Yup - he’s lucky it wasn’t two pick sixes. He’s tiny too. Mathis is the only viable option and he’s out for a while.
Through 2 games, here are my opinions vs my personal expectations. Fromm - equal Zeus - better Swift - equal Cook - below (Usage rather than performance) Herrien - equal OL - equal, with the exception of Trey Hill. His talent is there, but he needs to get better at blitz recognition. WR - better Monty Rice - below Mark Webb - better I am mostly unknown on defense. They’ve performed well at times and overall, with a few significant lapses. It’s hard for me to make any proclamations due to talent level of opponents. Vandy was weird because they threw a million quick passes, and Murray State is FCS, so not much to take away there.
Cook is above on usage for me. I'm surprised we've gotten him the ball in so many different ways. I was never high on Rice so he's been about what I thought. I want to think the defense is good but we haven't played anyone with a pulse yet. I guess we find that out in a week and a half.
It's hard in general to gauge the defense and offense when you haven't played a close game. Lapses happen when it's 42-7.
I think Rice has played well. Crowder is the ILB playing below what I thought. He has to tackle better
That play early in the 2nd with the scoop and score ended up a great play because other guys came to the ball. Tae has missed the tackle, the guy got away from him just as help arrived.
I hope he never beats us, but man am I pulling for Zeus. Kid went through a lot, and then blew both ACL's. Hopefully he gets back to at least 95% and is running for ATL in a couple years.
Rice is a plugger. He’s not overly athletic and I’m pretty meh on him as well. I think the cream rises to the top at LB soon and that is Dean and Walker. Tindall is a mystery to me right now - talented pass rusher with exceptional closing speed but something isn’t clicking obviously in terms of him being an every down guy.
rice is solid crowder would be if he didn’t keep running by would-be tackles. he did that at least twice in the murray game pickens is a monster and he and fromm have a good thing brewing. same with wolf
I’m a dipshit, so I could be way off base. In the games so far, he seems more like the type of LBer who makes stops once the ball carrier has gotten 3 to 4 yards down field rather than the type who sniffs out plays and makes stops before they get started. I’m also going off a minuscule sample, so take all of this with a grain of salt.
Nine touches for 92 yards and a TD through two games. I expect him to continue to get 5+ touches a game. We have guys on top of guys at the offensive skill positions. It’s an embarrassment of riches. With that said, I think Cook is a special talent and he will be a big part of what we do offensively. All of our backs can catch the ball and that’s going to be a real weapon against the better teams on our schedule.
Absolutely. Cook has a different skill set to be exploited, and I expect we’ll continue to use it moving forward. I’m just talking first blush impressions after 2 laughers. With the way they were talking about Cook’s increased ability between the tackles, I figured he would’ve gotten a few more in the initial going. Obviously, there’s a long way to go and things will shake out differently once we have to actually compete in the second half.
Agreed. No need to do too much with him between the tackles when you have three guys like we have. He’s a weapon on the edges and an absolute blur in the open field. He’s a little different than anyone we have and I expect him to be key in a game or two this year.
Anyone else listen to Dean Legge’s podcasts? It’s kind of stunning how little Dean knows about CFB in general. He says some of the most idiotic/asinine shit ever.
Noon always sucks for fans early in the season. Now that Kirby has come out saying he has no issue with noon kicks, I expect to get noon’d more often now. Sometimes espn picks a good matchup for noon and we are 3rd best that day. Unsure how often that happens, or the exact order of picks.
Probably, but Whining apparently gets rewarded by the sec giving the whiner what they want. Welcoming nooners sends the wrong message at the very least.
I don't disagree with that. The man has to know that his fans and stadium are not into those games. I still remember losing to Vandy with the early kick in 2016. That stadium was dead. Hell, the entire town was dead. It was like being at a funeral. That was a slip-up by Kirby, period. If you want to hang out with the wife and kids, go get job that pays you less than $7mm a year or whatever it is.
To my point earlier, whose spot is Dean taking? Crowder's? Nope. He's taking Rice's spot. Especially against spread teams. Rice is slightly better than average and that's about it.
Proud of our fans, university and the entire city of Athens for how we handled this game today. If you were there, I hope you wore pink. Thoughts and prayers with Coach Anderson and good luck to those guys the rest of the way.