This season belongs to the Oline period.

Lets do some QB analysis. Riley has taken all the blame from most of the fans this year and Bronco has taken a lot of heat for Playing Riley but is it really Riley's fault for our losses this year or the Oline's? Lets analyse the games this year:



Utah: I think they had a Better D than SDSU Riley's PER: 111.15

BSU: Better Defense than SDSU IMO: Taysom's PER: 75.28

Utah State: Better D than SDSU IMO: Taysom's PER: 125.11

OSU: IMO = D as SDSU: Riley's PER: 99.84

ND: Much Better D than SDSU: Riley's PER: 112.41

GT: Not as good a D as SDSU IMO: Riley's PER: 133.70

SJSU: Better D than SDSU IMO: Riley's PER: 112.63

SDSU: Lark's PER: 94



The bottom line is, I am not trying to say that Lark is a bad QB or Riley is better or anything. We played 3 QB's this year and none of them came close to a 135 PER against the best defenses we played this year. IMO, that is due to the Oline. One other thing, Taysom's 125 per against USU (the best team we beat all year) shows to me that the coaches were correct in making him 2nd string over Lark while Riley was injured.

frdbtr wrote:
Lets do some QB analysis. Riley has taken all the blame from most of the fans this year and Bronco has taken a lot of heat for Playing Riley but is it really Riley's fault for our losses this year or the Oline's? Lets analyse the games this year:



Utah: I think they had a Better D than SDSU Riley's PER: 111.15

BSU: Better Defense than SDSU IMO: Taysom's PER: 75.28

Utah State: Better D than SDSU IMO: Taysom's PER: 125.11

OSU: IMO = D as SDSU: Riley's PER: 99.84

ND: Much Better D than SDSU: Riley's PER: 112.41

GT: Not as good a D as SDSU IMO: Riley's PER: 133.70

SJSU: Better D than SDSU IMO: Riley's PER: 112.63

SDSU: Lark's PER: 94



The bottom line is, I am not trying to say that Lark is a bad QB or Riley is better or anything. We played 3 QB's this year and none of them came close to a 135 PER against the best defenses we played this year. IMO, that is due to the Oline. One other thing, Taysom's 125 per against USU (the best team we beat all year) shows to me that the coaches were correct in making him 2nd string over Lark while Riley was injured.

Agree with a caveat. If Lark or Hill plays at Utah and at BSU we win those games, bad line regardless.

I'll agree w/ your caveat regarding BSU, but not Utah. RN was the right QB for that game and played well enough in spite of a porous o-line, Anemic play calling, and a kicker who couldn't hit the broad side of a barn.

BoiseBYU wrote:

Lets do some QB analysis. Riley has taken all the blame from most of the fans this year and Bronco has taken a lot of heat for Playing Riley but is it really Riley's fault for our losses this year or the Oline's? Lets analyse the games this year:



Utah: I think they had a Better D than SDSU Riley's PER: 111.15

BSU: Better Defense than SDSU IMO: Taysom's PER: 75.28

Utah State: Better D than SDSU IMO: Taysom's PER: 125.11

OSU: IMO = D as SDSU: Riley's PER: 99.84

ND: Much Better D than SDSU: Riley's PER: 112.41

GT: Not as good a D as SDSU IMO: Riley's PER: 133.70

SJSU: Better D than SDSU IMO: Riley's PER: 112.63

SDSU: Lark's PER: 94



The bottom line is, I am not trying to say that Lark is a bad QB or Riley is better or anything. We played 3 QB's this year and none of them came close to a 135 PER against the best defenses we played this year. IMO, that is due to the Oline. One other thing, Taysom's 125 per against USU (the best team we beat all year) shows to me that the coaches were correct in making him 2nd string over Lark while Riley was injured.

Agree with a caveat. If Lark or Hill plays at Utah and at BSU we win those games, bad line regardless.

Lark should have started at utah and Taysom should have started at BSU. I still don't understand why the coaches would have prepared a guy all week and then scrapped him the morning of gameday. I still think that the teams leadership council was responsible for Bronco changing his mind the morning of gameday. I can't come up with any other logical conclusion "man crushes" are not logical but bad conspiracy theory.

MesaCougFan wrote:
I'll agree w/ your caveat regarding BSU, but not Utah. RN was the right QB for that game and played well enough in spite of a porous o-line, Anemic play calling, and a kicker who couldn't hit the broad side of a barn.

I think the play calling would have been better if they had been playing the guy they had prepared all week and created the game plan for. Lark should have played utah.

RN was the right QB for the Utah game. That 4th down throw on the last drive should have gone down in BYU lore, but alas we didn't have a kicker that could hit the broad side of a barn!

MesaCougFan wrote:
RN was the right QB for the Utah game. That 4th down throw on the last drive should have gone down in BYU lore, but alas we didn't have a kicker that could hit the broad side of a barn!

Even though I thought Riley played well enough to win the utah game if the Oline doesn't snap the ball over his head twice and doesn't allow an untouched defender to hit his arm after hoff had gotten 3 yards past his defender on the last play in regulation, I still think it was a coaching mistake to prepare a guy to play all week and then scrap that game plan in order to play a guy who hadn't practiced all week.

MesaCougFan wrote:
RN was the right QB for the Utah game. That 4th down throw on the last drive should have gone down in BYU lore, but alas we didn't have a kicker that could hit the broad side of a barn!

Drugged up Riley's missed catch of the snap cost us that game pure and simple. Riley should not have dressed for that game. he should not have even made the trip, just to keep the coaches from being tempted to put him in and cost us the game, like he almost did against SDSU

Maybe the coaches knew that JL would run the offense like he did last night, and the RN was healthy enough to lead us to victory (like he was).



I believe that JL would not have played with the athleticism, or confidence necessary to beat the U. In fact, I believe he would have been broken, and we would have lost by a lot more than we did.

MesaCougFan wrote:
Maybe the coaches knew that JL would run the offense like he did last night, and the RN was healthy enough to lead us to victory (like he was).



I believe that JL would not have played with the athleticism, or confidence necessary to beat the U. In fact, I believe he would have been broken, and we would have lost by a lot more than we did.

A loss is a loss, if Lark had started and been blown up and we lost by a billion, we wouldn't have anything to disagree about, but it would counted just as much of a loss as it was.



That said, I disagree that RN was healthy enough to win that game for us. The way I see it, he was injured enough to lose it....

MesaCougFan wrote:
Maybe the coaches knew that JL would run the offense like he did last night, and the RN was healthy enough to lead us to victory (like he was).



I believe that JL would not have played with the athleticism, or confidence necessary to beat the U. In fact, I believe he would have been broken, and we would have lost by a lot more than we did.

I have to agree with this. Last night proved to me that Lark would look just as bad in the utah game against a good utah defense as he did last night. It would have taken defensive scores to win the game which we didn't get (or we would have won even with Riley at QB). The bottom line is, our oline was allowing defenders through all year barely even touched and those defenders were blowing up our offense no matter who was playing at QB. The guy who handled it best after Riley's injury was Taysom Hill. Unfortunately, he got injured too.

So back on topic :), I agree that the line was to blame for a lot if not most of what happened or didn't happen this year with the O. But I don't put it squarely on them. I can imagine that if you get into NFL shape it would require that you also learn and use NFL technique since you can no longer just use your weight to move people around. I think our O-line was not ready to drop so much weight and then have to perform at a high level. Hopefully they will be used to be down in weight next year and will be much better at moving people so we can establish a running game that doesn't involve a QB running for his life.

If you are going to bail out Riley and his slew of low velocity, high risk huck-a-ducks, and career leading pick-sixes, you better apply the same excuse to Lark and Heaps.

There is a reason why drunken drivers are "impaired" and jailed if caught. Riley should not have played vs Utah and BSU as evidenced by Bronco wising up and not starting him last night and then pulling him when he played like he usually played. Not even Riley's heart could overcome his defiant, high risk play, especially when combined with an injury.

frdbtr wrote:

I'll agree w/ your caveat regarding BSU, but not Utah. RN was the right QB for that game and played well enough in spite of a porous o-line, Anemic play calling, and a kicker who couldn't hit the broad side of a barn.

I think the play calling would have been better if they had been playing the guy they had prepared all week and created the game plan for. Lark should have played utah.

We certainly wouldn't have seen 12+ QB options for just over a dozen yards.

imuakahuku wrote:
So back on topic :), I agree that the line was to blame for a lot if not most of what happened or didn't happen this year with the O. But I don't put it squarely on them. I can imagine that if you get into NFL shape it would require that you also learn and use NFL technique since you can no longer just use your weight to move people around. I think our O-line was not ready to drop so much weight and then have to perform at a high level. Hopefully they will be used to be down in weight next year and will be much better at moving people so we can establish a running game that doesn't involve a QB running for his life.

I'd give them some slack for the reasons you mentioned, but this is not the first season they have completely underperformed. We've had great recruits for the o-line since Weber got here and we've never had a solid o-line. Maybe a game here or there, but I mostly remember our quarterbacks having to play around the O-line's weaknesses.

Before the season started, I questioned if slimming down was the best idea for the linemen. I wondered if they were going to be able to protect, and I wondered if they were going to be able to open holes. They proved throughout the year that they could do neither.

Cougs_Rule wrote:
If you are going to bail out Riley and his slew of low velocity, high risk huck-a-ducks, and career leading pick-sixes, you better apply the same excuse to Lark and Heaps.

There is a reason why drunken drivers are "impaired" and jailed if caught. Riley should not have played vs Utah and BSU as evidenced by Bronco wising up and not starting him last night and then pulling him when he played like he usually played. Not even Riley's heart could overcome his defiant, high risk play, especially when combined with an injury.

Maybe he's trying to bail out Lark's sorry, sad-sack performance of overthrows, underthrows, and huck-a-duck turnovers...