is having an OL who just straight-up fucking murders people on the regular. Rudolph has been building toward this for a couple of years now, with an inordinate number of serious injuries slowing the process. There is no slowing shit now, bc we have established a level of depth to overcome this.

The 1a fix is called Aneyas Williams + Kedren Young, plus a dash of Nolan James. I'm not concerned about short yardage.

Regarding #2, there's no freaking way that Faison will approach 1200 yards, but he'll likely be in the 800-900 range and super productive. I don't know why this wouldn't register in whatever you were looking at statistically, but the man converted an insane number of first downs on his catches in 2025, percentage-wise. His efficiency rate on conversions could not have been matched by too many other receivers nationally.

Regarding #3, Rodney Dunham is going to be a superstar sooner rather than later. Also, who on this schedule is even capable of exposing whatever weakness in depth one has to strain to see at DE? Our opponents up til the trip to Provo will be lucky to rush for 100 yards. They're all going to get fucking smushed. It would be more of a concern if we had last year's schedule, but this is clearly not that.

will pay dividends. He's one of the best athletes (maybe the best) on the team. Developing better chemistry with Carr would help. Faison only had 50 yards receiving in the first two games (though obviously the quality of the opponent factors into it) and 590 in the remaining 10 games. I hope we have a reliable big-bodied receiver who can force teams in match-up problems. Fields did pretty well in that respect last year but I'm hoping for better this year.

I'm not sure what the right answer is on 3rd and 4th and short. In 2024 it was easy -- have Leonard run the ball. Last year, I was among those moaning about the Wildcat. Teams always seemed to find the right gap to plug. I don't know if we telegraphed it or what. I also didn't understand leaving Carr on the field as a WR. It seemed to me to defeat the idea of getting a +1.

If you basically tell the other team that the play is going to be a give to a TB it's pretty hard to gain two yards between the tackles assuming you have an opponent of major conference quality. One advantage Leonard (or any running QB) had or has is that he's standing up when he gets the ball so he can more easily see where the creases are. There was one play in a playoff game where the play was designed to go to the left but a crease opened the right and Leonard galloped for about 25 yards.

I'm really high on Williams. Rewatching the highlights of the PSU game, we would not have won that game but for him. He came up large both in the passing and the running game. I'm glad he stuck around after basically not playing last year. I'm sure he had big NIL offers elsewhere.

I really hope we identify a QB2 and get him some meaningful action early on. If Carr gets dinged we need someone who can run more than 20% of the playbook.

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"Somewhere in Middle America"

I speak both, so ...

Let's simplify and say that if Craig is healthy and Knapp is truly a "people mover" at guard, then even basic inside concepts should work well in short yardage. Add to that Lambert and a healthy Flanagan next to one another and off tackle/outside are in play, so there's enough variability to keep defenses off balance even when playing for run. RG will be a bit if a question mark but as long as it isn't a weakness, we should be good.

If we decide to throw against a loaded box then a healthy Faison will almost always be open. He's too quick to cover 1 on 1. Graham is an x factor here if he lives up to Spring hype, so that 2 guys that are uncoverable. Anything else is overthinking it, IMO.

On your 3) I think our defense will be dominant if healthy. We can't lose a safety and need KVA at 85%+. As you know, he is a massive variable and paired with Moore and Tae, it's too much for an offense to avoid all 3. The new DTs/SDE just need to be solid against the run and, as you note, in short yardage, where we were horrible last year.

What was going on with our blocking/schemes? It clearly wasn't a talent at RB situation. And I don't have data on this, but goal-to-go situations seemed bad too.

Shit, there were times that our RBs bailed out our line. Recall Love's miraculous Navy TD where he was stopped in the backfield but spun out of the tackle for a TD.

We have what would be objectively considered a very talented offensive line but for whatever reason our run blocking in short yardage leaves a lot to be desired. It baffled me how the defenses get so much penetration on us.

The way things played out, scraping RPOs after Miami was a fatal flaw. Turns out that Miami was absurdly good at defense and this took a critical club out of our bag for situational football.

This all was exacerbated by what our collection of skill talent was really best at. Fields was great at downfield but couldn't catch a slant to save his life. Teams could double up or play tight on Faison/Pauling and bring safeties down for extra help against the run. For obvious reasons they didn't want Carr running as much as Leonard. We were also telegraphing something in our screen game so that wasn't a good outlet either.

As you point out, Williams brings a really nice receiving skillset to combine with what appears to be a good between-the-tackles running ability. There's a lot to build off with that.

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Freeman's got so much riz they need to call him Aura Parseghian