Monkeypox

I would've liked to see a better QB prospect in there, but due to the youth of our current crop, understand why it might not have been easy to do.

No, I won't stop the argument, not until people stop considering losing to Troy, or F?U, or Baylor, or the 4th place CUSA team, or LA Tech (by a bunch) as successful seasons. If you brag about those years, you were content with them. Content isn't the same as happy. It simply means you're not looking for a change. You are satisfied. And many here ARE satisfied and by their posts WOULD be satisfied if all we did every year was beat SBC teams. We haven't progressed in the big picture. Our football product is not different than the first year Dickey came on board. The same old problems are still evident. And new problems have arisen. I am NOT satisfied. You can say "no one is satisfied with where we are" right now because we just went 2-9 last year. Would you have posted that a year ago? I would've, but people would've jumped on me for being "negative." We go 2-9 and now it's using a "tired" argument. Funny, too, that I see people say things like they're tempering their expectations to be more realistic based on the fact that we don't have the athletes in place, when it falls under the same person's responsibilit. It's like saying "sorry, boss, I know I've failed to develop a coherent policy structure for my department, but really, how can you expect me to when I don't know how to type."

I don't trust any of the QBs we have on our roster. That doesn't mean someone won't become trustworthy this year, but the '?' at the position from last year was never answered, unfortunately. And, we've got a rather unexpected '?' now at the RB position. Hopefully JaMo will come back and show he's in good health and shape. WR - We've got the personnel. Do we have schemes to use them effectively? Ditto TE. Good set of blockers and receivers. Like to see someone who can do both, and either with more consistency. Coordinators and Coaches - Who knows?

I'm just gonna comment on football for now... 1) DD was never a hero to some of us, not 8 months ago or 8 years ago. Watching and listening to games since the dawn of the Dickey era, it's been fairly easy to notice things that weren't right, even when we won. And we'd get called out for it. Funny that the comments then were "WHO CARES? A WIN IS A WIN..." and now they've changed to "WHERE WERE THESE COMMENTS WHEN WE WERE WINNING?" They were there. They were dismissed. Any decent coach should be able to SEE those things, account for those things, and fix those things. Some of us knew the moment that we did not have a distinct talent advantage over teams, that some of those little things (and not so little things) would come back to haunt us. After all, they were plain enough to see whenever we faced mid-major talent or better. Last year, they came back to bite. It wasn't entirely unexpected. If our goal is to frequently win the Sun Belt and lay eggs vs. most everyone else, then I understand sticking with DD. I'll believe he's capable of more the second I see it. He's at 39-55, or a .415 winning percentage. In other words, he's no Corky Nelson. That means something to some NT alums. Sure, most of us will still be around watching NT football when Dickey's gone. He'll either go the way of Corky Nelson or he'll stay around here long enough to actually start winning something of note. There's a certain chance last year was an aberration, but it would be easier to believe if the signs weren't already there. And accepting that as a possibility, one might also be reasonable to accept as a possibility that Dickey's success came off of one recruiting class, and that those 3 winning years were the aberration. Obviously some people feel it's worth the risk of having a poor football team now on the chance that he develops later as a coach. After all, isn't that the case with... 2)...Ramon Flanigan, conspicuously absent from your post, though I would say he's gotten a good bit more flogging on this board than just about anyone outside of DD. In fact, I would hasten to say that he's responsible for a good percentage of the flack that DD gets, as DD is to you. It trickles up... but I digress. Any reason for his (RF's) absence from your coaching comments? Now, I realize you're bound by diplomacy and good sense. Obviously, we aren't. That's the way of things. It's a message board. I've got people who work for me too, and I wouldn't make comments regarding their performance anywhere other than where it belongs, which certainly isn't a message board. But I'm a football fan, and IMO the football at NT is simply a bad on-field product. You can dress it up however you like, but in the end all you'll have is a gilded turd, or, as it's called in NCAA football, a Sun Belt title. I can't much stand for defending the state of a bottom 20 football team. If people are content winning against only the worst competition, I do not understand our position in Div 1-A. However, I've not had any major problems with the job you've done (yet), and I was pleased with your hiring.

Arkansas State looks to have one of the better classes. No telling how any of these guys will perform when all is said and done, but stAte's got verbals from 3 of Arkansas' top 15 players.

yikes.

People might if the pages worked.

That's what I got out of it. I think he helped get his name out there, and the fact that he plays special teams is a huge bonus. Many premier players at your bigger schools don't play on special teams, and they're not gonna be premier players in the NFL so they'll have to learn. Cobbs showed his versatility, and that's good. I hope it works out for him.

Cobbs looking good... catches a perfect screen for 12 yards and a 1st down. Looking real shifty on the run.

Sometimes you have to make a play to make a penalty. Like, you have to be CAPABLE of holding the opposing athlete to get a holding call. You'd have to be able to tackle your opponent in order to get a late hit or facemask. It's why you won't see a lot of penalties on us when we play far superior teams.

It's not small at all for an OLB in college football... especially a young one.

Several things: 1) The guy's a 6'6", 220 lb WR, so I'm sure people are looking at him. 2) As far as comparisons to Quinn, he's put up more yards and TDs than Quinn in the same timeframe. That's no knock on Quinn, who's awesome. I just think the "couldn't hold Quinn's jock" statement doesn't hold much water at this point and time. Also of note is that his 1 100-yd game is 1 more than Quinn had last season. 3) Yeah, 4 for 72 (18.0 avg) and a TD, and helping to win the game against us. 4) I will give ythe kid the benefit of the doubt that this was a financial decision. Quillen is from New Orleans, and my guess is that he and his family are suffering the hardships as many others are, and that he feels a need to take the opportunity SOONER than would otherwise be advised.

The games were actually also marketed fairly well that year as part of the push to get us back into Div 1A.

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dw...ty.8a9c78e.html

http://footballrecruiting.rivals.com/viewp...sp?pr_key=43484

I was responding to a poster who put up an old link and said he couldn't find a 4-star ranking. Haugabook is, according to scout.com, a 4-star recruit, as I posted. If you have a problem with that specific site's ranking system, that's not my problem. At any rate, a 3-star recruit at rivals is of the level that most people around here would be praising DD for, especially since they were falling all over themselves about 2-star Rivals recruit at the same position with less size, a worse injury history, and far less skins on the wall. Instead, we'll just piss and moan about how the system isn't accurate. Judging by team performance, however...

The link you have is from when he graduated high school. Apparently, he was only a two-star recruit at that time. Note his height, weight, and interested schools, THEN go to the original link posted in the first message. You'll see he's now at 6'2", 215 (220) as opposed to 6'0", 205. OR, if you go to the list of QB recruits for 2006 on scout.com, you'll find him just after #17 Kevin Riley and at 4 stars.

The way people carry on here, you'd think WE had.

I don't know, how's his trash-talking? How much lead time does he like after the whistle in order to get in a nice lick? And what about his show-boating abilities? There are just too many question marks... But seriously, I've learned not to consider any signing outstanding until they've played some ball here and contributed meaningfully.

Uhm, we didn't score our TD to make it 31-10 until there were 6 seconds left. They had cruised to a 31-3 margin until that point, and that's with them missing a bunch of field goals. We were never in that game. They doubled us up in yardage. We lost 31-10. We were blown out. We played Memphis close, however. So that makes us 2 and 2 as far as blowouts go.

A LOT of great stories at that school the last couple of years.

No we couldn't have.

ASU doesn't look as overmatched as we did, but USM is playing REALLY bad. I mean, embarrassingly bad. Hopefully they won't wake up and stAte can take advantage.

The only reason we did more passing this year was we couldn't effectively run the ball and got behind a lot more than we used to, particularly in Sun Belt play.