I think when Chaney figures out your personnel, you'll have some success. As I was saying before he left, in order for us to take the next step, Chaney would have to get better at playcalling with his back against the wall.
For some examples, we had drives early in the season that would be called brilliantly. We'd be gashing a team for 5-8 yds at a time on the ground and then Chaney would run either a reverse to a TE (crazy as it sounds) or try to get cute and do a reverse that involved a pitch that would get blown up and you'd go from putting a team away early to turning the ball over and keeping the opponent in the game.
Then we had some close games where he really hurt us. You may not watch a lot of Bama, but what they do really well is stick to what they do best bc they have a philosophy that the other team won't take their bread and butter away the entire game. You see Bama's physical play wearing teams down and what might not have worked early in the game is next to unstoppable as they pound away (before Kiffen).
As you know, we run to setup the pass. In three of our close losses this year, we just stopped running the ball. I think we ran the ball 6 times vs. Bama in the 2nd half, 7 times vs. A&M in the 2nd half (after gashing them over and over the entire game) and to top things off, we had a QB that was more that couldn't hit a still target bc his back was hurt so bad vs. Mizzou, and Chaney ran the ball ONE time on the last drove we had to score.
That is the frustrating thing to expect. He panics when the game is on the line and neglects what got him all his points throughout the season. It was very frustrating at times to watch, but hopefully you guys have enough talent at playmaker positions to overcome his shortcomings that will occur at playcalling.
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