If you made me OL coach at A&M tomorrow I'm not sure how much better or worse I could make this OL. If we started back in August how much technique could I change or how much demotivation could I do to make them this much worse?
The answer is not much.
We're giving Addazio way too much credit, IMO. #1 is the 10 of 19 OL who are not playing right now that we had on the projected roster coming into this year. Some were not surprises (Kenyon, Matthews) but most were. We already had a thin exterior, but we had a deep pool of interior linemen that quickly evaporated. That's a cumulative effect across the line. That doesn't let you create chemistry together. And then continued injuries since then and lack of depth (you can blame some recruiting misses at tackle and a misguided transfer policy as well) only perpetuated that. And even now your RG and supposedly your LT are playing hurt. Not cool.
The next biggest offender? Jimbo's scheme. We've talked that to death, but when you're vanilla, don't get your QBs pre-snap reads, and have predictable play calls, they're going to tee off on you. And that's exactly what they've done. Jimbo spent the 2nd half interview at SC talking about how they need to run as they threw the ball 6 straight times right behind him (the same as they did in the first half, both against one of the worst run D's in the country).
Next? QB play. Indecision. Inaccuracy. Forcing long downs. Teeing off.
This past week they actually established the run. And then Weigman was able to make decisive throws behind it. The OL looked very good until late when we had to throw and things started coming apart. It was also one of a few consecutive weeks these guys have played together now. Funny how that all works.
