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So will CU be able to cover KO's?
- Thread starter leftybuff
- Start date
Just read an article on this at buffzone.com. Neinas says during the bye the stripped the whole thing down and rebuilt the KO coverages. Re-explained concepts. He feels a lot better this week, but he knows it all comes down to game time performance. Also is taking full responsibility for not having his coverage units ready to go. Love that accountability on this staff.
Considering the lack of ownership of any poor performances over the past however many years, having someone, anyone actually taking responsibility for anything looks a lot like accountability. Maybe it's common sense elsewhere, but it's damn new here, so excuse anyone for being impressed with it.
boydbuff
Club Member
I totally agree with you. Neinas did not back down from taking full responsibility for those failures. WB&Co enjoyed attributing blame every where but themselves in many cases. I found it refreshing that he rightly accepted full blame for not having the team ready to execute.
Lt.Col.FrankSlade
Well-Known Member
Forgive Duff. He wants everyone at CU fired.
Well, sounds like more starters are making their way to special teams. DD Goodson switching to #3 to allow him on the field at the same time as Jered bell (#21) for instance. I think and hope the experiment with non-starters and walk-ons on special teams is (mostly) over.
Ideally most of your special teams players are not guys who are also starters on O or D. This lets you have guys who can concentrate on their jobs and lets more players participate while reducing the risk of losing key players to injury.
Unfortunately at this point this roster doesn't include enough quality athletes to do this. We are also not talented enough to keep winning when we are giving up huge chunks of field position and even points on STs.
Hopefully in the future we will be able to have coverage teams made up mostly of guys who are younger or back-ups but right now we can't afford to.
I think it is safe to say that, with the extra time (practically a whole extra fall camp) to work on the KO coverage, Neinas is now coaching for his job.
The best teams will selectively use starters but the bulk of their special teams are usually made up of kids who are back-ups or young developmental guys. Certain guys are special athletes who need to be out there but the majority of the starters are not playing a lot on specials. LSU had as much depth of talent as anyone in the country but they played Matheiu on almost all their specials because he was a difference maker on them. Most of their upperclassmen starters never saw the field for specials.
Unfortunately we don't have the athletes to as you put it "get the job done" without having our starters play a more prominent role on specials than a more established program would. As our roster improves we should see fewer and fewer regulars playing on specials. There will always be some but less.
Barney blaming Craig Ochs for the Fresno St. fiasco-loss is still my all-time fav in the blame-shifting game!
Refreshing to see a new attitude. (The rest of Neinas' ST work is exemplary.)
I definitely see your point, but this is better than "well, we were just a couple steps away from stopping everything at the 5 yard line, just need to work on a couple little things" or "the coaches can tell them what to do, but it's up to them to do it" type explanations we've had the last too many years.
Rugby punts FTMFW.
Kickoff returns: 113
Kickoff return defense: 123
Punt returns: 54
Punt return defense: 118
Net punting: 113
Oliver's FG percentage is good, but your definition of "exemplary" must be different than mine.
You hit it spot on. The only way that the ST performance has been exemplary so far is that it hasn't cost us a game yet.
Certain things look better because we are comparing them to the units coached by the Riddler. CU has been uniformly horrible on STs since Hawkins got here and JE and Co. carried it on. Expecting improvement certainly isn't unreasonable considering where we are at so far and as we get better overall and are in more games the potential for bad STs play costing us wins will go up.