Well, obviously run blocking was a positive. We blocked well against 8 and 9 man fronts.
Pass blocking was not bad. For the most part, Vandy had time to make plays.
Both Vandy and Coker were tentative early, but It seemed like they gained confidence as the game went on. Hopefully, that will serve us well.
Myers is solid on FG and the kick-offs weren't too bad.
We have good speed on defense and the initial coverage was good. If we can somehow get pressure from the d-line, this defense could be very good against the pass.
We had a lot of missed tackles and mental errors (over-pursuit, abandoning lanes, etc). Those are fixable. More experience and discipline will go a long way toward fixing this defense.
Most of our issues are simply from being a young team and those will get fixed over time.
I came out of this game with 3 major concerns:
1) Toughness - with the exception of Davis, McNutt, Law, and Prater, the players seemed almost afraid of any real contact. They just weren't very physical and got physically dominated most of the game.
2) The D-line - They not only got beaten, they were flat out dominated. The ISU o-line bullied them and was consistently getting blocks on our linebackers. And they looked almost bored doing so - like it was no effort at all. We really, really need something to happen here or our defense is never going to be able to stop anyone.
3) Coaching - Our coaches really didn't do our young players any favors. Our WR's had a huge advantage over the ISU DB's. It seems like we could have really helped Vandy out early be setting him up for short, easy passes to to our WR's and TE's. Why don't we use slants? On defense, it is entirely possible to blitz the LB's or safeties outside of the shadow of our own endzone.
Anyway, I think there were certainly some positives, but this is looking like it is going to be a long year...
