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OK, agree we left PL title on the field qith Gate loss. The fact that we failed to show up for Bucknell this year was distressing. But, these are college kids. Over my yrs with LU , there is rarely a season w/o a WTF game. Bucknell was ours. We all had our expectations soar after the OOC games. This was a rebuilding year. Once we lost BB, the margin we had to take title was beyond razor thin. The loss to Pards ,always annoying, but not a shock. Simply,w/o BB Pards a better team.
The most important takeaway from the season is the failure of D. I am a bit optimistic given the signs of life D showed late in the season. The problem? Talent,co-Ds,inexperience,lack of a NG… Probably a bit of all of these.There is a good amount of talent at every level IMO. Up to Andy’s staff to properly use it. The key to me is a runstopper on the DL. The inability of DL to win LOS cascaded back to put LBs and DBs under too much pressure. NG is not a matter of size. We have had very good runstoppers from 245 to 290. We need to find one or alter D scheme to bolster DL production. D seemed most effective at LOS this yr when Nigel was move onto the DL and conversely when we switched to only 2 DL with 5 LBs.
D calls throughout season were at times perplexing. Bad guesses by DC? Ineffective execution? We can speculate but it remains for Andy to fix it. We have had many yrs where we relied on outscoring opposition as our main D. We got snagged this year by losing BB.Championship teams need a Defense. If we hope to challenge Fordham and Lafayette next year, D will be the key.