Applewhite

This is the worst playcalling I’ve seen all year. Unbelievably predictable. So you run it up the gut three straight plays on the goal line to no gain? WTF! I know everyone’s railing against Herman right now but I think this loss goes back to Applewhite. There is no creativity whatsoever, very little motion, and no pre-snap motion. It just seems like the same plays over and over and over again, and the defenses have figured out exactly what we’re doing. It’s the Greg Ward show, and they know exactly who’s getting the ball.

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He sucked last week as well.

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I agree that Applewhite has called a few poor games, but Herman should be seeing it too. Herman is then man, so it lands on his desk.

UH needs to focus on made UH and Greg good, more play action and allowing him to us his feet to get the team out of a sticker situation.

I’m frustrated and upset like most everyone here. But more than anything else, I’m sad for the players. They will need strong guidance and coaching to recover. Herman and staff need to challenge themselves to be better coaches and teachers for these young men who committed to sign on and play for the University of Houston.

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These coaches asked the players to commit to University of Houston, but it is very obvious that they couldn’t do that themselves. They are the ultimate hypocrites, and this is exactly the type of mess that brought us Tony Levine.

The damage of this game and what it revealed about these coaches goes well beyond the players. This fanbase, the players and the faculty gave these coaches everything they had. It seems clear that wasn’t enough for Tom and his staff.

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Back to the OC, the offense became predictable. Part of that is our O-line is beat up but calling runs into the nonexistent hole is pathetic. Hopefully we get more creative by next week. Thank goodness we don’t play Rice. They would put our backs to the wall.

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I’d love to see a succes rate percentage when UH runs up and snaps it quick after a big play. I wouldn’t be surprised to see that it’s 15% or less.

The first two runs on the goal line were quick snaps and quicker failures.

And Not going for it, after you screwed yourself by going for it in your own territory with loads of time left, was pathetic.

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It worked great last year with the great blocking of Farrow. We just cant do that play anymore this year. We tried it with OU and it was clear we couldn’t reproduce last year’s results.

The bigger question is where has Herman been these past 2 weeks. Major reports to Herman and while he may be physically present it’s pretty clear that in his head he is somewhere else. When he’s cooking no way do teams like Tulsa and SMU back us against the wall. When he’s not 100% into his job UH becomes very ordinary. You can’t phone it in.

The WRs were terrible blocking too. The O-Line problems aren’t like they appeared out of no where, good OCs know how to game plan for the personnel you have. The Ticket City Bowl against Penn St I don’t think we ran it once in the entire 1st half because we knew they had 2 or 3 NFL players on their D-Line. Too much this season we have relied on Ward making throws on 3rd and long. This game he was missing some throws and we had at least a few drops too. We can’t put ourselves in those positions. The great thing about Ward is even with no running game, you can get the coverages you want because they have to keep guys to spy him. Too much talent for this to happen.

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Whether CTH stays or not, I think we need a change at the OC position, imo.

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Offensive play-calling has been perplexing as this season has progressed, and execution has been poor. Both of those issues point to the same source.

The playcalling leaves a lot to be desired, and wasn’t just the game against SMU, it’s been questionable every game. For the life of me I can’t understand why you would use a 175 lb RB (Birden) on a goal line stance instead of a 240 lb FB (Burrell), especially when you know your o-line is struggling to get a good push.

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I would love to know how many yards we gained by running between the tackles?

This is the key right here. Our O-Line wasn’t that good to begin with. With all the injuries, it is atrocious. Alex Fontana should not be playing D1 football, much less for a ranked team. Yet, for some reason, Applewhite thinks he can still run the ball up the middle. I just don’t understand it. I can immediately think of at least 5 other plays that have proven more successful in the red zone this year than running it up the gut. I’m REALLY hoping our young OL recruits are ready to step in next year. We HAVE to get better up front.

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That’s correct. Also, why not go with an up-tempo offense with quick hitters to The WR’s to combat the pass rush. Without solid pass blocking It would make more sense to make quick timed throw 5 to 10 yards. Get the ball out of Ward’s hands so he doesn’t get hammered. That’s exactly what SMU did to avoid our pass rush. The ball was out of that QB’s hand in 2-3 seconds, and we didn’t get to him one time. Very similar to what Briles ran at UH

Morris runs the Briles offense. Except for a few wrinkles it is a carbon copy of it. This is where I have some questions about our defense. We should have plenty of playbooks in our own library. There should not be an FBS program more ready than ours for it. Let’s face it, our defense has usually played great but the last three games have been a major disappointment.

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Does anyone recall a true sreen pass attempted all year long? One that has a delayed route to the running back or tight end? I dont.

Duke’s catch and run, almost td was a delayed pass out of backfield.