re: This is the 2014 Ole Miss game all over again

agreed, perhaps he is still learning on the job? excuse? IDK man.

What I saw yesterday was simple. It was incredible up against Kiff...

If we played that way all season, we win TAMU, Liberty, LSU, Miss State???? not sure on that or bama. But we would end the season with at least 10/2 then the bowl as well. Possibly 11-2 record.

Will he learn from all of this and get us there, or become complacent and not recruit well enough?

The problem with this season has been injuries, leadership, slow starts and being ill-prepared, red zone offense, and defense and offense not being in sync when they come to play.

Injuries — people immediately think of KJ and the secondary, but we’ve had others that were impactful. Dominique Johnson was arguably our best back last year and would’ve been a good complement to Rocket, but couldn’t get back from his bowl game knee injury and ultimately went down for the season. Pool was banged up, Wagner missed some time, and there were others. We were relatively healthy last season but the pendulum swung the other way this year. A healthy KJ is worth at least one more win and maybe as many as three.

Leadership — I’ve gone on ad nauseum about our captains this year as well as what we lost when the COVID seniors graduated, specifically Grant Morgan. This team didn’t feel like it had a vocal leader.

Slow Starts and Preparation — there were several games where we simply came out flat, looked disinterested, underestimated and/or flat out disrespected our opponent, got outcoached, and in some cases paid the price. We were painfully outcoached in two of our supposed cupcake games (Mo. State, Liberty). Our offense was horrid at scoring on its first drive, if not its first few. We scored on our first drive in ONE GAME this year (South Carolina). The remaining 10 games’ first drives consisted of 9 punts and 1 fumble.

Red Zone Offense — the Achilles heel of our offense this year was the red zone. Someone posted the stats last week, but at the time we were in the 10s in yardage but in the 60s in scoring. Our red zone scoring was terrible for most of the season, and we had multiple goal line series in which we came away with no points.

Defense and Offense not in sync — outside of Cincinnati and Ole Miss, it seemed like for most of our schedule, either the defense or the offense would be MIA while the other had a good game. We’ve been waiting on that game where both came together and played their best ball, and after most of the season Ole Miss was that game.

Lastly, this staff was pretty poor at roster and talent management for most of the year. I’ll give them credit, they did change things up and not stubbornly keep forcing it, but it was noticeable and persistent all year. Playing a banged up KJ against Liberty instead of resting him, Hornsby over Fortin, the punters, a banged up Pool over Paul, McAdoo not playing until late in the season, the Hornsby at WR package, etc.

It seemed like whatever worked last year came up snake eyes this year. Hopefully that pendulum swings back the other way next year.