Guest Blogger: Mickey Matthews Outcoached Again
Shady_P saw it coming folks. He predicted ODU would beat JMU 38-27. Sadly, he was almost dead-on. The good news is that he won the right to be our guest blogger this week. Here’s his take on the head coach of your JMU Dukes, the state of the football program, and other JMU sports. News Flash – Harrisonburg, VA – November 17, 2012
Mickey Matthews out-coached again.
This program needs to look in the mirror and soul-searching over the next few months. I would like to see a change in the coaching staff starting at the top but I doubt that will happen. But this week President Alger, AD Bourne, and MM need to have a sit-down and MM needs to be put on notice that this is NOT good enough. All of the issues I see with this team comes from the coaching staff starting with MM:
Lack of toughness – the current Dukes are way too soft. I think a lot of that comes from our offense which spends most of the time running east-west 5 yards behind the line of scrimmage. This is highlighted by the fact that JMU is horrible in short yardage.
MM is stubborn and refuses to admit when something is not working and makes adjustments. Examples include, but are not limited to: lining up in the shotgun in short yardage, JT as a starting QB, multiple reverses in a game — one the last one here is a secret, the reverse does not fool anyone when you run 4-5 times every game.
If you listen to the post-game press conferences MM is just an ASS when they lose and rather than answering the questions seems to refuse to be accountable for preparing the team to play and would rather take shots at the reporters – that is just not the kind of behavior I want representing JMU.
Along the same lines, every other coach in the CAA watches the film and knows exactly what we do. We have no secrets in our offensive game plan and it never changes. Our offense is a JOKE and MM is the only one who seems not to get the punch line. Every yard JMU gets is a hard earned struggle, we never get an easy yard on offense.
This is a simple one –> Recruit QBs to play QB NOT athletes.
Another simple one MM –> make up your mind on a QB – no more 2 QB system
Another simple one MM –> just answer the question about Birdsong’s injury; why were we not just taking a knee at that point in the Maine game???
I may be wrong on this one, but I think JMU has some of the best talent in the FCS on its roster…..but the coaching staff does not, or is NOT allowed by MM to put them in positions to win. MM needs to back off and let the other coaches coach.
Enough about football, I feel my blood pressure rising once again.
GO DUKES!!!!!!!
Shady_P (class of 1995)
@shady_p – Love Mickey’s mugshot! Did that pic come out of your personal archives? Nice article too and way to give the shout out to all JMU Sports. JMU does have a lot to be proud of in their Athletic Program and we definitely do not want to lose site of that. With that said, I am going to shutdown my rant on football for at least a few days because I really don’t know what more can be said on that subject that has not already been well documented. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
While I would love to play SOCON teams rather than the cupcakes we played this year, it doesn’t have any bearing on the playoffs. The bottom line is that you can’t get in now a days on a 7-4 record (technically it was 7-3 b/c they throw out the WVU game). If we quit whoring out to schools like WVU, and (more importantly) started WINNING games we are supposed to win (Richmond), we would be in the playoffs.
Please don’t mention our “basketball program”. I will say that at least the “basketball program” succeeds in living up to my expectations for them (they show up to the game and wear JMU jerseys), unlike the football team.
I think Shady nailed it with this: “Every yard JMU gets is a hard earned struggle, we never get an easy yard on offense.” That is exactly how I felt all season. I celebrated first downs the way normal people celebrate TD’s.
I did this rundown of last week’s game by position. The coaches might want to read it before August:
O-Line: Needs to get tougher. If you notice, they play with very high pad-level and position block everybody. They move side-to-side rather than blowing people off the ball and dominating the line of scrimmage.
TE: The only good spot on the field. You better find a replacement for Barlow.
WR: Don’t do anything. They may as well not exist. They make up around 27% of the warm bodies on the field, so it seems stupid to not ask them to do anything.
RB: DQS sucks. He thinks this is still high school where the defense is so slow that you can just run to the sideline and run around them. News flash– this is the CAA. Another thing I noticed from the ODU game is that the RB’s refuse to run through the holes. I don’t know if their eyes are closed or what. There could be a huge hole and the RB would just run into the back of a lineman rather than through the hole. Lastly, don’t get arm-tackled. A RB needs to be tough enough to run through an arm-tackle without going down. one thing I noticed this season, especially with DQS, is that just a sneeze from the defense sent him diving to the turf.
QB: Obviously fire JT. First, he cannot complete a pass more than 10 yds down the field. I lost count of how many WR’s were wide-ass open on the deep route and JT *might* put it within a 10-yard radius, at best. Even more damning is that as essentially an option QB, JT can’t really run either. How many times did we see him run around in circles in the backfield and take a 10 yard loss rather than throw it out of bounds? How many times did we see him duck to the sideline rather than fight for the extra yard? When he made big runs, it was usually because the defense was in man coverage and the WR’s ran them off, so nobody was even looking at him. This is a no brainer- play Birdsong next season and get back to 21st century football. The single-wing went out of style in about 1940.
DL: Ask Santa for a pass rush. Our DL was FAR from dominant. I chalk this up to coaching. On the tape, I noticed the DL does stupid things, like try to spin back to the inside without closing the gap between themselves and the OL first. That is undiciplined, and poor coaching. They also try to bullrush offensive tackles that are twice their size. Never going to happen, coach.
LB’s: Best part of the defense this season. The one thing they suck at, though, is pass coverage. When you run a zone, the LB’s have got to count the receivers in front of them. If you don’t see any, you have to keep bailing and deepen your zone. Our LB’s don’t do this at all, and thus you have opponents all season long hitting WR’s standing still 15-20 yards deep in the middle of the field WIDE open.
CB’s: Learn how to cover man-to-man. I can’t count the number of times I saw opponents catch a pass with our CB 2 steps behind them trying to catch up. You are supposed to be COVERING them, not following them. If you had some football smarts, you would also know that (such as against ODU) on 3rd and long, with you playing 10-15 yards off the ball, there is a 99% chance they are going to run some type of curl right at the 1st down marker. It wouldn’t hurt….. and this is just a suggestion…. to try jumping the damn route once in a freaking while. Especially when you pretty much know exactly what’s coming.
Safeties: At least twice during the ODU game, you had a man deep up the sideline, and you broke your crouch away from him rather than into him. As a result, the opponent easily caught the ball for a 30 yard gain. Not sure who coached you to do that, but they should either fire you or be fired themselves. Also- whe the other team throws up a deep jump ball into a 1 on 1 matchup, it should statictically be incomplete at least 50% of the time. Our opponents catch it, even with you defending it, about 80% of the time. This is totally unacceptable.
The sad thing is that the casual fan realizes the coaching is horrible, but if you look at the details of the game, it is even worse than you thought. Maybe MM needs to hire a consultant to visit spring practice and give hima second opinion. Challice McMillin is still around… maybe he should help MM out.
Although I thank MM for his previous accomplishments, sadly he MUST be FIRED NOW ! JMU has underperformed the past 3 seasons and their offense is a complete embarrassment!
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