Ag8556

The simplest explanation is that Stoop’s agent used contacts at Kentucky to plant false narrative that we were going to hire Stoops. The Kentucky contacts start plastering the story on Social media. Our own social media personalities start repeating the story and it picks up a life on its own.

Bjork can lead a search and recommend candidates but cannot hire on his own. It is possible he pitched Stoops as an option but it was never going to happen without BOR buy-in.

All of the gory details will eventually come out. I could very easily be wrong but I look for the simplest scenario first. Who knows? Maybe Bjork did not handle this competently and that ends up being the simplest scenario.

King has improved to serviceable. He was playing pretty well last night. He can't carry the team but can be effective if the rest of the unit is executing well. I don't expect he will be able to start next week because of the weird nature of his non-contact arm injury.

Is there any timeline for Max Johnson being available again? I expect Weigman will get his first start next week out of necessity.

Our biggest continuing issue on offense is with the OL pass protection. The QBs can't trust the OL to give them a clean pocket. The shuffling of players and overall inexperience is killing us.

Defensively, we have got to get a better pass rush out of our DL and get some of our DB's healthy.

Certainly fair game to debate the play call but that throw does not require an NFL QB. King is standing by the hash mark that is closest to the pylon. The distance on the pass is not very long at all in the grand scheme of things. I would definitely agree with you if the throw was supposed to go to the pylon on the opposite side of the field.

We are having to rely on way too many underclassmen with little to no substantive game experience this year. I knew we lost a lot of upperclassmen after last year but was surprised when I counted the number of juniors/seniors actually starting on offense and defense.

Even though Foster is an underclassman, we need him back to stabilize the interior of the OLine with his full season of playing experience from last year. We also had bad luck that Robinson is already nicked up and we don't have an experienced TE that is ready to play. Wright will not be a world beater as a receiver but he probably would have helped out a lot with the run game.

I agree that Fisher needs to be ready to pull King next week if he is missing wide open throws. Hopefully we can provide at least decent pass protection for Johnson after getting 2 games in with the current OLine group.

The best coordinators have a good feel for the game to decide when to send pressure, when and how to disguise coverage, etc. You don't know if brand new coordinators have it or not until you see it.

You can find exceptions to the rule like you mention. It probably works out better, but is no guarantee, if the head coach specializes on the side of the ball where you are breaking in a brand new coordinator like at Georgia.

I do not want to see a repeat scenario like what we had with Sumlin where he greatly contributed to the failure of his tenure by successively promoting brand new offensive coordinators that had no business getting their first coordinator job at an SEC school. There were obviously other strategic errors that were made but he did not help himself in any way with his OC promotions.

No doubt his footwork needs major improvement but I thought he played very well last night for the amount of duress he was under. Earlier in the year he would have turned the ball over multiple times on plays where rushers got in his face by just throwing the ball up for grabs.

He has a lot of upside if he can settle his feet, keep improving going through his progressions, and getting the ball out on time. No idea if he will be able to do it but we will see how he comes out of the offseason. Worst case scenario should be he is a solid backup after all of the game reps he has played.

I just don't see how anybody can compare how he started during his first 2 or 3 games to where he has ended up and argue that he has not improved.

Disappointing loss after clawing our way into the lead.

My view is that the inconsistency we have seen throughout the season stems from 2 main causes:

- Breaking in new starting QBs
- Playing too many freshmen on both sides of the ball

Calzada improved markedly over the season, especially being gimpy with his left knee and shoulder. He still has a ways to go fixing his footwork.

Last night we had 4 freshmen play a substantial number of snaps on defense. We also had 3 freshmen play a substantial number of snaps on offense.

Fisher needs to close out this year's recruiting class strong and keep stacking classes together.

I don't pay any attention to Liucci. I do like to watch the offensive and defensive game room breakdowns with McGee and Warren. I also like to hear what the McKinney brothers have to say about offensive line play.

I pay no attention to recruiting rankings. I evaluate how well we are doing by what I see on the field. I personally put very little stock in comments about overall talent level or class rank average.

Football is executed by position groups with units. Every position group within the offense, defense, and special teams units needs to be solid for us to compete at the highest level. Class rankings are misleading if certain position groups are emphasized at the expense of other position groups. Class rankings also do not reflect class attrition that occurs over time.

I think we will see continual improvement between now and when King might become available again. I think the OL group we started last week was the best one so far with the players we have available. I expect the OL group execution to continue to improve as long as we don't suffer any more injuries.

I am not ready to call a full implosion to a losing record at this point.

We will be 3-3 after next week. It looks like the OL grouping we used tonight will be our starting grouping for the duration. We have to hope they will gel over the next couple of weeks and nobody else gets hurt. If we keep moving OL around, all bets are off.

We will get a better feel for Fisher's true feelings about Calzada if the Bama game gets out of hand quickly. I would expect to see him stick his #3 QB in for reps if he is really considering making a change before King is healthy. If he wants to make a change, he can start QB3 at Missouri after getting some game reps in the Bama game.

I believe that is exactly what Calzada was doing because Fisher coaches the QB's to put us in the best play based on defensive alignment. Throwing on 1st down can be very effective but you have to be productive when you do it. Calzada also needed to be quicker to see and take easy running yardage when the opportunities were there to scramble.