Ok, so broadly speaking, we knew this was going to be rocky. Different schemes, different roles and expectations of players etc. Somethings worked, others haven’t. It takes time to turn a battleship or whatever.
Drilling down a bit. We have enough talent to win these games we’re losing. It’s effort and execution, and play calls. Something is noticeably different these last 3 weeks from earlier in the season. It’s the mentality of the team and what I’d characterize as their energy level or effort to make plays.
I’m not saying players aren’t giving maximum effort, but there’s a momentum a team feeds off of. An extra step, a sharper cut, a faster break they get from this energy. Laser focused and amped up. It leads to breaking tackles and making tackles.
In short it’s psychological in a lot of ways. I think we’re seeing the breaking point of that. This years been straining, and I’ll go into that more, shortly, but I think we’ve seen this team break under that mental taxation and I can only hope the break between Bama (which will be ugly) and whatever bowl will allow some rest to field a competent team.
My version of the emotional and psychological timeline.
1) Off-season coaching change, players come and go, some are hurt by the departures, some are intrigued by change.
2) Between the new coaches, schemes, personalities and the S&C changes - the off-season was hard, reportedly the hardest in a long while. Some foundations laid, but more importantly I believe “hope” came into the program. “Look how hard we’ve worked”, “us against the world”, “we’re better than the outside world thinks we are”
3) We go into the season and beat up some scrubs and we kinda validate the hypothesis that we’re a “good team”. Better than expected, we’ve “got a chance”, “this is what we trained for”. Now it needs to be pointed out that although we’re winning, some players aren’t playing like they thought they would, but winning cures all.
4) Tough loss in Happy Valley. This was supposed to be the “coming out party” and we dropped the ball, literally. 1st crack in the facade.
5) At the 1st sign of adversity, we tripped and nearly lost to Georgia state. We were flat and uninspired. And once behind, we didn’t have an answer, but got lucky. Some issues around the team show up, frustrated starters and guys not playing. Coach corn fired, something Harsin felt so strongly about that it had to happen now.
6) LSU was all about Bo magic and LSU being in a worse mental space than we were. UGA crushed us and we just didn’t play well all together with the drops and lapses in coverage. But Arkansas was a great bounce back game and arguably our best performance of the year. That win and a well deserved bye week gave us another boost of energy to beat a good Ole Miss team.
7) Now we get to A&M, another shot at a “coming out party”, we win we control our own destiny. We were talking about winning out and playing in Atlanta. We go out and fall completely flat. Nothing worked, we had no answers. Probably a lot of finger pointing and those players not playing rumbles getting a little louder.
8) Miss St was a combination of playing good ball and taking ownership of that momentum to go up 28-3 and failing to maintain that same energy and going back to what we saw against Ga st and A&M. Just epic meltdown. The injuries, the frustration mounting.
9) Now I think we’re struggling to find “what we’re fighting for”.
I think you’ve got 10-15 guys that have already decided to leave. Good or bad, That could be as many as 1 in 5 guys around you. That can’t be good for practices, camaraderie amongst the players on and off the field, trust in the coaches or “the bigger plan”. I think that manifests itself on the field. Those players have to go or commit to the process. Some staffing changes need to be considered.
This won’t be fixed overnight and we’re not recruiting to the level of our biggest rivals, so it’ll take 3 or 4 years where they did it in 2 or 3. Maybe the portal changes things, but I think we’re in for a bumpy ride.
I like Harsin and believe he’ll be a really good coach for us and build a strong program - but think he’s held this team together with tape and we’re coming apart at the seams. Think we all hoped he could piecemeal and shore it up to get through the season, but the truth is we need to remove all the rotten wood and start fresh. It’s not going to be fun these next few weeks, but it’s got to happen for us to get better.
Drilling down a bit. We have enough talent to win these games we’re losing. It’s effort and execution, and play calls. Something is noticeably different these last 3 weeks from earlier in the season. It’s the mentality of the team and what I’d characterize as their energy level or effort to make plays.
I’m not saying players aren’t giving maximum effort, but there’s a momentum a team feeds off of. An extra step, a sharper cut, a faster break they get from this energy. Laser focused and amped up. It leads to breaking tackles and making tackles.
In short it’s psychological in a lot of ways. I think we’re seeing the breaking point of that. This years been straining, and I’ll go into that more, shortly, but I think we’ve seen this team break under that mental taxation and I can only hope the break between Bama (which will be ugly) and whatever bowl will allow some rest to field a competent team.
My version of the emotional and psychological timeline.
1) Off-season coaching change, players come and go, some are hurt by the departures, some are intrigued by change.
2) Between the new coaches, schemes, personalities and the S&C changes - the off-season was hard, reportedly the hardest in a long while. Some foundations laid, but more importantly I believe “hope” came into the program. “Look how hard we’ve worked”, “us against the world”, “we’re better than the outside world thinks we are”
3) We go into the season and beat up some scrubs and we kinda validate the hypothesis that we’re a “good team”. Better than expected, we’ve “got a chance”, “this is what we trained for”. Now it needs to be pointed out that although we’re winning, some players aren’t playing like they thought they would, but winning cures all.
4) Tough loss in Happy Valley. This was supposed to be the “coming out party” and we dropped the ball, literally. 1st crack in the facade.
5) At the 1st sign of adversity, we tripped and nearly lost to Georgia state. We were flat and uninspired. And once behind, we didn’t have an answer, but got lucky. Some issues around the team show up, frustrated starters and guys not playing. Coach corn fired, something Harsin felt so strongly about that it had to happen now.
6) LSU was all about Bo magic and LSU being in a worse mental space than we were. UGA crushed us and we just didn’t play well all together with the drops and lapses in coverage. But Arkansas was a great bounce back game and arguably our best performance of the year. That win and a well deserved bye week gave us another boost of energy to beat a good Ole Miss team.
7) Now we get to A&M, another shot at a “coming out party”, we win we control our own destiny. We were talking about winning out and playing in Atlanta. We go out and fall completely flat. Nothing worked, we had no answers. Probably a lot of finger pointing and those players not playing rumbles getting a little louder.
8) Miss St was a combination of playing good ball and taking ownership of that momentum to go up 28-3 and failing to maintain that same energy and going back to what we saw against Ga st and A&M. Just epic meltdown. The injuries, the frustration mounting.
9) Now I think we’re struggling to find “what we’re fighting for”.
I think you’ve got 10-15 guys that have already decided to leave. Good or bad, That could be as many as 1 in 5 guys around you. That can’t be good for practices, camaraderie amongst the players on and off the field, trust in the coaches or “the bigger plan”. I think that manifests itself on the field. Those players have to go or commit to the process. Some staffing changes need to be considered.
This won’t be fixed overnight and we’re not recruiting to the level of our biggest rivals, so it’ll take 3 or 4 years where they did it in 2 or 3. Maybe the portal changes things, but I think we’re in for a bumpy ride.
I like Harsin and believe he’ll be a really good coach for us and build a strong program - but think he’s held this team together with tape and we’re coming apart at the seams. Think we all hoped he could piecemeal and shore it up to get through the season, but the truth is we need to remove all the rotten wood and start fresh. It’s not going to be fun these next few weeks, but it’s got to happen for us to get better.
