BillySee58

In career TD passes. Aune is now 5th in school history with 43 TD passes, after passing Thompson (42).

We completed 11 passes last week

This kid’s last name reminds me of a QB who used to play in the NFL named Jon Kitna.

Exactly! I would say he’s much more James Reese than Chris Davis at the moment.

Posted this in the other thread with Vito’s article. Really impressive get. Looks like he averaged 17 a game and made 111 threes in just 35 games, while hitting at a 40% rate. Also 2 steals a game, which we know how imperative it is to play defense if you want minutes here. https://www.maxpreps.com/m/athlete/alex-cotton/pI-fv098XkGTk6kkQLbXjA/basketball-21-22/stats.htm https://www.hudl.com/profile/11966795/Alex-Cotton

Really impressive get. Looks like he averaged 17 a game and made 111 threes in just 35 games, while hitting at a 40% rate. Also 2 steals a game, which we know how imperative it is to play defense if you want minutes here. https://www.maxpreps.com/m/athlete/alex-cotton/pI-fv098XkGTk6kkQLbXjA/basketball-21-22/stats.htm https://www.hudl.com/profile/11966795/Alex-Cotton

The sentiment among many on this board seems to question if redshirting players provides any value to our program still in 2022, in the era of NIL and Transfer Portal (mostly the one-time sit-out free transfer). Let’s look at the actual evidence we have. The Transfer Portal was created by the NCAA in October 2018, meaning it has been around every season of the college career for the 2018 high school signing class. Those players are now in their 5th season of college football, which signifies the last season of eligibility for players under normal circumstances. Let’s review the class, as it relates to redshirting and the portal. Did not redshirt: • KD Davis - On current roster, 5th year senior • Alex Morris - Not on current roster, does not appear to have resurfaced elsewhere Redshirted: • Jyaire Shorter - On current roster, 5th year redshirt junior • Austin Ogunmakin - Not on current roster, transferred down to DIII Sul Ross State • Kason Martin - Not on current roster, transferred down to DII Eastern New Mexico • Jason Bean - Not on current roster, transferred to P5 Kansas • Jaxon Gibbs - Not on current roster, transferred to Butler Community College • Derrick Shaw - Not on current roster, transferred down to DII Central Oklahoma • Larry Nixon - On current roster, 5th year redshirt junior • Dayton LeBlanc - On current roster, 5th year redshirt junior • Jordan Hunt - Not on current roster, does not appear to have resurfaced elsewhere • Daizion Carroll - On current roster, 5th year redshirt junior • Keenan Crosby - On current roster, 5th year redshirt junior • Cole Brown - On current roster, 5th year redshirt junior • Jordan Redfearn - Not on current roster, retired from football in 2020 Now for the breakdown: - 7 are still on the roster - 1 transferred to a P5 (Bean), after losing his job at the end of the season against UTEP - 4 transferred down to a lower division - 3 appear to have quit college football altogether What we are looking at is basically what we have been looking at for the last decade. Of the players who redshirt, a chunk stay, a chunk try and go somewhere else (lower level) for playing time, and a chunk quit football altogether. And yes, some may go P5 but that is absolutely an outlier on the existing outcomes. But the idea that redshirting just doesn’t provide value for us anymore isn’t based in evidence. Why would we burn every player’s redshirt? Just because ONLY half end up sticking it out all 5 years, or because maybe one of them ends up utilizing that 5th season at a P5? It just doesn’t make sense to let the outliers start driving the decision making process.

1. What’s the harm in redshirting guys who aren’t in your rotation? 2. What are the odds of P5s plucking guys off of our rosters with NIL money? So far it has just been the Murphy twins and guys utilizing their extra COVID season of eligibility at a P5 (Cam Johnson, Jacob Brammer). Has there even been any indication that it was because of NIL money anyways? What’s the NIL market for a Right Tackle at Vanderbilt? I just don’t think the evidence we have justifies being so defeatist that any player we develop is just destined to get poached by a P5.

I’m hearing that 60% of the time, this works every time.

We are a P5 that offered Mazin a bunch of NIL money?

He has been playing. Sports reference has him at 6 games played. We had a lot of true freshmen play in the Texas Southern game. Samora Ezekiel, Howard Sampson, Isaiah Villanueva, and Qualon Farrar that I saw. Stone Earle still has his redshirt available as well and he has only played one game.

Why would it ever need to be an either/or relationship between those two variables?

Why would his QBR being higher than those QBs invalidate the statistic? Aune has a higher passer rating than all of them too. They are unbiased quantifications strictly based off of on-field results. It’s not swayed by the QB’s name recognition and prior season accomplishments. If it were, that would invalidate the numbers. It’s unbiased and consistent math, not objective analysis. Again, it’s a quantification of actual on-field results. Aune is 48th in passer rating in the country and was not even top 100 last year. The point here isn’t about other QBs. It’s about the undeniable improvement of results from last year from the same QB. And if you’re saying “can we really trust this statistic if it has him ahead of these other QBs?” The question we probably should be asking is “how are we getting Austin Aune to produce at a higher rate of effectiveness than those QBs?” To answer your question, I would not start Aune over any of those QBs, and I also understand that numbers are what they are, and Aune’s numbers being better speaks to the job Bloesch is doing as both a QB coach and OC.

Is it really though? Aune was 93rd in the country in QBR last year (ESPN’s QB rating metric). This year he’s up to 41st in the country. I know you’re mostly making a joke here but if we’re putting aside our emotions to in-game mistakes aside and analyzing body of work, isn’t that the type of improvement you would attribute to improved Quarterback coaching?

Yes but the tricky part here is that good college QB coaches are usually OCs. Not being able to offer the OC role when going out in the market for QB coaches limits your options. Not that it can’t be done, but guys like Blake Joseph (High School HCs) or lower level college coaches wanting to make the jump is probably the supply you’re looking at. Definite dice rolls.

Yes, we did. Whether it’s Ruder or Earle running some sort of read option, or bringing Kaylon Horton in motion, I just want to see us stretching the defense out and making them defend more than just Oscar Adaway up the middle

We tried going under center on short-yardage in 2020 early in conference play against Charlotte and USM. It didn’t work. Not to say that we are objectively correct in never going back to it since, my point is just that I don’t think it’s ego why we don’t do it. The ego was put aside, just didn’t work out. We were 3/3 on 4th down yesterday and I think a big part of why was because we were making the defense defend the whole field with Kaylon Horton, as opposed to just being able to stack the middle. Under center or shotgun, it’s hard to get anything up the middle when it is being stacked and more guys are shooting in than you have to block.

If you were truly being objective then you would be analyzing based on results-based metrics, not based on whether or not he’s running the formations you prefer. If you’re still getting caught up on that then you aren’t able to really have a nuanced, unbiased conversation about the actual results of the offense that is actually being run.

One thing I have learned from searching OCs names on twitter (OCs we may be interested in becoming our HC) is that every fanbase trashes their OC. Even the best ones. It is incredibly easy to criticize an OC for his playcalling in hindsight after it works. It’s not as easy to trash the results when they are there. We are 13th in the nations in yards/game and 28th in points/game. Bloesch came in after the 2019 season and took over a bad offensive line that everyone attributed the failure of Fine’s last season to, with only two returning linemen with any experience, and pretty much transformed that unit into a good one overnight. We were 5th in the nation in rushing last year, and are 6th this year. The play calling has been creative while finding the right mix of staying true to your foundational plays without being overly stubborn with them. He obviously isn’t perfect and has taken his lumps as a play caller too, but his name doesn’t get mentioned enough on here behind the success we’re having. Probably because he didn’t come in with the name recognition that Harrell did, but he has been every bit as impressive at coordinating an offense.

My post is more for the “geez, does our offense know run plays other than running to the A gap?” folks that I see in the game threads most Saturdays. And obviously any offense will still come down to execution and talent, but just from a scheme standpoint I feel like there is a disconnect between our fan base and our offensive scheme.

Correct. Bloesch played O-Line for him at Houston + coached under Montgomery at Tulsa, and Tate Wallis coached under Briles at Baylor. Those are the two who spearheaded the implementation of this offense here in 2020 after we moved on from Bodie Reeder.

Watch Tennessee on offense (number 1 in the nation in yards and points) and see the similarities in what they run compared to us. The same staples of our offense are the staples of theirs. The wide wide receiver splits with receivers lined up almost out of bounds, the HB dives up the middle, the play action, the vertical receiver routes, etc. I see Bloesch and the offense overall be criticized, particularly for the runs up the middle, usually without the context of the offense we are running (Veer and Shoot). Again, you’ll see the same with Tennessee. Side note: thought Bloesch called a great game Saturday mixing in some jet sweeps, wildcat, and zone-read with Stone Earle to give new wrinkles to our run game to combat stacked boxes. We are 23rd in yards/game this season and I think the job Bloesch has done is very underrated by our fan base.

Great point. Makes way more sense than “a little dinged up” = knowing he’s out for season immediately after the game ended.

The school isn’t the party paying them NIL money

He is supposed to be, but even Aune last year was effective running the ball when he had to in order to solidify his starting job. Aune ran for 50+ yards four times in a five game stretch when he first took over. Now we don’t seem to run him as much, and are treating him like a traditional QB (almost no designed runs and slide after you get the 1st on scrambles). My point is, if these guys have to run to carve out a role, they run much differently than when they’re the established starting QB. Even Stone Earle only had a career high of 49 rushing yards at ACU, but when that’s what role they asked him to fill, he ran with some juice (maybe a little too much). So if we give Ruder a shot as a zone-read package QB, I bet we see him run with much more authority than we saw from him last year as the starting QB.