Why yes, yes someone did. I meant to bring this up, but cocknfire already did on Team Speed Kills so I’ll only say a little about it.
I should point out that I don’t agree 100% that Vanderbilt was doing it with smoke and mirrors until the Auburn game, because as discussed ad nauseum there’s at least some level of sustainability to turnovers, return yardage, and few penalties. There’s possibly a little sustainability to red-zone performance, although I’m less confident of that based on the Steele article I mentioned. That said, I never totally drank the Kool-Aid of “We don’t need no steenkin’ yardage,” and I’m very happy that we outgained a decent team.
Also the subtext is that our offense is just much better with Adams in there right now. I don’t know if it’s Nickson being injured or just being limited in throwing ability, though I suspect the former. But right now we’re just giving up too much by not having Adams in there, as long as he plays like he did Saturday.
3 responses so far ↓
1 Willl // Oct 6, 2008 at 12:00 pm
Why do you feel that way about red-zone performance? I will concede that our 18/18 when we’re trying to score (we’re actually 18/19 but the 1 non-conversion was against Rice when we were running clock) will not last, but I fail to see why we can’t be towards the top of the list in red zone conversion. I have no idea what that number would be- maybe 85%? Hahnfeldt has looked like a different kicker this year (the miss against Auburn was well struck, just pushed a little) and our offense is taking care of the ball, meaning we’re not likely to turn the ball over in the redzone, making a FG attempt the worst case scenario.
What exactly does Phil Steele say?
2 philipvu94 // Oct 10, 2008 at 1:40 pm
Will,
Sorry for the slow response. I summarized the Steele article I’ve been referring to here:
http://savetheshield.com/?page_id=475
3 Miss State post mortem: The OMG! WE’RE SCREWED!!!!!1111 Edition // Oct 12, 2008 at 10:15 pm
[...] really in spite of our lousy cumulative yardage stats up to that point. It was because the Auburn game gave me hope that we could outgain a good opponent with Adams in the game. Well, Auburn certainly isn’t acting like a good opponent, although I [...]
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