A new year is a new start. This fragmented sentence has been a staple of the IU football program in all the years of losing seasons. Each year became a new chance, a new start to the same story for the past 14 years. This season the story was the same, just a slight twist on the ending.
For the first time since the 1993 season, IU went to a Bowl game, playing on New Years Eve, in Tempe Arizona. This is a middle of the road bowl, but after a 14 year drought, most of us fans would have taken the Toilet Bowl sponsored by Kohler (if it existed). We didn’t get that low of a bowl seed, playing in a Big Ten contracted game against Oklahoma State, a Big 12 school. If you were not familiar with OSU, they are coached by Mike Gundy, he is a man, and he is 40. Like Chris Korman from the Herald Times said, that joke will never get old.
Now, with all joking aside, Mike Gundy is a good coach. He had a great game plan, knew who and where to attack our defense, and kept Tracy Porter and Greg Middleton from being able to hurt them, they actually took Middleton completely out of the game. My hats are off to the entire OSU staff and their players, they came set and ready.
Our guys were not ready to play, they came out flat, playing in an atmosphere they had never seen before, and just seemed intimidated by it all. Couple that with a very fast and physical OSU team, and the formula for a blow out had came together.
As I watched the game, on a 47” HDTV by the way (sorry, new experience, go buy one), I was not one bit shocked at anything I seen. Kellen was under pressure, and again he was determined to be a passing QB, when it was evident he was faster and more athletic than the guys chasing him. His plan was force it to Hardy, or throw it away. He never saw Thigpen, Sears, Means or Bailey opening up in the flat, many times with first down yardage. The announcers as well as others attribute this to being a sophomore QB, and yes he is a sophomore QB, that was starting his 22nd or 23rd game. He is a 2 year starter, these are the basics he should have learned as a redshirt freshman, and really taught as a first year starter.
Note to Lynch: Look for a better QB coach.
My next issue was Thigpen at running back. All year long I cringe when he gets the ball, and it is for two reasons, he will either fumble it, or lose yardage the majority of plays. There are two things this team does well running the ball, either a straight forward power game with Payton or Sears, or running the weak side counter. Payton runs this better than Thigpen, though Thigpen can be effective with his speed, when he remembers to run forward, don’t dance, don’t go outside, hit the hole the play is called for, if you get 2 yards, that is better than losing 3 like you did on the first play.
2nd Note to Lynch: Move Thigpen to the slot receiver, make the running backs coach pull the shotgun draw and the sweep out of the play book. If he is caught coaching these two plays, fire him on the spot, they don’t work, they have not worked, they will not work when the front 5 can’t block 4.
Speaking of the front 5, did they miss the flight? Come on guys, football games are won in the trenches, it doesn’t matter how good a QB is, how great his receivers are, how fast your running back is, without a solid front 5, the offense goes no where, does nothing. I know it is tough, you don’t get the credit when a QB has time to complete 80% of his passes, yet you get the blame in a hurry when he is running for his life, as you should. I know you were a veteran group, many who stayed an extra year to give your younger, more talented counter parts time to mature. For that I thank you.
3rd Note to Lynch: Need to find a really good tight end to help with downfield blocking on running plays, and with the hands to be the check down to allow the HB to either block or get the screen pass with man coverage. When you find them, use them, don’t let them stand on the sidelines like you did Nick Sexton, you wasted his senior year.
Now let’s talk about receivers, and not about IU’s receivers, but about their counter parts for OSU. Everyday, every film session, download it to their iPod, burn them a DVD to watch at home, but give every single one of our receivers a copy of nothing but the blocking on the outside that the OSU receivers done all game. It was almost perfection.
I don’t really have much more to say about the receivers, even when they could get open, Lewis could not get the ball to them.
4th Note to Lynch: Use the 1 and 2 man sleds to teach the receivers to block. If you don’t have one that can be used, buy one, some Alumni member has the money. If not, email me, through this site, I will start a fund raiser myself to get one!
Note to James Hardy: You are a very good receiver, you need to learn how to play through the double team and make the catch when it hits your hands. You also should learn how to block down field, I used to think your other skills would take up for that, but I was wrong.
If I was you, I would prepare for my senior year at IU, your draft stock went from middle to low first round to high 3rd round after Monday night. You are not ready, don’t fool yourself into thinking you are. If you don’t believe me, watch the film for yourself.
Now, do we really want to talk about play calling? We need a first down to keep a drive going, it is 4th and less than a yard, Lewis is in a shotgun, rolls out, and throws it to far ahead of Fisher for him to even get a finger on it. Let me ask the coaches this, why would you not put the ball in the hands of Josiah Sears? He averaged 3.2 yards per carry this season, he carried the ball 1 time Monday, 1 damn time, and it was a 5 yard TD, and would have been more if he would have had further to run!
Note to Lynch: Never mind, you should know what to do by now.
There will be more in the near future, I have lots of things to say about the defense, and it will not be nice.
Let’s hear your thoughts.
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