Ive said it before and I'll say it again. Skip Holtz is going to lose a couple of games every year that should have been victories. That's been his MO his whole career. On the other side of the coin, he will very seldom, if ever, win a game against a P5 or upper echelon G5 because he has a strong tendency to play "not to lose".
MTSU is game there was no excuse for losing. They are not better than us.
But, to quote the thread title, the good news is our conference is crappy enough that we can still win 7 games, go to a shitty bowl game and play a shitty opponent.
That's who we are.
There is a HUGE difference between playing to win and playing not to lose. See last night.
Our guys on defense don't like CONTACT enough. IMO, they are too soft. They need to go thru a "Jimmy Johnson" fall camp, not a Skip Holtz fall camp. If you don't know about JJ's camps, it was all-hitting, full contact, every day. And if you couldn't handle it, you were sent home. Period. And it worked. The nucleus of those JJ teams won 3 of the next 4 Super Bowls. There were books written about how hard the hitting was in those camps, but it made the players very tough.
If We're going to win, we have to quit kicking field goals inside the 5 yard line. This is why Skip will never win a big game. We should have run the ball in from the 5 on that last drive. We left a time-out on the clock. Higgins can't make a play when the pressure is on. With good coaching, this team is 3-1 instead of 1-3.
Based on how the defense has played up until this point you can expect heartbreaking loses against WKU and USM too. I'm not calling out the players, It starts with the coaches and trickles down. In short, I have zero faith in Blake Baker. I hope they fire that worthless hack at the end of the season, but then again, I know Skip doesn't have the testicles to do such a thing. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the next Tommy Spangler.
The only reason he was hired in the first place was because it was believed that he actually learned something under Manny Diaz. Long story short...he didn't learn jack. Tech is paying him about $110,000 more than he is actually worth. Yeah, that's right...I believe he's only worth about 30k. The manager of Waffle House deserves higher pay than that loser. USELESS!!!!!
To me, the bright side will be the next three seasons. We have a solid QB with a high ceiling in J'mar. Plus, the defense should only get better. I mean, how much worse could it get on that side of the ball? Hopefully Baker will get better or get the hell out of the way. I'm sure Presbyterian College will take him. Rumor has it that they'll take anyone.
It seemed to be the total opposite from Week 3. In Week 3 the defense played terrible during the first half, giving up 21 points in the first quarter. In Week 4, the defense played horrible in the second half, giving up 21 points in the the third quarter. The defense needs to learn how to start and finish games. Until they can do this, my pantry will be filled with antacids.
I'm not even going to use Weeks 1-2 as examples for anything. SC State is terrible even by FCS standards and based on what AR has been doing since they played us, I am not convinced that we played the same team that beat TCU and hung with aTm for the first half. They were breaking in a brand new QB that has dramatically improved in weeks 2-4. Although a one point loss is impressive when you consider the differences in our conferences and athletic budgets, a L is an L and that game is essentially moot in my eyes.