The overriding question in all this is simply “Is this fixable?â€Â. After listening to CKD post game and in his Monday presser, followed by Grubb and Wommack’s comments, I’m certainly not oozing with confidence.
We had an offensive line that looked like a sieve, unable to establish anything physical, and one guy out of highly touted receiver corp that seemed to be playing with effort. Nothing established in the run game to open up things.
CKW stated that nothing FSU did surprised us, yet our defense looked totally baffled. A offense that gashed us for 230 yards rushing and only needed 14 pass attempts for the game. The QB run game continues to kill us. Remember last year that OU and Jackson Arnold, with literally no receivers left due to injury, gashed us 130 yards in QB runs. Stockton at UGA, Sellers at USCe, and of course Arnold now at the Barn are all capable in the QB run game. And I’m sure there are others. CKD stated that he felt “the defense started to get its legs under them late in the third quarter. Seriously? Where the heck were their “legs†in the first two and half quarters? I keep hearing about “personnel†lacking on the D-line, players that don’t fit what we need. Well there is this thing called “the portalâ€Â. That team we played Saturday had 50+ new players, many of them transfers. Looks like they did a pretty good job of filling gaps.
Is it fixable? Yeah. But I’m not certain we have the leadership and decision making by both coaches and players to make it happen.