Connor Shaw & Mike Davis

[JQ94]

Originally Posted by Flameout12

You mean like that pick-6 that Wilson threw?
Right now, Connor Shaw is ranked ahead of Wilson and Bray in passing efficiency and is 3rd in the SEC.

http://web1.ncaa.org/mfb/natlRank.js...&div=IA&dest=O

If I could hit a dump pass on most of my throws, hell I'd be ranked high too. Most of his completions and stats are buffeted by YAC on the part of RB and receivers.

[Cockyhard]

Originally Posted by JQ94

If I could hit a dump pass on most of my throws, hell I'd be ranked high too. Most of his completions and stats are buffeted by YAC on the part of RB and receivers.

He is doing whats asked of him at the moment... plus We have become a TE oriented offense... Its working ...

[Garnet girl]

Originally Posted by mike1520

The pass protect on the line is good for the most part. It seems to me they struggle with run blocking.

I see the pass blocking as better than the run block. I don't know enough to understand why the same players can't do both. I saw one good gap to allow a run.

[SpecOps Cock]

Mike Davis stepped up in the blocking game for sure !!! Congrats to him

[snoopcockycock]

i have been feeling all season, and have posted it a couple of times, that i am less than impressed with sands as our rb coach. even latti has coughed up the ball a few times this year, and for him that is unthinkable. i think davis should have been the second guy early on, but his development has been slowed by poor coaching. i'm sorry if this offends, but i have been feeling it all season, and if anyone needs to go, i think it is him.
now, with elliot i am on the fence. there are good arguments both ways. i feel it is hard to show a great improvement on ol, with so many young players, but like has been mentioned, lsu and tenn have done it. of course we don't recruit nearly as well as they do on the ol, but our ol recruiting is ten times better over the last two years, than maybe ever. with our younger guys getting so much experience this season, together with the ones we redshirted and the excellent ol recruiting class we have coming in this year, we should be excellent next year on the ol. so i vote to give elliot another year, although with tenn's ol coach being available, i...
i am also not exactly blown away with browns guys. every decent passing team we have faced has thrown the ball at will against us. where is this aggressive style i kept hearing about? why are wr's so open that you can't see a gamecock defender in the pic? other times, these guys are making int's, and looking very aggressive. so i don't know if it is worth giving brown another year, or if he should go. the jury is still out on brown. he might be very good, but i just can't make a decision one way or the other on this guy.
lastly, i have been saying the entire time jr has been here, that he is not a good wr coach. stockstile was a great wr coach, and we haven't had a good one since he left. bubba has underachieved with some seriously talented wr's, and that position should have done more over the last six years at the very least.

[Kickerspl80]

Everette Sands has done an excellent job and is one of the biggest reasons we lead for David Williams. Its crazy to say he has done a subpar job. BTW, everyone fumbles once in a while, and Latti is no exception.

Bubba lost the 3rd best reciever in the country this year and has turned a group of 4-5 recievers into a group good enough to not even need a #1 guy. And if you want to actually do some research, you can go to Rivals and look at all the bigtime guys we have gotten and see Jr's name somewhere in most of the articles.

[Flameout12]

Originally Posted by JQ94

...but he'll never be the drop back guy some people want him to be.

And what is that supposed to mean? How do you quantify "drop back passer" besides some tall guy too slow to run?
He's doing his job and winning games...I'll take that anyday if it means we're stuck with some guy who will never be the next Peyton Manning.

Originally Posted by JQ94

If I could hit a dump pass on most of my throws, hell I'd be ranked high too. Most of his completions and stats are buffeted by YAC on the part of RB and receivers.

Like Danny Wuerffel?

[Red Devil]

Originally Posted by Flameout12

You mean like that pick-6 that Wilson threw?
Right now, Connor Shaw is ranked ahead of Wilson and Bray in passing efficiency and is 3rd in the SEC.

http://web1.ncaa.org/mfb/natlRank.js...&div=IA&dest=O

Are you saying that if we had Wilson as QB we would not have beaten LSU or UF, assuming he did not cough up the ball on the first play on our own 3 yard line??

[henmania]

Originally Posted by Spurticus

I've said it before and It's as true now as it was when I said it after
game one.

Connor is a Zone Read QB. He can be a decent pocket passer, but he
is at his best when he can roll out or move around. We FINALLY figured
that out last week against UT, and yesterday and in passing downs
we are getting him out of the pocket and allowing him to move some to
throw....... HOWEVER, this is ony a result of what I've been saying for
9 weeks. Our O/Line is causing this team to underachieve and unless it
gets better next season, we are going to continue to see our offense
struggle and be less than what it can be.
Shaw could have become a consistently good drop back and pass guy, but
with the line we had, he was under fire way too quickly. Our line is also
the reason Lattimore has not gotten the full measure of his talent here,
and had to do what he did on his own for the most part.

Unless we get the line playing like an SEC Caliber line is capable of playing
Connor Mitch and Brandon Nosovich will suffer the same fate. If our
coaching staff wants to compete for the SEC Title next year we have to
re-evaluate a couple of position coaches (3 at least IMO). Make the
changes or suffer a team that is going to be less than it is capable of
being.

Spurt, I have to agree with this. But why is it? Is Shawn not as good a coach as we thought? or is it timing to develop a quality line?

[4gamecockfb]

i think coach elliot is doing fine. grady brown is a good db coach too. i'd like to see us retain our current staff if at all possible

[scfanz]

As much as I like Coach Elliott, our OL has shown little improvement. We still struggle to open holes and pass protect consistently. If Dooley loses his job we should go full bore after UT's OL coach. Just like last year, we are wasting an SEC championship caliber defense because we can't block.

[Red Devil]

Originally Posted by scfanz

As much as I like Coach Elliott, our OL has shown little improvement. We still struggle to open holes and pass protect consistently. If Dooley loses his job we should go full bore after UT's OL coach. Just like last year, we are wasting an SEC championship caliber defense because we can't block.

This is true. We will only have Clowney for 1 more season guaranteed. It would be a shame to have that good a defense and our o line stops us from taking advantage of it. At the end of the day, Elliot came from App state. The SEC is a little different.

[Flameout12]

Originally Posted by Red Devil

Are you saying that if we had Wilson as QB we would not have beaten LSU or UF, assuming he did not cough up the ball on the first play on our own 3 yard line??

How many teams has Wilson or Bray beaten this year? Well....?

[cockypanther]

Originally Posted by Flameout12

Our OL is a WIP, but it is not the main reason our running game has been off. A lot of this is schemes, play calling and defenses adjusting to what we are doing. We are not playing as smart as we could.

Even yesterday when we were beating Arky with the pass, they continued to load the LOS with guys and dare us to run on them. 5 OL cannot block 6-7 guys...someone is free.
Teams are scheming to stop the zone-read and make us beat them with the pass...this is why the play action thing is working.

We had 2 outside runs that yielded ~-7 yds...why we think we're fast enough to run outside on a SEC defense is beyond me. That's just stupid play calling...we are an inside running team and we are at our best with a big RB pounding the rock.

And our passing....we still don't have enough shorter/quicker routes...this is why we are taking some of the sacks...the plays take too long to develop. We seem to never throw that dump off to RB anymore....that and those TE drags should be our bread and butter.

Marcus....he was not the same runner until the UTen game...it wasn't his cuts or speed...but his drive after contact. I never saw him drive the pile like he didn't in '10...he wasn't as big and strong...let's be honest.

And Shaw is doing the same thing...just sliding...

I disagree about your assessment of the running game. We don't need to be running out of shotgun anymore.. It's not working and part of the reason holes aren't opening up. From the little bit we have run out of traditional running formations (the I, off set I, single back) we have been successful. In fact the O line looks pretty good when running off tackle or with a pulling guard. We could be more successful if we keep up that kind of play calling for the run game.

[Dizzy01]

Originally Posted by Kickerspl80

Everette Sands has done an excellent job and is one of the biggest reasons we lead for David Williams. Its crazy to say he has done a subpar job. BTW, everyone fumbles once in a while, and Latti is no exception.

Bubba lost the 3rd best reciever in the country this year and has turned a group of 4-5 recievers into a group good enough to not even need a #1 guy. And if you want to actually do some research, you can go to Rivals and look at all the bigtime guys we have gotten and see Jr's name somewhere in most of the articles.

I don't think anyone would disagree that Bubba is a good recruiter but that doesn't change the fact that as a WR coach he leaves a lot to be desired. He's not much different that having David Reeves as the QB coach. The reality the WR core has consistently underachieved. People always point to Rice, McKinley and Jefferey but two of those guys were freak athletes that were going to be stars regardless. McKinley may be the one guy who you can look at as having really grown in the position since he was primarily a QB in HS. However even if you want to give credit for all three of them then you can't ignore the number of other highly ranked recruits that came in and never developed. In fact a couple guys that didn't make it at receiver moved to other positions where they were very successful.

Maybe the move that needs to be made is sliding Bubba into the QB coach spot since the HBC is really going to drive that spot and then let him focus on recruiting and get a WR coach that can help players develop.

[cockypanther]

Originally Posted by JT21

Run blocking has been terrible. The pass protection has been surprisingly good when the defense just rushes straight up. But these guys are absolutely clueless on even the most simple delayed blitz or stunt.

But if there's anything holding back the offense it's Connor's play. He was solid yesterday but still left a ton of plays on the field. Don't know what happened but seems like he's hardly thrown a decent deep pass this season.

If you think Connor hasn't thrown any good passes this year then maybe try opening your eyes when "watching" the games. Is he as polished as Bray or Wilson? No but he deserves more respect then a lot of people give him. He has thrown beautiful balls throughout the season and it's not exactly an easy job to be the QB of a good SEC team with sky high expectations. Be glad we have a competitor and a winner heading up our team.

[Dizzy01]

Originally Posted by henmania

Spurt, I have to agree with this. But why is it? Is Shawn not as good a coach as we thought? or is it timing to develop a quality line?

It will be interesting to see Spurt's assessment on this but my take is Elliot was hired to bring in a zone scheme and he's been recruiting and coaching to this. For some reason though rather than committing to this style there has been a mix of styles and schemes and more sets seem to be pro style sets and plays than zone.

[Rebel4ever]

Originally Posted by pantera17

There were many times Saturday where I was like "he has all day to throw"

Some people think when the QB takes off running it means the line didn't block well. When really the ball should have been out.

I agree. Our pass blocking has been good enough. Run blocking is the issue but these youngsters can and will improve this year and next.

[COCKYWOOD]

Spurrier Jr when in control of the WR and not recruiting our guys ran great routes and caught everything . Shawn Elliott brought a never say die attitude to this team. It's not easy making OL nasty ,but he's doing what he can with what we have. Our recruiting and popular national notoriety ,which has never been higher , has us set up to keep on rolling !

[Red Devil]

Originally Posted by Flameout12

How many teams has Wilson or Bray beaten this year? Well....?

That's not what I asked now is it?