Ketch's 10 Thoughts From The Weekend (Time to stop braking)
- Thread starter Ketchum
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But we are sure now that we lost the game because Ewers played every series, every down. the loss wasn’t all his fault, but I can’t subscribe to the desire to lose any game just so any player can hopefully be better developed.
so I guess those who care more about player development over winning will be okay if the same results occur next game, and the next. under what circumstances would replacing Ewers be justified?
You can make a case that he played well enough in the last 5 minutes to win the game and his teammates/officials failed him.
"Seven Win Sark" is who he is. That won't change and he is clearly in the bottom half of the conference as far as coaching ability - particularly in the 4th quarter.
Is he worth keeping around for 2-3 more seasons though just in case Ewers and/or Arch go "super nova" and lead Sark to unprecedented success? As tempting as it is to completely tune out this program, the hope that elite QB talent will overcome Sark's 2nd half adjustment issues keeps me on board.
Is he worth keeping around for 2-3 more seasons though just in case Ewers and/or Arch go "super nova" and lead Sark to unprecedented success? As tempting as it is to completely tune out this program, the hope that elite QB talent will overcome Sark's 2nd half adjustment issues keeps me on board.
I think that's fair and probably where most people are.
I mean... Gene Chizik won a natty. All he needed was elite quarterback play.
I wouldn’t have pulled QE for the rest of the game, But maybe that was a game where you pull him for 1 series and just kind of calm him down on the sideline. Run some wildcat and do some non traditional stuff with card for that 1 series. have QE take a second to breath, maybe talk to one of the coaches about what he is seeing and what he needs to do. Gives him a chance to process and see it from a distance for a second
I’m not totally sure this is true. Here is where I think arguments could be made that Sark has been better so far:
1. Recruiting
2. Offense design
3. Offense game planning
4. Game management in terms of clock, substitutions, at least on offense
5. OL development
Areas where there has been apparent decline:
1. On the fly adjustments, especially in second half (not halftime adjustments, it’s adjusting to the second half adjustments of the other guy)
2. Overall consistency - Both offense and defense has been really good at times and very poor at times. And sometimes both things within the same game. OU game is great example of very good on both sides of ball and Tech game good example of poor on both sides. OSU is an example of both, imho.
overall, while I wasn’t a big fan of firing Herman, I’ve been impressed with Sark. But no way have we seen enough to know for sure.
1) Undermine his success? What success? He looked absolutely lost for the entire 2nd half. I think leaving him in such a bad situation undermined his success as much as anything. Plus I don't think he's mentally week enough that getting pulled for a series or two is going to do long term damage.
2) I don't know if Card is healthy so maybe you're right. And I'll agree that one particular play it wouldn't have mattered because of what I think was a phantom holding call. All I'm saying is Card should have a package where he can come in and run some zone read, option, QB draw, etc that we can use as a change of pace, in extreme weather, or simply to give the other teams more to have to think about.
I actually don't think we should have pulled Ewers the rest of the game. I just think giving Card a series or two would have shaken things up. But I'll also admit, better playcalling (short passes to backs in the flat or quick hits to Sanders) would have helped quite a bit too. Just my opinion...
This exactly. And I don’t know if he’s being coached to do this to protect himself or if he’s just reacting to being afraid of getting rehurt. I’m prone to the former as he didn’t play like this in either of the last two games after his injury. But a cautious QB isn’t going to be successful at this level.
You don't pull your future when he's ahead and you don't put the past in during the final moments.
It's like some of you don't understand the importance of the experiences of 2022 will have on the 2023 season.
Did he look fearful of being hurt when he took the team down the field for what could have been a game winning TD or FG with 5 minutes to play of when he took off and ran for 40 yards on the next drive?
This is a good example of why it is short sighted to place the blame for the loss squarely on anyone’s shoulders. There were breakdowns everywhere. Pick your favorite punching bag and have at it.
That’s a good point but if he had been coached to be cautious, maybe at that point he said, “screw it, I gotta win”.
Please help me under why someone, prefer Anwar, does not ask the obvious when he is in front of Sark. Coach, there seems to be not adjustments made to the opposing team halftime adjustments to your offensive game plan. How are you going to fix that?
Sark is an intelligent, dedicated coach. Why wouldn’t he recognize the problem and have a very serious round table with Patterson, PK and Flood and encourage honest critique. Surely they can see that the second half is a disaster due to lack of adjustment with play calling from him. Your take Ketch on what needs to happen to save this coach and the program. No one wants another coaching change.
Sometimes you can just be too close to things and your own confirmation bias becomes an issue.
You can’t really believe that, can you? The key phrase in your statement is “we are sure now”, but the decision as to whether to replace Ewers or not wasn’t made “now”, it was made “then”, and you’re lying if you say “we were sure then” because in the last couple of drives, after Texas lost the lead, the failures were not mostly on Ewers.
Idk. I see a LOT more confirmation bias on these boards than I do people having sex.
Kinda picky, huh? I didn’t say we were sure then, because he could have thrown a touchdown instead of 2 interceptions, OSU might have fumbled or thrown an interception. All “might have been”, but didn’t happen then.
NOW we are sure because it’s history.
We scored on a field goal in the second half, that’s it. I’m not saying he should have been replaced in the last 5 minutes, as Ketch has stated on this thread. And I haven’t ever said Ewers shouldn’t have come back in the game, either. Give the kid a different view of what’s happening on the field. Catch his breath, calm doan, whatever. If Card doesn’t produce, run Ewers back out there again with a fresh mindset.
But damn it, we should expect our coaches to try to WIN, and not be afraid to sit the starter if things aren’t going well.
There have been many examples of this happening in the past, by many different coaches. And sometimes the change worked, and the team won because of the change.
Precisely Ketch. one of my biggest issues, along with everybody else, is Sark’s inability to make adjustments in the “chess match” between him and opposing coaches. For a guy that’s been coaching at such a high level for well over 20 years, how can he remain so inept at making in-game changes. We are great at getting the lead, but weak at holding the lead. Sonny Dykes made a mockery of our ability to adjust, he flat out knew we couldn’t. He, along with so many others, all too well know our shortcomings. I am not ready to throw in the towel on Sark, but I am damn close. At this minute it appears that his calling may well be as an offensive coordinator at a major program. Huge difference from coordinator to Head Coach (See Nick Saban).
I'm not sure you really want to make THAT kind of argument.
Listen, this was a TEAM loss. I think the one overlooked aspect of the game people may not appreciate is OSU adjusting to our passing game by rotating LB blitzes on the inside-- and our OL and blocking RB really never adjusted well to it. The more Ewers got post throw hits from the OSU defense, the more hurried Ewers' delivery. For a while, I think Ewers was really affected by the pressure.
We did something similar with Sanders with our defense and had success up to the 3rd quarter-- then Sanders started running with the ball and had decent success. When you can do things as a defense that can throw a QB way off schedule-- especially a freshman-- you can shut a lot of stuff down.
In addition to that, OSU made a calculated risk that Ewers would still not have accuracy with the long throws in the 2nd half... and for the most part, the OSU coaching staff guessed right. While I question why Sark wouldn't even attempt the short RPO game as an extension of the running game is a mystery... but I think OSU stacked it enough to jump the short routes. From an adjustment standpoint, we really didn't help Ewers enough in keeping a clean pocket. We did find a good counter to the blitzes using the TE in the intermediate passing game... but it was too late for it to really matter.
