First things first, the Tigers aren’t going anywhere the rest of the season without Brady Cook unless some big changes happen.
If he’s unable to play, I’m not sure the offense can score a touchdown, let alone win a game. The defense has been far better than I expected coming into the season, but there’s just no way to win games operating as inefficiently as the Tigers have when Drew Pyne is on the field.
In two games in relief, Pyne is 16-of-33 passing for 120 yards and three interceptions. I’m not sure I’ve seen a less confident quarterback.
I don’t want to spend all day bashing Pyne, he doesn’t deserve that. But the nicest way I can put this thought is without Brady Cook, the Tigers – who currently have six wins – would be pretty lucky to end with seven wins. Maybe the team takes the bye to set up an offense specifically for JR Blood or one of the other backups and then I could see better results, but if they stick with Pyne, I have no faith in the rest of the season.
And what a waste of talent that would be.
Luther Burden had three catches for three yards Saturday, tied for his career low with the second college game he played when he had one catch for 3 yards against Kansas State.
Theo Wease has essentially been a no-show in the middle third of the season. Ever since finding the blanket in College Station, he has 11 catches and 195 yards in four games. Not truly terrible numbers for four games, but without one big catch in there it's a lot worse. And if you take out his big game against Buffalo, he’s averaging just 47.6 yards per game this year and has only the one touchdown he scored against Texas A&M.
That leads me to thought No. 2. We’re far enough into the season to call the receiver room what it has been. A disappointment.
You can definitely put some of that on Cook and some of it on the play calling, but the receivers just aren’t getting open. It was clearer than ever against Alabama. No one is creating any space and when the play breaks down and Cook is scrambling out of the pocket, the receivers all just stand there waiting.
Sometimes that’s the right thing to do. If you find a spot in a zone you sit in it and wait. But they’re just waiting there with a corner or safety on top of them, giving Cook nowhere to go with the ball.
Along with Wease’s poor numbers this season, Mookie Cooper and Mekhi Miller have done almost nothing. Cooper had the big catch against Auburn, but he has just 12 catches for 235 yards this season after nearly reaching 500 yards on 36 catches last season.
I thought Miller could be a good fourth option this season, but he’s caught just three passes for 35 yards.
I don’t really know where to place the most blame. Cook wasn’t on target in deep or intermediate passing early in the season, that had a big effect on the total season numbers. But once SEC play began, the receivers have stopped being able to find any space and I don’t know if that’s on them as route runners or improvisers, or if it’s on Kirby Moore and the play calling and design.
Moore was such a revelation last season, I don’t get how there could be so much regression in a play caller from one year to the next. That can’t be all it is.
On the coaching point.
I’ve seen a lot of takes about Eli Drinkwitz not being a good coach and I think they’re ridiculous.
He’s not great at clock management and some of his in-game decisions are confusing, but two major parts of a college coach’s job are talent acquisition and motivation. And Drinkwitz is amazing at talent acquisition and motivation.
I really thought he had the other part of the job down last year in hiring very good coordinators to control the in-game decisions so he could focus on the other stuff.
Moore and Blake Baker were a great combo that seemed to allow Drinkwitz to just be a motivator and recruiter, playing to his strengths and theirs. And Corey Batoon seems like he’s basically taken over where Baker left off. But like we were just talking about, the regression of Moore’s play calling has been crazy.
Drinkwitz also definitely needs to do better down the line in recruiting and developing a quarterback. He’s brought in some highly-ranked guys over the years, but none have worked out. And that’s kind of just college football now.
Highly-ranked quarterbacks who have a lot of value on the market aren’t going to sit and wait behind a multi-year starter. They’re going to go somewhere they can be the guy. Now, none of Drinkwitz’s big recruits have even gone on to be the guy somewhere else, which is concerning, but that doesn’t mean he can’t do it. I don’t think the current lack of quarterbacks ready to just step in to Cook’s shoes in an injury situation is really that bad a mark.
Maybe Sam Horn would be ready if he didn’t tear his UCL, but most teams aren’t going to look good moving to their second or third quarterbacks.
Some look better. Marcel Reed and Conner Weigman seem to be doing a great job rotating at Texas A&M. But for the most part, when you go to the backup, you get the Auburn look of going to the backup and having him immediately throw three picks in a handful of drives. Sound familiar?
My final thought here follows the last.
The entire environment of college football is still changing as NIL and portal rules are being fully ironed out year-to-year. But it seems like we’re getting to a point where you’re mostly reloading your team every offseason and if we’re fully going to every player is a free agent every year, then the best thing a coach can do is convince good players to play for him and keep the good players he has. I don’t want to start looking ahead to next season already, but if Cook is out, then the conversations about this year are basically over without one of the other backup quarterbacks shocking everybody.
But it’s almost impossible to look ahead a year or two nowadays. Who will be on the team? Who knows.
Will Josh Manning and Daniel Blood still be on the Tigers in two years? Maybe. Will Cayden Green be the piece anchoring the offensive line? Maybe. Is next year’s quarterback already on the roster? Maybe.
There’s really no way to know at this point.
Maybe the players who are here really do love the brotherhood they all talk about so much, it’s a constant talking point not just among the football team, but both basketball teams, too. How the ‘Family environment’ is perfect for everyone who decides to join the team. But that family environment wasn’t enough to keep Dominic Lovett in the receiver room when Georgia came calling.
If Cook misses a few weeks and the Tigers end the season with seven or eight wins, the quarterback and emotional leader is headed out the door and it’s hard to say what the team will be next year, maybe another couple of guys decide that family environment isn’t enough to keep them around either. So you need to rely on a coach who is able to convince talented players that he is the guy they want to play for long term. Whether that’s bringing in new talented freshmen and keeping them around long enough to develop, or convincing portal guys to finish out their years in Columbia.
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