No, not them, us.
And some freshmen made mistakes. And vaginas were rubbed. Almost makes you wonder how powerful Scipio really is. He wears that crown . . . but you have to wonder.
There were some serious assignment issues in the middle of the field, and while Earl Thomas was the public face of many of the miscues, only the coaches know whose fault they were. He might've just been cleaning up other people's messes.
The good news is that we gave up less than 30 yards in the second half, partially because Rusty Smith's backup, Alex Van Pelt, was awful. But between the assignment clean ups and the dominant, injury-fueled pass rush, you have to give credit to the second half defense.
We'll know a lot more about the secondary after the games against UTEP and Rice. Both teams have good spread schemes with inferior talent. We will have failed the tests if guys are still wide open on third down and we tackle like hanky-waving fops.
"Ryan Palmer is adequate but will stick out like a sore thumb with the rest of the guys."
Bzzt. He stuck out like a sore thumb alright, but failed to approach adequate. Thinking about last year's defense, a defense in which Palmer managed to be the least of our problems, makes me cringe. He's short and has terrible ball skills, and Bobby Tatum must've punched him in the part of his brain that regulates spacial awareness.
You almost have to feel bad for him, a fifth year senior who just Kirby Freeman'd his season. But I don't see how Muschamp can continue to play a guy who can't stay within 7 yards of his man when we have so many other options. The coaches are high on Curtis Brown and Aaron Williams, so expect to see those guys transition in.
"Spread offenses like to gloat that they can isolate you in space. Well guess what fuckers, that street runs two ways, and it runs through the ghetto. Yeah we have to cover, but now you have to deal with Teh Motherflippin’ Kindle in space, which is the football equivalent of brushing your teeth then eating an orange."
Our pressure was outstanding. They couldn't handle Aaron Lewis for goodness sakes. The completion numbers for FAU were below 50% thanks almost entirely to the 7-8 incompletions directly forced by the pass rush. Kindle . . .
"Sometimes it’ll be as a DE, but in our 3 man line packages he can be moved around and blitzed from different places."
was used sometimes as a DE and as a rush LB in the 3 man packages. Can't really make any judgements about his play based on this game, since you could assemble any 4 of us from this site and still abuse FAU, but just the fact that the new coach saw Kindle's abilities and made use of his best ones was cathartic. It's sad that doing something obvious is so pleasing to this fanbase, it's like Muschamp is following the Bush presidency. Whoever succeeds Greg Davis is going to get the stadium named after him.
The bad news about the pass rush is that FAU might have the worst OL we see all year, but the slightly better news is that last year we wouldn't have dominated them the way we did. So we know we're better, but we won't know how much better until conference play starts.