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FOOTBALL Middle Tennessee at Memphis Game Thread

MTSU opts to punt on 4th and medium around midfield and Memphis will start at their 11 after a good punt by Grant Chadwick
 
I know they are not to be confused with 1986 Bear's D but I am seeing some improvement, not enough but seeing some signs.
Playing much better than the offense! 5 games in nobody knows how to run this offense with any consistency. Dumbest play calling I’ve ever seen.
 
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Omari Kelly big play to get the ball in Memphis territory. HUGE game from him tonight
 
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Derek Mason picks up an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty as he gets upset over a terrible no-call as Omari Kelly was being held clearly right in front of the ref. Stalls the drive and Grant Chadwick punts it for 42 yards to pin Memphis at their 13-yard line.
 
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Playing much better than the offense! 5 games in nobody knows how to run this offense with any consistency. Dumbest play calling I’ve ever seen.

Hallmark of a bad team is never being able to put a complete game together. One week the defense can't force a punt. The next week the offense turns the ball over and can barely cross mid field.

Football is pretty simple. MTSU average yards per carry is 1.9. Memphis is 6.5. You don't need to look at anything else.
 
For all y’all that were upset with Stock, how ya feeling now. This is worse! Any media going to ask this staff any hard questions? We were more aggressive against Ole Miss. If you know football, this offense looks ugly and the play calling is pathetic. Hate this offensive philosophy.
 
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For all y’all that were upset with Stock, how ya feeling now. This is worse!
Agree here, even if it is just year one, this team looks bad bad. I see people saying they are seeing improvement but outside of Omari Kelly being a freak, I do not see any improvement from week to week out of any position group. Memphis is Memphis, but it is 24-7. 7 points in a game is not an improvement regardless of opponent.
 
We’re exactly where just about everyone thought we would be after 5 games. The team looked much better today. Obviously would love the win but I think it was a step in the right direction.
I’m not sure what you watched. Defensively much improvement. Offensively the handcuffs need to come off. Y’all are too accepting of mediocre & that was offensively embarassing. They do not know how to start a game using what they have. Nick had a terrible game, but he’s still getting too much pressure. His OC isnt helping him out at all.
 
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For all y’all that were upset with Stock, how ya feeling now. This is worse! Any media going to ask this staff any hard questions? We were more aggressive against Ole Miss. If you know football, this offense looks ugly and the play calling is pathetic. Hate this offensive philosophy.
If Mason is horrible, he can easily be let go after a few years, whereas suckstill was never-ending mediocrity, precisely like the school's "leadership"
 
For all y’all that were upset with Stock, how ya feeling now. This is worse! Any media going to ask this staff any hard questions? We were more aggressive against Ole Miss. If you know football, this offense looks ugly and the play calling is pathetic. Hate this offensive philosophy.

I said many times McPhee, Steve Smith, and Massaro were more deserving to be fired. Stockstill didn't do himself any favors with poor community out reach, terrible in-state recruiting, and the most mediocre of mediocre results. Maybe if his bosses (and contract) demanded more we would have gotten more.

Our problems start at the top folks. Stockstill deserved to be fired, but it was a terrible decision to give him 5 million to walk away and then let the bigger problems decide on his hire. We would have been much better off keeping Stockstill and replacing McPhee, Steve Smith, and maybe Massaro and going from there.

We made our problems worse going the route we went. The head of the snake is still intact and thriving.

It doesn't even matter anymore though. We missed our chance
 
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Actually thought we were a little better tonight.

Defensively, there’s still issues with the back 7 that probably won’t be fixed this year with this roster. Corners were good and the DL wasn’t a liability, but there’s problems with the safeties and linebackers so Memphis just played pitch and catch over the middle. That’s the best offense we’ll see the rest of the year though.

Offensively, I don’t have a problem with the playcalling. They can’t really run the ball with the makeshift Oline so they’re one dimensional from the get go. NV is an above average QB with good accuracy, but not great and some decision making issues apparent on that last drive.

We’re past the murderers row part of the schedule, so we have a chance to build some momentum against some similarly limited teams.
 
Actually thought we were a little better tonight.

Defensively, there’s still issues with the back 7 that probably won’t be fixed this year with this roster. Corners were good and the DL wasn’t a liability, but there’s problems with the safeties and linebackers so Memphis just played pitch and catch over the middle. That’s the best offense we’ll see the rest of the year though.

Offensively, I don’t have a problem with the playcalling. They can’t really run the ball with the makeshift Oline so they’re one dimensional from the get go. NV is an above average QB with good accuracy, but not great and some decision making issues apparent on that last drive.

We’re past the murderers row part of the schedule, so we have a chance to build some momentum against some similarly limited teams.
I don’t get their stubbornness to force run early in games & almost always after 1st downs. We stall out so much & really struggle getting in the end zone & we shouldn’t be. We try to run the ball way too much & run everything out of pro set. Maybe we are saving aggressive offense for conference play….wait WKU.
 
If Mason is horrible, he can easily be let go after a few years, whereas suckstill was never-ending mediocrity, precisely like the school's "leadership"

Is this sarcasm ?

Did you see the contract extension McDevitt got after one of the worst times in MTSU basketball history?

These idiots will probably give him an extension after we go 2-10 this season
 
Is this sarcasm ?

Did you see the contract extension McDevitt got after one of the worst times in MTSU basketball history?

These idiots will probably give him an extension after we go 2-10 this season
Yeah, you're right. I forgot about that.

I fear that once this semen guzzling "leadership" is gone, it will be replaced by "leadership" of equal or lower quality.

Nothing that will benefit this school.
 
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I thought our guys did a lot better tonight. I’ll be interested to see how we actually play in CUSA games. Western Kentucky looks pretty good so I don’t think anything is that surprising as to where we sit record wise. I could be wrong but I feel like a lot of people on here haven’t let that first game against TN Tech go. Maybe people would have excepted where we are at if we had blown them out but I feel like we look better than we did in that first game.
 
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We put 7 points up against yet another team we should have been competitive with. We for the 5th game in a row can put up almost 300 passing yards but can’t figure out how to put the ball in the end zone. The defense looked better. The offense is on life support & it starts with scheme & play calling, then OL & QB. We are so predictable. You have a defensive head coach who seems fine that the D got better. Getting better is competing in all facets of the game. Getting better is seeing changes made in the offense, fixing errors, and having a pulse on what makes this O go. Players are not going to be happy about this game & the fans shouldn’t either.
 
We run on every 1st down…so predictable. Pass the dad gum ball & mix it up.

That’s literally not true.

In the first half we called 4 passes and 4 runs on first down. For the game on first down we ran the ball 9 times on first down and called pass 13 times.

We averaged 4.1 yards per carry on first down.

The bomb that Kelly fumbled out of the endzone was on first down in the first half. Clearly we don’t run on first down every time.


We called 38 pass plays and 17 runs (31 passes plus 4 sacks and 3 NV scrambles. Last year with Stock we passed the ball 58% of the time. Our 69% pass selection literally would lead the nation in pass to run ratio last year.

The most pass happy HC in college football, Mike Leach, was running the ball 30% of the time the last year he coached before he died.


Our OL is bad. We can’t handle twists or pressures worth crap. NV spent half the night running for his life.

If we drop back many more times, NV gonna get killed. Our delay handoffs on first worked pretty well.

And Stock would be 1-4 now just like Mason is. I hope, but don’t have much confidence in CDM. But regardless of how bad we are this year or next, Rick needed to go.
 
I’m not sure what you watched. Defensively much improvement. Offensively the handcuffs need to come off. Y’all are too accepting of mediocre & that was offensively embarassing. They do not know how to start a game using what they have. Nick had a terrible game, but he’s still getting too much pressure. His OC isnt helping him out at all.
It was also pouring rain for a lot of the game and in the second half you had like four backups in on the OL including a freshman and redshirt freshman taking up one side. I would say things definitely need to improve but comparing a makeshift year one team for Mason to a year-18 Stock team on an even platform is not the fairest of judgements though. Need to cut down on the turnovers for sure, but this team just simply does not have trench talent to not have started 1-4 at the end of the day and that's not a staff problem with the situation they were thrown into. I tend not to be the optimist but this team can definitely win a significant amount of conference games still in my opinion, if they don't crap the bed in the turnover margin
 
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To the point of the offensive line though, I definitely agree that they need to air it out more though. With three rain games behind MTSU, it needs to trend towards more of a pass-first attack. I get wanting to establish the run and you do need to but right now those lanes are coming off the pass and you need to take advantage of that as a coach
 
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I saw an OC that was learning and shifting away from run first last night.

On the opening drive, 3 of our first 4 plays were pass plays.

After the fumble punted, we ran for 4 yards, then missed on 2 passes.

The third drive opened with a pass and the 4th play (on first down) was the bomb to Kelly that he fumbled out the endzone.

I’m not seeing run first. In our scripted plays, we were definitely pass first. We were pass first the entire game.

Our pass:run ratio play calls were similar to air raids.

Last night the problem was not play calling. The problem were mistakes (turnovers, penalized, missed assignments), lack of talent & the Tigers’ ability to control time of possession and field position. Play calls don’t matter if your OL can’t consistently block and you are asking them to drive the length of the field over and over.

I was encouraged by the effort and adjustments on both sides of the ball. The lack of talent and depth are the glaring issues. Add self-inflicted mistakes and it’s a recipe for disaster, no matter the play call.
 
To the point of the offensive line though, I definitely agree that they need to air it out more though. With three rain games behind MTSU, it needs to trend towards more of a pass-first attack. I get wanting to establish the run and you do need to but right now those lanes are coming off the pass and you need to take advantage of that as a coach

Hey guys. So what did I miss? Zero regrets skipping this one even with a closer score than expected. From stats looks like Hennigan had one of the worst games of his career. Yay for moral victories since I guess that’s what middle-TSU football has been relegated to.

To this post Shayne, which is similar to the one I made a couple of weeks ago, Mason was going to have to decide whether he wants to install culture and maybe not win another game or try to win games now and worry about culture later. Seems like he has decided given the shift in playcalling. It’s been clear our OL can’t run block or pass block. But maybe slightly better at pass blocking. Somebody told me our real schedule starts now.
 
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I was encouraged by the effort and adjustments on both sides of the ball. The lack of talent and depth are the glaring issues. Add self-inflicted mistakes and it’s a recipe for disaster, no matter the play call.
This is the reality about a total tear down and rebuild.

I thought the defense played well - they held Memphis to 413 yrds - only FSU held them to less. That's a prolific offense and it wouldn't surprise me if theres 3-4 NFL players on that offense (Taylor, Anderson, Hennigan looks like one of those guys that is like a 10 year backup in the NFL)

Our offense - it works but you can't shoot yourself in the foot over and over again. That Kelly fumble was a killer - you can't be too hard on the kid, that was just a flat out effort play that went awry, but it shows you that against these superior teams, the margin for error is so slim that one play like that can just kill your chances.

ESPN had the injury graphic - we lost 3 DBs (2 for the year) and 2 starting OL already. We've got to get the program infrastructure built so that we have a chance of avoiding the chronic yearly injury bug.

It's just not going to happen overnight.
 
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I said many times McPhee, Steve Smith, and Massaro were more deserving to be fired. Stockstill didn't do himself any favors with poor community out reach, terrible in-state recruiting, and the most mediocre of mediocre results. Maybe if his bosses (and contract) demanded more we would have gotten more.

Our problems start at the top folks. Stockstill deserved to be fired, but it was a terrible decision to give him 5 million to walk away and then let the bigger problems decide on his hire. We would have been much better off keeping Stockstill and replacing McPhee, Steve Smith, and maybe Massaro and going from there.

We made our problems worse going the route we went. The head of the snake is still intact and thriving.

It doesn't even matter anymore though. We missed our chance
I don’t disagree but I’m happy that at least something changed.
 
I thought our guys did a lot better tonight. I’ll be interested to see how we actually play in CUSA games. Western Kentucky looks pretty good so I don’t think anything is that surprising as to where we sit record wise. I could be wrong but I feel like a lot of people on here haven’t let that first game against TN Tech go. Maybe people would have excepted where we are at if we had blown them out but I feel like we look better than we did in that first game.
TN Tech might be a pretty good FCS team. They won yesterday 52-21 over Gardner Webb. That’s the same GWU team that gave JMU and Charlotte all they could handle losing 13-7 and 27-26 respectively. TN Tech moved to 2-2 with their losses being MT and Georgia.
 
This is the reality about a total tear down and rebuild.

I thought the defense played well - they held Memphis to 413 yrds - only FSU held them to less. That's a prolific offense and it wouldn't surprise me if theres 3-4 NFL players on that offense (Taylor, Anderson, Hennigan looks like one of those guys that is like a 10 year backup in the NFL)

Our offense - it works but you can't shoot yourself in the foot over and over again. That Kelly fumble was a killer - you can't be too hard on the kid, that was just a flat out effort play that went awry, but it shows you that against these superior teams, the margin for error is so slim that one play like that can just kill your chances.

ESPN had the injury graphic - we lost 3 DBs (2 for the year) and 2 starting OL already. We've got to get the program infrastructure built so that we have a chance of avoiding the chronic yearly injury bug.

It's just not going to happen overnight.
We’ve lost 2 starters on the OL and 2 starters in the backfield for the season. Those areas are where we are seeing most of our issues. CDM hasn’t had the time (recruiting classes) to develop depth and that’s what is killing us right now. Shayne and I are both high on our incoming recruiting class. I think pairing that with what I am sure will be a VERY active portal haul for us, we should be in a better spot next year. I’m not sold on CDM but I’m going to give him a while to get this figured out.
 
Went back and watched highlights. Can we just talk about the God-awful uniform we had going the other night? That has to be the worst look we have ever put on. First, I'm not sure why we would have went grey when it's one of Memphis' colors.

But more importantly, the color of those pants with no markings with the rest of the uni being white were just awful. Look like we had laundry wash malfunction and were wearing discolored britches. If we're going to wear this color please bring back the silverish tone instead of that dirty grey. Classic MT look to follow (and works with white jersey)...

aa38f7cc-007d-4c72-939f-d2ece769218f-AP_091220060304.jpg
 
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Went back and watched highlights. Can we just talk about the God-awful uniform we had going the other night? That has to be the worst look we have ever put on. First, I'm not sure why we would have went grey when it's one of Memphis' colors.

But more importantly, the color of those pants with no markings with the rest of the uni being white were just awful. Look like we had laundry wash malfunction and were wearing discolored britches. If we're going to wear this color please bring back the silverish tone instead of that dirty grey. Classic MT look to follow (and works with white jersey)...

aa38f7cc-007d-4c72-939f-d2ece769218f-AP_091220060304.jpg
I love the gray personally. Have a gray jersey from '15 hanging in my office. Have a gray BB too.

But I 100% agree Saturday's looked awful. Would've looked fine with a gray helmet with the pants. Lids should always match the britches.
 
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TN Tech might be a pretty good FCS team. They won yesterday 52-21 over Gardner Webb. That’s the same GWU team that gave JMU and Charlotte all they could handle losing 13-7 and 27-26 respectively. TN Tech moved to 2-2 with their losses being MT and Georgia.
Maybe we should have gone after their coach?
 
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