FOOTBALL Are you altering your season prediction after Saturday?
- Thread starter Matt Dossett
- Start date
I'll wait for the out of conference games to be done, though if Missouri beats the Raiders by a wider margin than the fcs school they whipped last week, I may think more poorly of them.
Not yet... If we lose to Murray, I may give up on those weeknight games and stay home.
If we lose to Murray, we don't deserve to win a single game. And we just may not.
I actually feel a little more positive.
I think we go as the QB goes, and I like Vatiatto more than I did. He's got a good arm, good release, good accurate spin.
We're still not recruiting FBS-caliber athletes. The team is still by and large too small and too slow. That's clear to me, as Bama looked like it was playing at 50% speed and most of our guys could do nothing. But we won't run into another Bama.
I'd like to see how we look vs Mizzou before I change my 6-6 prediction. Mizzou doesn't have the Bama horses, and should still out talent us in the end, but I want to see us throw some punches.
I think we go as the QB goes, and I like Vatiatto more than I did. He's got a good arm, good release, good accurate spin.
We're still not recruiting FBS-caliber athletes. The team is still by and large too small and too slow. That's clear to me, as Bama looked like it was playing at 50% speed and most of our guys could do nothing. But we won't run into another Bama.
I'd like to see how we look vs Mizzou before I change my 6-6 prediction. Mizzou doesn't have the Bama horses, and should still out talent us in the end, but I want to see us throw some punches.
In the past Stock's teams always seemed to improve after getting stomped the first game, & wouldn't be unusual for us to get a win the 2nd week. However, this was a stupidly designed schedule. Two back to back Power 5 teams in consecutive weeks on the road is more than MT can logically handle. A mid-level G5 school should have been sandwiched in between these schools. Idiotic scheduling.
If Colorado St for example had been scheduled between Bama & Mizzou giving us some momentum going into week 3 a possible upset could have have been in the making.
I still don't have much of a feeling for this year's team. All I know is that even for a G5 team we're poorly recruited & under sized compared to many of our peers. Those young men shouldn't be forced to be humiliated playing 2-3 P5 schools on the road annually. But that is the pennance for an over paid coaching staff whom the media & former players seem to love.
All the former players, MT administrators, & media like Chris Childers act like they love our coach, but we never seem to here from them after any of our 50 point beat downs.
If Colorado St for example had been scheduled between Bama & Mizzou giving us some momentum going into week 3 a possible upset could have have been in the making.
I still don't have much of a feeling for this year's team. All I know is that even for a G5 team we're poorly recruited & under sized compared to many of our peers. Those young men shouldn't be forced to be humiliated playing 2-3 P5 schools on the road annually. But that is the pennance for an over paid coaching staff whom the media & former players seem to love.
All the former players, MT administrators, & media like Chris Childers act like they love our coach, but we never seem to here from them after any of our 50 point beat downs.
That's been an issue for several years IMO. Started around the time Spray left
The eye test (however subjective that may be) makes it look like MT lacks power / explosiveness to compete (even against CUSA foes like WKU, Liberty, etc).
Is it S&C? Recruiting? Both?
I'll leave that to someone else to answer but MT will struggle to WIN conference championship until it's fixed. Further, MT doesn't look like a complete team. Overly reliant on 1/2 players to be better than the competition. That's fine against the low-end CUSA team, but that's not gonna fly against the more complete / faster / explosive teams like Liberty / WKU.
I think it's mostly recruiting.
I know i've said this 100 times on here, but I was absolutely floored at the size/speed difference between us and UTSA when i saw it in person. We looked like children. They looked like men.
I don't think we're getting the highest caliber athletes that we can. Our recruiting classes don't seem to rank very highly relative to our peers, and a large bulk of our classes for years under Stock were guys who were recruited mainly by the lowest end FBS and FCS teams. Guys who end up in that tier often do so because they don't have the measure-ables that many higher level programs are looking for.
Talent is one thing, but at some point, guys without natural size and speed run into a ceiling. And S&C can only do so much. You can make a fast guy a little bit faster, but you can't make a slow guy fast. You can put weight and muscle on a guy who's 6'6", but if a dude is 5'11", there's a limit any S&C program is going to run into.
You're exactly right about the "complete" team comment. We always have a handful of guys who are really good come through here - but we never have a roster with more than a couple of them sprinkled around. Those individual guys are bright enough to beat teams that are really down (which our conference always has a couple), but their not good enough to beat the top dogs of the conference. And it's not helped by the fact that one entire unit - the offensive line - is always terrible.
Which begs the question, as a coach and running a program, is CRS actually a decent at it outside of recruiting?And I don't think it's an ability thing, it's a commitment to recruiting.
Because he still manages .500 seasons with weak recruiting classes. What would happen if we had consistent recruiting classes at the top of our league? And I know someone is going to raise the facilities. Well, let's see if that has any impact on this year or next years classes since construction has begun.
I honestly don't have an issue with the X's and O's. It's not like we've never had a good team when we've lucked into higher end talent. We're not reinventing the wheel, and the systems we use offensively and defensively are good enough to win when you plug actual FBS level college football athletes into them.
That's why I keep calling him a fraud. Trying your best and failing is one thing. But we're not winning because of a lack of effort, plain and simple.
Stockstill just doesn't put any effort into recruiting the best players we can. Look no further than the endless stream of JUCO nobodies that never do anything when they get here. They're filling out recruiting classes with kids who's primary attribute is that they'll sign on the dotted line.
There's no accountability. Offensive line has been awful for nearly a decade. There's no change.
There is no accountability anywhere in MT Athletics unless you get arrested for a very public DUI or busted for weed.
I miss Adam Sparks. The guy wasn’t (and still isn’t) afraid to ask the hard questions and write about the warts. His coverage of the Pruitt saga at UTK has been outstanding. All we’ve had since he left are a bunch of in-house fluffers who are afraid to call out the program out of fear of losing their access.
