Poke-proud said:
Hey Junky, no offense/ hard feelings.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Of course not.....This is a good debate. I like a good debate.
It's a weird set of circumstances this year that lead to an offense that is more disappointing than most Wyo fans expected.
Josh Allen has the potential to be the first pick in the draft. The NFL execs want to see him stay in the pocket, stop throwing across his body, dramatically increase his completion percentage, and eliminate the turnovers. Wyoming having the first pick in the draft would be marvelous for recruiting. That is a blessing and a curse. We scored a lot of touchdowns on the scramble drill last year. Neutering Josh's ability to create is limiting our offense, although it's good for the program in the long run. We need more big plays on offense. The NFL draft is not helping us with that.
That's part of it.
I think people are over-looking the loss of Russell Dennison. We lost ONE offensive linemen last year: Chase Roullier. I believe in our freshmen, but how did 2 true freshmen end up starting with all the linemen we had coming back? Why did our offensive line get worse in the off-season, with so much returning talent? I think a big part of that is the loss of Russell Dennison. We should be bigger and stronger and our offensive line has failed to establish the point of attack in the running game. Chase Roullier was the best linemen we had to pull and lead block. So far, we don't have anyone that can make up for that loss. If we can't establish the run, we're fucked. I haven't been impressed with the oline this year. Did they not work as hard as Russell made them work?
I thought we would be fine with running back by committee because I assumed our line would be creating huge holes. They aren't and the running backs aren't as good as Hill or Wick. The combination of poor line play and not as talented running backs, looks to be a complete inability to run the ball so far. Vigen's play calling won't help with that. There has to be a hole or none of his playbook works.
We're still a young team. We have nine seniors in this squad. We could use some veteran leadership on offense. We lost a ton of that last year with Gentry, Malhaurdt, Hollister, Hill and Roullier leaving.
We'll see. It's still too early in the season to tell, but it's not Brent Vigens playbook to blame for our offensive struggles. That might be a small part of it, but there's a lot more to it.
The good news: the defense looks great. Last year we had to score 35 to win. Now we probably only need to score 24 to win.
We'll see more as the season goes on, but if the offensive line isn't opening holes in the running game and our running backs aren't getting north and south, it could be a long season again.