Exactly! Some of the "we think our o-line was good" crowd responded to those who thought we did have reason to be concerned as if we said they were, "terrible". But almost all of us said there was reason for concern, and that we did not think they were good.
Using total yards, YPC and/or scoring in a vacuum is not very useful when evaluating o-line play. The YPC get inflated every time an RB breaks through the hole
and blows by all the LB's and DB's. For the o-line in run games, they are more properly judged by how often they opened holes...not how far the RB was able to go after they opened those holes. It's pretty much the same hole, whether it goes for no gain or 99 yards.
By my count, when we used mostly starters (up until KT came in), we ran 29 times, excluding TD runs less than 3 yards. Of those 29, 10 were held for 1 yard or less...11 for 2 or less. To me that is very concerning considering we were up against an inferior FCS d-line & LB's.
Yes, they had some really great plays, and opened some big holes, several of which resulted in huge gains, (19, 19, 15, 12, 11, 11), but I would expect big holes vs an FCS d-line, and would not expect that high a percentage (nearly 40%) to be stuffed for 1 yard or less.
As before, I will concede that a lot of that could be due to it being the first game, and these kids needing to learn how to work together better, and that on a couple of occasions, the RB missed the hole. But to say it was "good o-line play" is something I disagree with because "feast and famine" is not good vs that level of competition. If our o-line was good, there should not have been that much, "famine" vs CSU.
I, like pretty much every poster here who has been critical, am also hopeful we will make adjustments in time to be ready for LT, and will see vast improvement. But I do think we will need to see considerable improvement before we can say our o-line looks good overall. I'd say vs CSU they looked good at times, but also bad almost as much.
I just haven't seen many posts saying our Oline played "terrible". I think there are some concerns. And I agree with Lee that La Tech will provide a good test particularly for Reese.
