Milton is killing us. That’s the first and most obvious problem that Heupel can try to fix. The o line will get better with Mays, but still won’t be great. We need a qb with awareness (pre-snap, pocket, etc) The defense was so passive last night, we didn’t give them a chance to be themselves. It’s time to go to Nico. You don’t pony up $8 million to sit him behind a qb that couldn’t play at Michigan or in 2021 or 2023.
I’m mixed on this. None of those guys were headed anywhere until Heup got them. I thought it meant he could do it with everyone, but so far, it doesn’t appear that way.
By the way, it’s been said, but the worst coaches on staff are Banks and Martinez. Banks should be aggressive all the time. Martinez has never been able to do it and never will. He’s had many opportunities, including two here.
Someone made the point already but the lack of juniors on this team is a glaring problem because a lot of these seniors can’t play and a lot of the freshmen aren’t ready.
1) Joe may not start the whole season, and he has flaws for sure (mostly game sense issues and communication issues), but you can't lay all of our woes last night at his feet. If he had gone through a peterman-esque meltdown, then fine, yeah pull him and put nico in. As is, without obvious poor performance, you can't pull a guy who's a leader and is doing everything you ask him to and also did things "the right way". It's going to go over poorly in that locker room. 2) I still think we have a decent chance of beating Georgia at home, and a better chance of beating bama. Winning either of those two games forgives tonight. Our season is still ahead of us. 3) It would be hilarious if we somehow go 11-1 off this loss and still make atlanta. Probably a pipe dream, as I don't see us beating both georgia and bama. But hey.
basically my hope for milton is either he has a crompton-like redemption arc in the next stretch, or there's a definitive "he's gotta go" moment where we can switch to nico without causing a split in the locker room
Milton’s accuracy is not a problem right now. He’s improved leaps and bounds in that regard. He’s still not Peyton, and he probably never will be, but he can hit receivers somewhat consistently and puts the deep ball on the money more often than not. That’s good enough to run a pretty good college offense. I’m not as sure about his ability to command the offense. This is where it’s hard to separate what’s on Milton and what’s on his teammates. The coaches know better than we do—is it taking us 20 seconds to line up because we have new receivers and linemen or because Milton is reading things too slowly? Is he failing to make checks he should make? How big a role does he have in the presnap penalties? I don’t know. I’m comfortable saying his accuracy has gotten better, and that he doesn’t do a great job of seeing opportunities to tuck and run. But the overall offense is a bit disjointed, and it’s really hard to tell how much of that is the QB.
Saw on Twitter last night that Joe Milton has never in his career thrown a TD when his feet weren’t set. So he’s never thrown a TD on the move. Ever. Is that true?
I'm not saying he isn't a huge problem, he's just not the biggest problem on our Offense. APU showed a litany of issues. Regardless, if he's the biggest issue or not, the entire unit grades out a low D or F across the board so he's the best of a bad lot.
Only Thornton is new to the program, but there are guys playing a whole lot more than they did last year.
They did. I’m not pressing this point too far—I don’t really think the receivers are to blame. Just expressing that I can’t tell as a fan watching TV whether some of the organizational disjointedness is Milton or just a lot of turnover. I suspect it’s a bit Milton, but I’m not ready to state that with any real confidence.
Just realized that I'll go my 20s and 30s without seeing us win game in the swamp. I was 18 in 2003 and will be 40 the next time we play down there. [uck fay] me.
