⚡ CFB Dashboard

Heavyweight fight so definitely banged up but all X-rays are negative. Keaton’s foot was negative. Nothing significant, nothing longterm. We’ll see for this week. Pleased with execution of the offensive line. The communication was good. Didn’t give up a sack and I was mostly pleased. We plugged and played with Tommy going down. I thought Connor did a good job. Exactly what I thought coming off is what the film showed. The two halves were so different. I knew we had a good hook, but could we take one and then swing again? Defensively we swung well in first half and offense swung well in second half. Defensively we just didn’t play well and didn’t swing in the second half. All three phases showed we have the ability, but all three phases didn’t do it at times. That’s on us. We have to be consistent, and we have to get it right. Proud we bounced back late, but you won’t always get those opportunities. We gave up 240 yards after contact. You can’t do that. The outcome was 1-0, but if you don’t look at the guts of this thing, we’ll be on the other side of this thing before too long. The positives are the flashes, but they have to be more consistent. I’m not surprised about the WRs who didn’t get theirs, and we took what they were giving us. Some jitters and timing and good job on defense. Game one is always a concern with timing and mechanism of it. Definitely some plays we want back. Some plays were open. But hopefully to week two we’ll clean a lot of that up. Am I surprised Cook and others didn’t have one at least? Sure. But it’s things we can look at and correct. The secondary can be fixed. I’d be concerned if contested players were losses and those Jimmys are better than our Joes. That wasn’t this. We had the ability. Some of these calls were day-one stuff we didn’t communicate. A lack of execution and a lack of focus and that’s a critical point. The best thing about what happened is it doesn’t matter who we played because if you blow a coverage it’s a touchdown no matter if it’s LSU, Charlotte or Delta State. Faceless or nameless this week, it doesn’t matter. We have to get our ***** corrected. That’s all that matters this week. We can put the focus on us. It’s coming at the right time. Angles and things that came up in the game. We have to fix that. This is timing. Execution at a consistent basis is all I care about this weekend. Do your job and do your job mentally well. The physicality was there. But you have to know the situations and when to take more physical shots and when to tackle. Hopefully we have a little chip on our shoulder. The narrative has changed a little bit which is a beautiful thing. They have to fix their stuff. A little doubt and they read what you write so fix it. See it. Fix it. Until it happens to players, sometimes the urgency isn’t there. We have to get it done now. But most of the issues were communication. No one wants or expects to screw it up, but you have to get it right Monday through Friday and hold each other accountable. It’s funny in a walk through. It’s not funny on Saturday. It gets your **** beat. It’s an open book test and you have to get right. Ten of the 11 get it right and you’re not. We have to do a better job as coaches. First he’s heard of the LSU-SEC vote. Basically a no comment. We had some elite players early not play well with Trinidad and Lucas and then when they are needed most they came back and were best players. Competitive greatness. You’re at your best when you’re needed most. We got punched in the mouth immediately by a great football team and we responded. That’s huge. We didn’t respond collectively the way we needed, but a lot of guys responding to the punch was a great thing for me. We just have to do a better job of tackling. Our green-dot communication didn’t’ suffer with Keaton out. They all know it each week. We teach it every day. It’s no big deal. They do a good job. The communication wasn’t a front-six issue. They had 12 explosive plays. That was 80 percent of offensive yards. Hard to beat anyone doing that. It was focus and communication in general – not green dot. I feel very comfortable with calling the defense. I was completely prepared. I was very in the game and locked in. It’s the most comfortable I’ve been of the four games so far. We just didn’t execute it. We went to the ground a lot in August. We were live with the scout team on Tuesday every week. It's not the same as a game and I get that, but we are on the ground more than most people and we do tackling circuits and things to simulate. But the approach has been good. Angles were poor. Stopping feet on contact. It wasn't a lack of violence. The pad level and foot patterns weren't correct. It's highly correctable. That's the good news. It's not violence. Caleb had to manage the soft tissue stuff through camp so he had specific roles with certain packages. We have to get him more involved as he gets healthier. I thought Samari did a good job with limited opportunities.