Our Underachieving Season Was Due To

Originally posted by Antix:
Our team was designed to succeed offensively this year, but since injuries arent an excuse for this thread then Ill say...

Beathard fumbled away or threw away 3 games off the top off the top of my head.

Penalties. Im pretty sure all our wins were games where we were the less penalized team.

Inability to make plays on D. We could never come up with a big play on D in close games. We started doing better toward the end of the year, but thats fools gold imo.

Honorable mention to tackling and RZ offense

Good stuff!

Originally posted by Niners816:

Originally posted by NCommand:

What were the giveaways and takeaways last year. Is there a trend starting?

But this year, the answer is both.

Originally posted by thl408:

They had a high number of turnovers, but the low number of turnovers forced was historically bad.

2018 32 turns
2017 23 turns
2016 25 turns
2015 17 turns
2014 22 turns

2005 35 turns
2004 40 turns

1980 40 turns
1979 39 turns

1978 63 turns

Some periods of time and giveaway numbers.

My man is always on point.

It seems reasonable to say we can expect around 23 turnovers then next year.

"This isn't about injuries"

Fine. We had more backups / PS squad players than starters on the field.

They weren't underachieving, they just weren't ready to go up against elite talents / better teams.

A few of them look like they could be solid contributors in a rotation, but definitely not starters. Shanny did a fine job with this bunch.

CJ Beathard! There I said it! .. on a serious note, the injuries really did us and We didn't have any continuity because of that. Add that the roster is very young that it showed on the field with their inexperienced. Look at the secondary for example, so many injuries and we saw missed assignments and blown coverages. So I would go with injuries is the biggest part.

Sorry, but "injuries" is the 500 pound gorilla in the room.

Even if I try to go to a secondary cause, such as poor tackling and lack of takeaways--it takes me back to: our best players were not out there.

About the only thing that might not be affected by injuries is rushing the passer. But Street might be pretty good at that, except that...nevermind.

Coaching, mostly on defense

Originally posted by Waterbear:

cause of plastic?

Jimmy didn't look like a future pro bowler the first 3 weeks so I'll say our starting QB continuing to grow and the team gelling was a problem
only 1 player getting to the QB
no one taking the ball away
us giving the ball away
one side of the field having someone wide open every play it felt like
WRs not getting open

Originally posted by DRCHOWDER:

Originally posted by Waterbear:

cause of plastic?

His heart might not truly be in to football. His true calling is to be bigger than Hugh Hefner and Larry Hustler...becoming the biggest icon who ever lived in the nude mags / porn industry.........

Originally posted by WestCoastForever:
Sorry, but "injuries" is the 500 pound gorilla in the room.

Even if I try to go to a secondary cause, such as poor tackling and lack of takeaways--it takes me back to: our best players were not out there.

About the only thing that might not be affected by injuries is rushing the passer. But Street might be pretty good at that, except that...nevermind.

11 different DBs saw playing time. That represents a TON of chemistry issues in addition to a greatly increased load on the coaching staff.

Anytime there is such a discrepancy in turnovers it is fair to look at the role of the coaches, however, it would be foolish not to recognize the impossibility of coaching up all those players and them developing the chemistry to play well together. You just can't.

Considering the quantity of players and the quality of players that lost significant time due to injuries, this team did about what one should expect.

Originally posted by dj43:

Originally posted by WestCoastForever:

Sorry, but "injuries" is the 500 pound gorilla in the room.

Even if I try to go to a secondary cause, such as poor tackling and lack of takeaways--it takes me back to: our best players were not out there.

About the only thing that might not be affected by injuries is rushing the passer. But Street might be pretty good at that, except that...nevermind.

11 different DBs saw playing time. That represents a TON of chemistry issues in addition to a greatly increased load on the coaching staff.

Anytime there is such a discrepancy in turnovers it is fair to look at the role of the coaches, however, it would be foolish not to recognize the impossibility of coaching up all those players and them developing the chemistry to play well together. You just can't.

Considering the quantity of players and the quality of players that lost significant time due to injuries, this team did about what one should expect.

True, that's why Hafley lost his job. His job security probably wasn't helped by the different DBs du jour.

Originally posted by brodiebluebanaszak:

Originally posted by JaggedJ:

Then your thread title is invalid.

Injuries happen, lesser players come in and are generally more prone to turnovers/inability to takeaway.

You can't disregard injuries from a discussion about why our season was poor.

Its valid to discuss if our offensive game plans were too ambitious for CJ and Mullens. That's a point of discussion here.

On defense, we didn't have any season changing injuries -- just no depth at all.Foster laid an egg his sophomore season. But that's not really meaningful injuries that change the course of a teams season.

All that you mentioned above are valid points of discussion.

However, you asked what our poor season was due to and the number 1 answer to that is injuries.

Too many injuries too early in the rebuild....that's it. When you in year two after being as devoid of talent as we were there is no depth to endure even a few key injuries much less the dozens we had.

Lack of takeaways as a way of saying that our defense didn't come up big in the moments we needed them to win some games

Our d was atrocious all season long