to see it change in the bowl.

Regardless. I think Coach Hudspeth can figure out how to put our team in a position to win the game. It just isn't going to be as easy as I think many expected (even with TB and Elijah). We are in for a war in the dome. I kind of think it makes the bowl more interesting. In no way do any comments I've ever given on here dimenish the accomplishments of this team. I'm in this through thick and thin. I cuss out the bumps in life's road. and I'm not apologizing for it. but I get over it. and get right back in the struggle to go forward.