more on ksu football

i know you've been waiting for it... my analysis of the ksu game to open the 2009 season.  yes, i have a few opinions.  first of all, let me say, i'm not disappointed.  i feel like there's a lot to improve upon, but, as i mentioned in my previous ksu football post, that is a mark of a bill snyder team.  so, we can pretty much guarantee that our boys in purple spandex will improve.  simple thing to ask for, yet somehow so elusive in the prince years.  

 

so, special teams:  good at times.  i felt like our tackling, getting downfield to cover the return game, was good.  we made tackles on first contact.  also an elusive skill last year.  however, on kickoffs, the kicker has some decisions to make:  as a kicker you have one of two jobs:  either put the ball through the back of the end zone or hang it in the air for a significant enough hang time that the really fast guys can get downfield and tackle the guy with the ball as soon as he touches it.  well, we did neither on saturday.  our boy couldn't reach the end zone once. and when he tried to get it to the end zone by line driving the ball all he did was prevent the special teams from making a tackle below the 20 yard line.  

i thought our offense did ok.  yeah we made some mistakes, yeah we turned it over a couple of times, yeah we had almost no passing game.  here's why i'm not worried about those things yet.  one, coffman was nervous.  that'll work itself out.  two, we have some insurance in our back up QB, he's fast, he's a runner, and he's a bill snyder type of QB.  three, we ran the option!  i know, i know.  but i love the option.  and we ran it pretty well.  i think coffman has a good feel for the option and i think we have the players to pull it off.  four, we WILL have a passing game... it just wasn't there last saturday.  we will have tight end options and brandon banks will not always have a bad game, like he did last week.  he was rough last week, no doubt.  that will not always be the case.  fifth, our running game was good.  and we pretty much ONLY ran it up the middle, but we still dropped over 200 yards on UMass.  we had a good team of backs and we really didn't even use our fullback option.  snyder is notorious for not showing all of his cards up front.  we ran a limited number of plays and we will add to our repertoire as the season progresses.  the turnovers will clean up as the season progresses.  i feel ok about offense.  

defense, to be honest, didn't stand out one way or the other.  the times that UMass scored were odd occasions, once on a special teams play and once after a quick turn around.  the only score their offense truly earned was a field goal.  we gave up a few big plays, but we also held them to a field goal in the red zone.  i give us a passing grade. 

as i mentioned in my earlier post, i'm not discouraged because i don't think we are going to peak here.  it's unlike a snyder team to allow these same mistakes to continue to happen.  i think we had a lot to learn from from saturday's game which is all you can ask for in a non-conference game.