(11-16-2013 08:55 PM)10miners Wrote: I haven't been following c-usa or even much of college football this season,since Utep is doing bad. But wow Southern Miss is even worst than UTEP?? What did I miss? Do they have some major injuries,, what happened?
This thread got well off topic, but let me see if I can answer this question for you:
Going into the season, we were reliant on a transfer QB who only set foot on campus at the beginning of August. We had experience at running back, but were very short on experience at receiver and especially on offensive line. On defense, we had a number of starters back, but we were very thin on depth. This was especially true in the secondary.
We, as fans, were not entirely unaware of our potential plight. A number of pointed to the inexperience of the coaching staff and the thin depth chart before the season even began. However, we all felt that enough would go right for us to win some football games.
What has happened is that nothing has gone right. Not necessarily horribly wrong as it did in 2012, but not right at all.
First, the QB simply didn't turn out as we hoped he would. Bridgford is terrible. That leaves us starting a true freshman. As any of our opponents can attest to, he tends to play a whole lot like a kid who was in high school five months ago. In other words, he will follow up a few nice plays where he makes something happen with the ugliest most ill-timed turnover you have ever seen. We have been knocked out of more games early on this year because of pick sixes and red zone turnovers than I think I have seen us knocked out of in all the previous years of Southern Miss football that I have seen, combined.
Next, the receivers and offensive line have simply not progressed the way we hoped they would. Specifically, the offensive line has gotten better at putting a hat on a hat, but they are still not getting hardly any push at all, and the inability of the true freshmen receivers we are relying on to create separation combines with this to create breakdowns in protection far too quickly. When it works, the line holds long enough, the receivers get open enough, and Mullens can throw a nice ball. The problem is it never works long enough for us to score points.
I can't say this enough: We have a sophomore snapping the ball to a true freshman, who can then hand the ball off to his choice of underclassmen (and one senior who does not start) or throw it to his choice of true freshmen, all behind a line full of first and second year players...and the second string is in even worse shape than the first.
This is not the result of injury. We are in this situation partly because of natural attrition from a 12-2 team but moreso because of the poor recruiting and forced attrition attributable to back-to-back-to-back coaching changes.
Defense, on the other hand, is directly the result of injury. We had eight starters back from last year, and pretty much all of them except Khyri Thornton (DT) have missed significant playing time because of injury. What has been most devastating is that the worst injuries seem to have hit the best players on this unit. For example, Deron Wilson, on the Thorpe watch list to begin the season, won't play a down this year because of a foot injury. With a thin two deep, even one of these injuries would have been tough to overcome. As it is, the defense is in the same position right now as the offense: burning redshirts as far as the eye can see.
Special teams has been no better off: Acosta hasn't been very good, but we have no one to replace him with. We are relying on a true freshman at punter. Coverage teams have probably been the brightest spot on the team for us, but that isn't saying much when you can't kick the ball, can't stop teams from moving the ball on your defense, and can't move the ball with your offense, at least not without turning it over repeatedly.
Essentially, we are fielding a composite of the best players from both sides of last year's Mississippi-Alabama High School All Star Game, with a fistful of blue chippers cherry-picked off the top by the SEC. The results are about what you would expect from high school players facing off against guys who are three and four years removed from high school. I mean this quite literally: there are times when we have eight first year players on the field at once. Sometimes, there is only one player who was on the roster in 2011 on the field.
