A relatively light schedule in their first nine games do give them a decent opportunity if they can get their act together.
That's all I'm saying, and that'd be the process regardless of the difficulty of the schedule. The offense and defense have never played together before, and lots of the coaches have never coached together. "Putting it together" is just figuring out how this team is built to respond to adversity.
This is why Peters brought in so many very established vets that ooze leadership and assembled a stable of coaches that are so highly respected. It's also a factor in drafting versatile character guys like Sainristil, Sinnott, and McCaffrey -- growing the next crop of leaders to create and maintain the right type of locker room.
We have no reason not to give them the benefit of the doubt. KK and the D showed an extra level of WTF yesterday, so those're particular areas to watch out for, but I think DQ will lean on his OC to be better, and guys like Wagner, Payne, Luvu, Allen, and Sainristil can help elevate the D.
But they're further behind than I anticipated
Maybe. I think it's equally fair to say that we may have gotten ahead of ourselves or overexcited and that they might be right on schedule. This wasn't just a 4-13 team last year. They weren't even in a lot of those games, especially in the second half of the season, meaning they got worse instead of better.
If we only win 6 games this year but are competitive and show improvement, that's lightyears better than last season. 2 more wins ain't much, but trending upward across the board will be a big step.
First priority is protecting the kid, and getting him to protect himself better. The playcalling was bad in that regard, and his decisionmaking was problematic a handful of times.
Whatever few strengths they have still seem very mitigated by their patchwork holes.
Sure, but also give credit to the opposition for recognizing and exploiting those holes. Having a weakness is one thing, and not gameplanning to minimize it is a problem, but both things are way worse when a good team sniffs it out and hits you over the head with it.
The only thing that really matters is that Daniels passed the test.
He did look good by comparison to the other rookie starters, but that's not saying much. It's great that he had his eyes downfield, but there's zero chance there weren't open receivers with all the trouble TB had with their secondary yesterday. So whether it's nerves or he's gun-shy or he's just not processing, his lack of attempts to wideouts was concerning.
Lack of any semblance of a downfield passing game is concerning. Not crazy about Kingsbury.
Agreed. I think part of it was on JD, but KK was definitely heavily at fault as the game wore on. TB was decimated at CB coming into the game and lost guys in their secondary as the game unfolded. That KK didn't have us going after that weakness immediately (or really at all) was terrible. He needs to be better for sure...