Man, I keep sitting down to write this out and get a sentence or two in and just have to start over.
My largest complaints about this team I think can be boiled down to issues with coaching, either in play calling, game management, or detail/discipline of players. I'll try to keep this as short as I can, but I have some spleen to vent.
Offensive Line
The O-line is the most glaring weakness on the team, but it's not just a depth issue (though poor depth is part of it), these guys play like they don't understand their scheme and don't communicate well. The most glaring example was on the last play, you can see the right tackle communicating that there's a blitzer coming from the outside. He identifies and calls it out three times. The problem was the end he was communicating it to was clearly going out on a route there. So the RT completely ignores him and it's a clear path...and the funny thing is the RT doesn't even block anyone, he gets into his drop and guards air. That lack of understanding and communication has been on display all year, and it hasn't gotten better. Whether it's not communicating on or staying home on defending twists/stunts/loops, or letting someone get across your face into a gap on a slant block scheme, we just don't do things well at all. By game 7 you still shouldn't be making the same mistakes and miscommunications that you were in week 1.
Defensive Playcalling/Coaching
The front 7 I feel HAS gotten consistently better throughout the year, though they lose discipline when pass-rushing sometimes--which kills us against a mobile QB. We love to play zone defense with a weird combination of super soft in the 5-15 yard range and then hyper aggression from your cover safeties which open up routes for big chunk plays. While the LBs have been really good at playing the run, watch their zone drops. They are sloppy and end up leaving big parts of the field open over the middle. The flats are almost never covered. And all night we never thought to put a frickin' SPY on the QB when we're dropping zone? Their biggest weapon was the QB keep--just like it's been in ANY game where we faced a QB who can run. We don't change our scheme though.
Offensive Playcalling/Coaching
Our route trees are pretty terrible, and I can't believe that anyone is drawing some of these up before hand--so either our coaching staff loves to put 2-3 guys in the same part of the field against zone coverage where 2 guys can cover 3, our our WRs have option routes and are reading them wrong. Asking a bunch of young WRs and a young QB to have option routes on so many plays is a disaster if that's the plan--but the thing is, I can't really tell. Friel clearly doesn't trust the OLine, as 2-3 times a game he tries to get outside the pocket when the pressure isn't there--of course when you get tattooed 2-3 times a game when you trust the OLine I can understand why that happens. We apparently either don't have a RB that can catch, or completely don't ever throw the ball to any of the RBs which lets teams cheat. There are times where Arroyo gets in a rhythm and I can see that he knows what he's doing. But anytime there comes an important call or decision I just feel like he panics and either goes way to conservative or way too aggressive. Or worse, last night tries to have his cake and eat it too with the 'lets run Chuckwagon on some plays and maybe he can break one' scheme which basically was the turning point in the game.
For the record, I personally hate it when an up and coming offensive coach tries to be the play caller. Very few people have any real success with that. The Head Coach has so much more responsibility that when you're stuck trying to figure out how to game plan offensively when you should be managing the team in all three aspects of the game. I think you can pull it off if you have an experienced staff who you can delegate those things to in game. I just don't think that we are that thing.
You can throw out 2020 as a once in a lifetime weird pandemic thing if you want to, I think in a place like UNLV you almost have to in order to not further blacklist yourself as a place where head coaches come to never coach again. We have been very competitive this season against some good teams, but Arroyo and this team are still finding ways to lose instead of ways to win. We basically have 2 games left this season where we have a puncher's shot at a W, and 3 teams I think are going to take a miracle. Honestly, I expect 0-12 at this point. And that's going to have to make Arroyo's seat at least a little hot going into next year--even though I come from a school where this program needs to give more time than most should need to give in order to turn things around.
The saddest part is with the conference realignment hijinks going on, you couldn't have picked a worse time for the school and the athletic department to lay a big, fat, goose egg in football.
