I don’t want to defend the offense, as it was totally miserable and has to be better, but its worth noting the totally conservative gameplan did get us to a 3-0 halftime vs a Big Ten team and 10-0 game into the 4th. Silas dropped an assured pick 6 that would have made it 10-7.
Once the offense was forced to try to be more aggressive late game is when Finn threw the back breaker that led to 17-0.
Again: offense has to execute better and be better, but its possible the conservative gameplan is what gave us a chance to be in this game. It really reminded me of the Aveon gameplans we used for him to keep us in games, which is quite disappointing if that is what Finn brings to the table. It did give us the best chance to win with Aveon (and we won alot of games doing it), but gotta think Finn’s ceiling is much higher unless he’s just not the same as he was two years ago.
I’m just crushed we had a great chance against a mediocre Big Ten team who had to play their backup QB who didn’t have first team reps in game one of the season and couldn’t capitalize. That was the perfect storm to steal a win.
Redsea-yes you are right - we got to 4 Q v Wisc only 10-0 but that was based on two factors - good D play and Wisc was using their 2d team QB. The question is what would the score have been with a good Miami O game plan?
To be fair Wisconsin wasn’t doing anything with their QB1 either. It was 3-0 halfway through the 2nd when he got hurt. If anything the backup did better
I was just hoping we could make it a competitive game. Don’t believe we got into Wisky territory until late in the game and that was due to a PI call. Vegas had the O/U for wins for the Badgers at 5.5. They don’t look like they are going to be a very good team and we should have been able to generate more offense than we did
O’Neil was SDSU starter as freshman prior year and had over 2000+ yds passing, 12 TDs, 6 INTs. Early on they thought he might be UW’s starter. He looked better than UW #1 when he came in against us.
Despite the lack of MAC titles (as already noted mostly due to a couple of superb MAC teams in UT and Marshall in that era), I found the Walker years to be very exciting with multiple wins against power conferences including ranked teams.
Walker prepared to win every game, and I think Chuck should do the same. In today’s world of bowl proliferation, almost every one of Walker’s 1990 teams would have gone bowling. When we played the big boys, I eagerly looked forward to the games. Now, not so much.
Of the approximately 93 games (186 teams) played since the season opened, only 10 teams failed to score a point. The MAC accounted for 3 of the 10 teams.
“Fighting to win the MAC championship is what it is all about, Chuck has it right.”
No he doesn’t. If you want your fan base to stay at 5,000 fans, this is perfectly acceptable. Chuck himself has disagreed with you. He said this past offseason that he wants to grow the program and position Miami to move conferences and compete for the CFP. I don’t think those comments align with settling for the MAC title game. I don’t think those comments align with not trying to score points against power conference opponents, below average opponents at that.
I don’t know why loyal Miami fans think it’s so awful to want more. We haven’t scored a damn TD in 3 straight season openers!
As someone who usually tries to make it to the opening away games and is as frustrated as anyone to sit through the last few years, I do believe Chuck thinks playing super safe gives us the best chance to win when outmatched, rather than taking risks. Its brutal to watch but I’m not going to act like he’s definitely wrong, it just totally sucks to watch.
He did have us in both the UW and NW games for what its worth. I don’t think its safe to assume that if we played more dynamically and took more risks we’d be more in those games. Its possible we lose by 20-30.
What kills me is the execution. If we are going to play like this, fine, but you can’t have 117 yards of offense and 0 for 9 on 3rd down.
I’d rather be aggressive, risk a few mistakes and lose 31-10. At least I know the team and coaching staff gave it everything they had to win the game. I don’t think we were significantly outmatched by either Northwestern last year or Wisky this year.
As it is, I think Chuck has convinced himself and his team that we can’t win these games and therefore the overly-conservative game plan. God, I hate that attitude.
I also don’t understand how 2 yds per carry and 117 total yards prepares the offense for MAC play. How? It feels like the fallback position of Chuck apologists…offense plays like crap…oh, don’t worry, Chuck is focused on preparing his team for MAC play. What?
I think the focusing/preparing for MAC play is a red herring and Chuck has never said that. I think its as simple as he thinks grinding the game to a stop and keeping it low scoring gives Miami the best chance to win when he thinks the team is outmatched.
As I said, he ran a similar strategy in the MAC when Aveon took the reigns and he felt we were outmatched, to success. Its exceptionally ugly and so far has not brought much results OOC.
From the northwestern game last year. Watch from about 4:45-6:00. He pretty much says they have to run against a big 10 team to establish who they are because conference play is only 4 weeks away
Wether it was Wisconsin”s first or second team QB is not really the point- the discussion point is how bad we were on offense and the absolute lack of a thoughtful game plan - which BTW left our D on the field way too long. We failed to convert any third down to a first down, ran perhaps the fewest number of plays on O in years, , averaged less than 2 yards a carry on the ground, failed to establish any type of RPO offense which should be a strong point for Finn, etc. Anyone trying to defend our O game plan should take a hard look at the stats, watch the game again on replay , compare our play calling to what other teams are doing on offense. The offensive effort Thursday night was terrible including making no adjustments at half time. The objective of the game is to win not to minimize how much you lose by . The question for the Rutgers game is whether our game plan on O will be any better.
