09-13-2023, 08:09 PM
* Taylor was of course effusive about Sacramento State QB Kaiden Bennett, noting that they first crossed paths when Bennett was about 14 and started participating in Taylor's QB school, Taylor recruited Bennett to Sacramento State, and calling Bennett an exceptionally athletic dual threat guy and a competitor. Taylor said Bennett is confident, teammates believe in him, and (because of the Folsom days) has been in a system similar to Taylor's for a really long time. The two themes that seemed most prevalent were that Bennett is playing with confidence and swagger and that he's a dual threat. The former sounds to me like Taylor's film review makes him feel Bennett has turned a corner and is looking like a different QB than when Taylor coached him. The latter strikes me as what we really are focused on game planning to address. Taylor mentioned Bennett's big success at Folsom but left unsaid was all the interesting subtext that contributes to an interesting storyline Saturday: Bennett won the Sacramento Bee Player of the Year the year before Justin Lamson did and was the two-time state champion QB high school legend Ari Patu transferred to Folsom in hopes of replacing before Patu failed to win the starting job. And when Taylor says he "recruited" Bennett to Sacramento State, the final matriculation was not right out of high school, as this is Bennett's third college. I'd love to be a fly on the wall of Taylor's inner self and know where he thinks Bennett would rank in the Stanford QB room. Through two weeks, PFF grades Bennett as the top graded player on the Hornets' roster (QBs in the Taylor system typically grade well). In conventional stats, Bennett is 14th in FCS in total offense, 6th in yards per attempt, 12th in passing efficiency, and 53rd in rushing yards per game (4th among QBs). He is averaging 9.2 yards of total offense per play. Obviously this is a dominant FCS player.
* I found it subtly, subjectively (but only slightly, as it's probable it means nothing) unsettling that Taylor's eyes got a bit shifty when he said he hopes we'll be resilient and bounce back from the USC game. Mostly the answer on what the lesson from the USC game has been was kind of a typical riff on how you always learn, need to move on to the next game win or lose, improve and get better, blah blah. Said all the right things and seemed to believe it. This is the kind of thing I want to judge on results though. We'll see how resilient we are over time based on the results and if we're able to (not overnight but over time) make the need to be resilient less frequent by failing less.
* Taylor talked about the frequency of his two running back sets and that's something I noticed against USC (and something I predicted months ago would happen when I dug into his offensive player snap counts and was startled at the RB usage). Where was Taylor when we had McCaffrey and Love on the roster together? Oh well. It's interesting Taylor would use this schematic feature as a rationale for why we're playing a RB committee (in his telling it's about developing depth). Taylor had times at Sacramento State of high degrees of spreading snaps around among RBs (the 2021 stat of four RBs in the top 18 in offensive snaps still blows me away) and times of going with a bell cow (Skattebo had 748 snaps last year, second of any non-OL), so to me the depth thing is more a convenient rationale. If he had a bell cow I bet he'd play that guy more than we're seeing. I think the comment about each of our four RBs being different but all bringing something pretty much says it: the mix of attributes and utility among these four is more attractive than giving one or even two guys extensive run. The mention of Irvin being less experienced but also talented seemed like an acknowledgement that it's a top three right now more than a top four, but I wouldn't be surprised to see Irvin get more run at some point.
* The question on grading the defense's execution and effort was a fine question, especially since Taylor eschewing an opening statement and nobody else asking about defense led to a ridiculously long time before defense was discussed. Something that needs to be asked so can't be mad at the question. But if it was intended to get insight into the quite evident problems with defensive effort against USC, there was no hope of that. Too broad and neutral of a question and there's no way Taylor was going to answer a question like that with critical insight when it gives him such an easy out to get off the stage with the generic and positive comments he prefers. Obviously to those of us who've seen the horrifying clips of the horrendous effort and lack of pursuit on USC's touchdowns, "the effort was really good" is an annoying if not disturbing comment. But I don't read too much into it. I think in context it's clear Taylor is talking about effort across the game, not effort within plays. It made a big impression on him that we battled enough in the second half not to have the score widen. In such a miserable game he has little to cling to as positives (and I think he will always want positives in his teaching moments, a compliment sandwich kind of guy like many of us are) and not folding in the face of an onslaught is what he clung to this week. The pathetic pursuit on numerous plays strikes me as a big concern if it suggests the lack of fire and consistency it seems to, but that's probably more of a question for April than Taylor.
* I think it's really disappointing that Taylor's answer on defensive execution was almost all about how good USC's offense is with then an obligatory comment about how there are things we need to do better and not make it so easy for USC. Yes, USC's offense is good. But we were worse against them than San Jose State. We gave up 49 points in the first half. I think this answer needed to be an acknowledgement we were awful and didn't execute when it mattered, on both sides of the ball. It's fine being a compliment sandwich guy and not wanting to kick the team when they're down and not wanting to expect things that are impossible from a pretty limited roster, but there's a point where all of that goes too far and you're tolerating something that's unacceptable. If Taylor won't be fiery about defensive incompetence when we give up 49 in a half, when will he? And if we're not holding our team to a high standard, how are we going to get better? I am confident Taylor intuits the balance on these questions better than I do but it just struck me as off to be quite as nonchalant and excuse-making as he was. Yes, Caleb Williams is going to be the #1 pick. But we looked worse than San Jose State and definitely a lot worse than a decent Power Five defense. Shouldn't that fall below the line of what we think is acceptable? Need to mention here that of course Taylor may deliver different messages in private than in public. I hope so.
* When Taylor says there were some individuals who really stepped up, it's not obvious who he's referring to in the plural, but I'm sure he has Bernadel's game-to-game improvement in mind and may also be thinking of non-Slocum corners.
* I found it subtly, subjectively (but only slightly, as it's probable it means nothing) unsettling that Taylor's eyes got a bit shifty when he said he hopes we'll be resilient and bounce back from the USC game. Mostly the answer on what the lesson from the USC game has been was kind of a typical riff on how you always learn, need to move on to the next game win or lose, improve and get better, blah blah. Said all the right things and seemed to believe it. This is the kind of thing I want to judge on results though. We'll see how resilient we are over time based on the results and if we're able to (not overnight but over time) make the need to be resilient less frequent by failing less.
* Taylor talked about the frequency of his two running back sets and that's something I noticed against USC (and something I predicted months ago would happen when I dug into his offensive player snap counts and was startled at the RB usage). Where was Taylor when we had McCaffrey and Love on the roster together? Oh well. It's interesting Taylor would use this schematic feature as a rationale for why we're playing a RB committee (in his telling it's about developing depth). Taylor had times at Sacramento State of high degrees of spreading snaps around among RBs (the 2021 stat of four RBs in the top 18 in offensive snaps still blows me away) and times of going with a bell cow (Skattebo had 748 snaps last year, second of any non-OL), so to me the depth thing is more a convenient rationale. If he had a bell cow I bet he'd play that guy more than we're seeing. I think the comment about each of our four RBs being different but all bringing something pretty much says it: the mix of attributes and utility among these four is more attractive than giving one or even two guys extensive run. The mention of Irvin being less experienced but also talented seemed like an acknowledgement that it's a top three right now more than a top four, but I wouldn't be surprised to see Irvin get more run at some point.
* The question on grading the defense's execution and effort was a fine question, especially since Taylor eschewing an opening statement and nobody else asking about defense led to a ridiculously long time before defense was discussed. Something that needs to be asked so can't be mad at the question. But if it was intended to get insight into the quite evident problems with defensive effort against USC, there was no hope of that. Too broad and neutral of a question and there's no way Taylor was going to answer a question like that with critical insight when it gives him such an easy out to get off the stage with the generic and positive comments he prefers. Obviously to those of us who've seen the horrifying clips of the horrendous effort and lack of pursuit on USC's touchdowns, "the effort was really good" is an annoying if not disturbing comment. But I don't read too much into it. I think in context it's clear Taylor is talking about effort across the game, not effort within plays. It made a big impression on him that we battled enough in the second half not to have the score widen. In such a miserable game he has little to cling to as positives (and I think he will always want positives in his teaching moments, a compliment sandwich kind of guy like many of us are) and not folding in the face of an onslaught is what he clung to this week. The pathetic pursuit on numerous plays strikes me as a big concern if it suggests the lack of fire and consistency it seems to, but that's probably more of a question for April than Taylor.
* I think it's really disappointing that Taylor's answer on defensive execution was almost all about how good USC's offense is with then an obligatory comment about how there are things we need to do better and not make it so easy for USC. Yes, USC's offense is good. But we were worse against them than San Jose State. We gave up 49 points in the first half. I think this answer needed to be an acknowledgement we were awful and didn't execute when it mattered, on both sides of the ball. It's fine being a compliment sandwich guy and not wanting to kick the team when they're down and not wanting to expect things that are impossible from a pretty limited roster, but there's a point where all of that goes too far and you're tolerating something that's unacceptable. If Taylor won't be fiery about defensive incompetence when we give up 49 in a half, when will he? And if we're not holding our team to a high standard, how are we going to get better? I am confident Taylor intuits the balance on these questions better than I do but it just struck me as off to be quite as nonchalant and excuse-making as he was. Yes, Caleb Williams is going to be the #1 pick. But we looked worse than San Jose State and definitely a lot worse than a decent Power Five defense. Shouldn't that fall below the line of what we think is acceptable? Need to mention here that of course Taylor may deliver different messages in private than in public. I hope so.
* When Taylor says there were some individuals who really stepped up, it's not obvious who he's referring to in the plural, but I'm sure he has Bernadel's game-to-game improvement in mind and may also be thinking of non-Slocum corners.