Second Half Woes

[Just1More]

_ UL only played one good quarter I don't know why y'all are pointing to the second half

igeaux.mobi _

Quarter? They only had good downs and bad downs. And technically, some guys played well on downs that resulted in poor outcomes and others played poorly in downs that resulted in good outcomes. They had more good downs in the 2nd quarter.

I have to laugh that our best work was at the very end of the second quarter... going into halftime... and our worst work was at the beginning of the third quarter. All of these moron Monday morning quarterbacks are yapping about how we "didn't adjust at halftime". What a bunch of clueless morons. Our staff was supposed to "adjust" to start the second half? Ha! Now I know why we can't fan our way out of a wet paper bag... our fanbase is stupid.

[Turbine]

The game of football is a chess match you have to be able to "adjust" on the fly.

If there was ever a game where no halftime offensive adjustments were called for it was Saturday against OSU.

You can't go into halftime after your most successful quarter of the year automatically assuming the opponent will be successful in countering what you did. If you make changes based on what changes you "think" (without seeing) they will doing the second half you are raising the odds of shooting yourself in the foot.

In other words you would be out coaching yourself.

Having said that any good coach will have contingency plans based on what he sees in the flow of the game.

jmo

[Just1More]

If there was ever a game where no halftime offensive adjustments were called for it was Saturday against OSU.

That is correct Turbine. I think what we saw in the second half was a serious response by a very good OSU team. Also, for everyone hung up on Blackmon and our inability to stop him. Our coverage was good. He is an NFL starter... right now... perhaps a franchise level WR.

What worries me about the next progression of football at UL... coaching, facilities and the like... is the regressing mental stability and comprehension skills of our outspoken fans. Many are nothing more than a bag full of stale complaints. They were almost more concerned about the Roosta Dance than they were about a good showing on the field of play.

Is the lack of success in football soured our fanbase so much so that they no longer have the ability to use good reasoning skills? There are solutions to our circumstances that simply have not been employed. Our outspoken fans rattle off more trivial, non-impact, bottomless claims and solutions to problems than I've ever seen in my life.

Misery's ugly cousin, Insanity, is lurking in the shadows of our fanbase.

[Crackleton]

_ ...fan our way out of a wet paper bag... _

Priceless.

[BabbForHeisman]

Is the lack of success in football soured our fanbase so much so that they no longer have the ability to use good reasoning skills? _

Stop talking like this, you're going to confuse people!

[HOUCajun]

That is correct Turbine. I think what we saw in the second half was a serious response by a very good OSU team. Also, for everyone hung up on Blackmon and our inability to stop him. Our coverage was good. He is an NFL starter... right now... perhaps a franchise level WR.

What worries me about the next progression of football at UL... coaching, facilities and the like... is the regressing mental stability and comprehension skills of our outspoken fans. Many are nothing more than a bag full of stale complaints. They were almost more concerned about the Roosta Dance than they were about a good showing on the field of play.

Is the lack of success in football soured our fanbase so much so that they no longer have the ability to use good reasoning skills? There are solutions to our circumstances that simply have not been employed. Our outspoken fans rattle off more trivial, non-impact, bottomless claims and solutions to problems than I've ever seen in my life.

Misery's ugly cousin, Insanity, is lurking in the shadows of our fanbase.

While I agree with almost everything you said, Remember its just the lunatic fringe that wastes time on message boards. At least I hope so...

igeaux.mobi

[ragin91cajun]

_ That is correct Turbine. I think what we saw in the second half was a serious response by a very good OSU team. Also, for everyone hung up on Blackmon and our inability to stop him. Our coverage was good. He is an NFL starter... right now... perhaps a franchise level WR.

What worries me about the next progression of football at UL... coaching, facilities and the like... is the regressing mental stability and comprehension skills of our outspoken fans. Many are nothing more than a bag full of stale complaints. They were almost more concerned about the Roosta Dance than they were about a good showing on the field of play.

Is the lack of success in football soured our fanbase so much so that they no longer have the ability to use good reasoning skills? There are solutions to our circumstances that simply have not been employed. Our outspoken fans rattle off more trivial, non-impact, bottomless claims and solutions to problems than I've ever seen in my life.

Misery's ugly cousin, Insanity, is lurking in the shadows of our fanbase. _

Ok I'll stipulate to your no need for adjustments at halftime argument. Passing the ball worked the whole first half. Why not do it until it fails? But what about adjustments within the context of the third quarter. It was obvious from the second Masson threw that interception that OSU had decided to sit back and dare us to run the ball in the second half. It wasn't a bad play call. That route would have been wide open in the first half, but OSU adjusted at halftime. They saw our quarterback had the best quarter of his life and decided he was not gonna be the one to beat them. I'm seriously just asking your opinion on this issue. By the way, you can call me stupid or a bad fan or whatever else you want;I don't care. The fact is when UL starts announcing attendances of 9,000 or 10,000 at the end of the season and there's really about 5,000 people in the stands. I'll be one of those 5,000 people.

[zephyr]

_ Ok I'll stipulate to your no need for adjustments at halftime argument. Passing the ball worked the whole first half. Why not do it until it fails? But what about adjustments within the context of the third quarter. It was obvious from the second Masson threw that interception that OSU had decided to sit back and dare us to run the ball in the second half. It wasn't a bad play call. That route would have been wide open in the first half, but OSU adjusted at halftime. They saw our quarterback had the best quarter of his life and decided he was not gonna be the one to beat them. I'm seriously just asking your opinion on this issue. By the way, you can call me stupid or a bad fan or whatever else you want;I don't care. The fact is when UL starts announcing attendances of 9,000 or 10,000 at the end of the season and there's really about 5,000 people in the stands. I'll be one of those 5,000 people. _

I too, tend to get aggravated when people make general assumptions about things that the staff didn't or did do without truly having an idea. However, to minimize the importance of making halftime adjustments is equally rediculous. True, it should not be seen as the only time to make adjustments, haltime that is. However, in this game that is exactly when we should have made them along with the middle of the first quarter (Which we successfully did). We were riding a wave of momentum going into half obviously as we had just scored 21 points in the second quarter to take the lead over a much favored team. Why, because they hadn't run the ball like they wanted to and never put pressure on Masson which is why he tore them up in the first half. They made the adjustments to blitz a bit more and put more pressure on him which they forced some turnovers along with some incompletions that ultimately stalled drives. From our standpoint, we didn't go in assuming they would do some things differently and alter some packages such as putting either an extra TE to block, chipping with a running back or running some misdirection tosses and screens to possibly counter any blitzes they would throw at us. We had to figure that they were not going to continue playing soft zone and they were going to blitz and make us read and react much faster. Alternatively, we did not do the same. Weeden was beginning to warm up and we did not blitz much at all as we were afraid of giving up the deep ball and rightfully so. Guys like Blackmon and Hunter and Anyiam, you can't really do much to completely shut them down. You have to cut the head off the dragon in hopes the rest of the body will not operate and we should have attacked the QB more. It was only a matter of time before their firepower caught up to us but I don't think we ran the screens as much as we should have.

[Just1More]

_ Ok I'll stipulate to your no need for adjustments at halftime argument. Passing the ball worked the whole first half. Why not do it until it fails? But what about adjustments within the context of the third quarter. It was obvious from the second Masson threw that interception that OSU had decided to sit back and dare us to run the ball in the second half. It wasn't a bad play call. That route would have been wide open in the first half, but OSU adjusted at halftime. They saw our quarterback had the best quarter of his life and decided he was not gonna be the one to beat them. I'm seriously just asking your opinion on this issue. By the way, you can call me stupid or a bad fan or whatever else you want;I don't care. The fact is when UL starts announcing attendances of 9,000 or 10,000 at the end of the season and there's really about 5,000 people in the stands. I'll be one of those 5,000 people. _

I'm not calling "you" stupid. I do find the balance of criticism of Friday night a little stupid. If I'm reading you right, you think Chris's single interception told the staff to change the playcalling? We picked OSU twice and Bentley should have gotten a third. The reality is that losing sucks. But... as much as I hated the gameplan and preparation for GA and MT... I find no fault with our play against OSU. If we didn't give programs such a short field to operate with on kickoffs when we do score... things would be a lot better for you, me, the team, the fans, and the coaching staff.

I really felt after losing Streeter... not having Ladarius... still not having McGuire giving us his gutsy play... and an offensive line that trying its best to become a unit...our offense performed well. The biggest difference was that WRs actually hung unto the ball.

I can't see how we can say that our offensive or defensive play going into the half would have warranted adjustments. Let's remember... we didn't just score 3 touchdowns in the first half... we also gave OSU a short field and stopped them in 2Q. OSU hit us with some big plays in the second half and they also threw it into a higher gear from that second quarter. Sometimes... just sometimes... this forum needs to back off and wait for some real opportunities to strike out against poor coaching (or whatever).

Even though we lost the game, I saw more positives in that game than I did in the Ark State and the NT win. There was 20x more horsepower on that OSU team... man for man... than anyone in the SBC has to show us. But, some fans watch a play and think "we did good" as opposed to whether we were disallowed or allowed to do it.

I sometimes think our fanbase is so shallow that they don't know the difference when a guy is running into a 50mph head wind or with a 50mph tail wind. They just see a runner and say one day he's great and the other day he sucks. BS... OSU took that game out of our hands in the second half. Period.

[Cajuns4me]

_ I'm not calling "you" stupid. I do find the balance of criticism of Friday night a little stupid. If I'm reading you right, you think Chris's single interception told the staff to change the playcalling? We picked OSU twice and Bentley should have gotten a third. The reality is that losing sucks. But... as much as I hated the gameplan and preparation for GA and MT... I find no fault with our play against OSU. If we didn't give programs such a short field to operate with on kickoffs when we do score... things would be a lot better for you, me, the team, the fans, and the coaching staff.

I really felt after losing Streeter... not having Ladarius... still not having McGuire giving us his gutsy play... and an offensive line that trying its best to become a unit...our offense performed well. The biggest difference was that WRs actually hung unto the ball.

I can't see how we can say that our offensive or defensive play going into the half would have warranted adjustments. Let's remember... we didn't just score 3 touchdowns in the first half... we also gave OSU a short field and stopped them in 2Q. OSU hit us with some big plays in the second half and they also threw it into a higher gear from that second quarter. Sometimes... just sometimes... this forum needs to back off and wait for some real opportunities to strike out against poor coaching (or whatever).

Even though we lost the game, I saw more positives in that game than I did in the Ark State and the NT win. There was 20x more horsepower on that OSU team... man for man... than anyone in the SBC has to show us. But, some fans watch a play and think "we did good" as opposed to whether we were disallowed or allowed to do it.

I sometimes think our fanbase is so shallow that they don't know the difference when a guy is running into a 50mph head wind or with a 50mph tail wind. They just see a runner and say one day he's great and the other day he sucks. BS... OSU took that game out of our hands in the second half. Period. _

I typically agree with you on most of your posts, but here...not so much. We've been outscored 105-21 in the second half so far this season, but you're saying none of that is our fault?? What do you think OSU went into half-time saying, uh, maybe we should adjust? We must anticipate that to have success. The second half of this game went pretty much like most of the other second halfs so far this season. The other team takes away the pass, we don't have a true up-the-middle runner (a la Fenroy) so we can't run the clock/ keep other O (and our D) off the field, 3 and out after 3 and out, D gets worn down, we lose...basically. How about trying to run the spread option with Gauthier some in the second half. Would OSU have been expecting that? If it doesn't work, then fine, but at least be prepared to try something different. And how about letting Blaine throw the ball in the regular flow of the game once and a while, not just in desperation at the end of the game. (You think teams aren't anticipating the run up the middle when he's in there?)

In regards to Blackmon, I agree he wasn't their whole offense, but 13 catches for 190 yards and 2 TD's is pretty damn impressive. I would much rather see us attempt to shut down the top rated receiver in the country and force another one of their player(s) to step-up than to say he's just too good for us to defend him. Did we dbl team him? Yes, at times, but there should've been safety help over the top on nearly every play. Would that alone have won us the game, of course not. But it sure would've helped.

And to call us "fans" stupid or "shallow"...this isn't rocket science. It's football. And I've watched a hell of a lot of it in my lifetime thus far so I consider myself to be a fair study of the game. Besides, we're all free to state our own "ridiculous" opinions.

Look, I'm proud of our boys for how they played in the first half. And I would've still been o.k. with a 10-14 pt loss, but to be completely demolished in the second half...again...inexcusable.