Probably the biggest disappointment of this season has been the offensive line. What looked like it was going to be a very  solid and experienced suffered major losses in the off season. Rehashing those, former starter Bunner hung up his cleats and former starters Flowers and Laudermilch were lost for the season due to injury, while former backup Davis went home to Omaha, and backup Pinder had grade issues.

The offensive line resulting after all these losses did not look good at all against Toledo nor against Ohio State. The good news is that they did do somewhat better against Marshall, and had an excellent game against EMU. In fact, the 33.5 pancakes they were credited with is the highest total I show against a Division I-A team in the last few years. Is this a sign that the young line is improving? Or did EMU have a really weak defensive line? We'll know more after a few more games, but hopefully its a little of both.

Some of the good trends I see in the numbers:
- Strum struggled at first with the shift to LT from LG, which normally means he now lines up across from the other teams best defensive lineman. He gave up 3 sacks, 2 pressures, and a penalty in the first two games, but has only given up one pressure, a half sack, and no penalties in the three games since, and his grade has been rising as well. As he improves, that means Boo's blind side is secure, which has to help help Boo's passing.
- Lechner has moved over to fill in for Carlotta while Carlotta has been injured, and seems to be doing very well for this stage in his career. He was credited with 7 pancakes in only 40 snaps at EMU.
- Flading is doing a great job at RT, probably playing at All-Mac levels. Against EMU he was credited with 68 good plays out of 69, and 7.5 pancakes.
- Neither Allen or Mitchell is consistently better than the other at center, but both are improving.
- Herman is doing a decent job at RG, and seems to be improving as well.

So long as this group remains mostly healthy, I think the line is going to be vastly improved by the end of the year, and that will mean the offense will perform as we have expected. Not only that, none of these players are Seniors  except Mitchell and Batsakes. The line for next year should be even better, unless there are major off-season losses again, especially if Laudermilch and Flowers return..

I hope so, too. I certainly was overoptimistic about the prospects for this year's line, but hopefully as the year goes on they will keep improving. On the negative side, maybe it's just that EMU's defensive line was really bad, and a lot of the "progress" I'm seeing is illusory.

I do know that the QB, whether Bates or Jackson, is going to look a lot better if they have time to throw, and have confidence is the blocking, particularly from the back side. I also know that the running attack will look a lot sharper if the holes are there and the Bobcats can go straight at the other team instead of relying on mis-direction so much.  All too often the RB and QB get too much credit and/or blame, when much of what happens is dramatically affected by the big guys up front. I know JCW has commented that this year's offensive problems have been significantly affected by the line. I can also tell you that the Bobcats rarely lose when the line has a good game, and rarely win when they have a bad one.

In defense of this statement, over the past few years I used a formula of my own to compute the offensive line performance, compiling everything into a single number. In games when that number exceeded 4.04 the Bobcats are 13-0. In games where the number is between 3.97-4.03, the Bobcats are 11-6. In games where the number is 3.96 or less, the Bobcats are 4-20. The actual formula isn't important; what is important is that it completely ignores other factors, such as who was at QB or RB, defense, weather, where the game was played, turnovers, etc, and yet it still is a very accurate indicator of who won the game.

For games this year, Wofford and EMU were in the expected win group (4.13 and 4.15), OSU and Toledo were in the expected loss group (3.96 and 3.90), while Marshall was in the borderline group that could go either way at 3.99.

Let's hope we see the offensive line keep getting better because they do matter.

Ah!  Note that someone beside me brought this up this time.

Russ said that the offense was playing at a much quicker pace on our first series or two vs. EMU.  Was this by design--I hope.  Seems to me to reflect confidence and vigor--which is 100% the opposite of what our offense brought vs. columbus.

Did anyone see the play in the Oke-Texas game last week?  The team came up to the line and snapped it immediately.  The defense was literally not ready--only a few guys close to being in position and many guys turned away from the line of scrimmage.  It went for an easy touchdown on a run from about 25 yards out, I believe.  That is why I advocate the hurry up occasionally--catches the D off guard and makes them adjust.  I just don't know why we don't have that in our arsenal for occasional use.

I'm not in love with the pistol.  I guess it makes it a lot easier for qb's to see the receivers (can scan field immediately, don't need to first take a few steps gack from center).  But I don't favor running backs getting the ball  7 yards behind line of scrimmage.  Either way--pistol or under center--I wanna see more two back sets.  Davidson, Brown, Boykin--put the wood on 'em!

What's BG's number?

L.C. 
 Many thanks for your insights into the game and specifically the 0-LINE. There is no doubt that all the injuries suffered by our experienced 0-LINE have hurt us this year. One could probably conclude what our record would be had we not suffered these injuies. On the other hand if we are able to have a good year with this group then next year could be even better.






GO BOBCATS

I have often wished for the no huddle with our talent at WR.  Do we get the play in quick enough for us to be effective?  Seems we can be a tad slow in calling plays at times.

I know our offensive line was pretty dominant against BG, which is a good sign, and I think we'll see the same against Akron. But looking ahead to next year, it is very promising when you consider that there are no seniors starting at this time on the offensive line and we added in John Prior, the transfer from Florida State.

Temple obviously has struggled to run the ball a lot more than expected. I wonder if it has to do with an underwhelming performance by the offensive line.