As much as we were burned with continuity

As much as we were burned with “continuity” from Levine… I for one am very glad we kept Applewhite and the blueprint intact. You can see unit pride building on tradition from the past regime in spring ball.

Will Applewhite bust? I dunno, but I don’t think it was bad to keep the blueprint in place, especially the defensive system and schemes.

The DLine should be downright terrifying for opposing teams. Let us hope and pray we can find a run game. Passing game will be fine with Allen the likely starter.

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If our offensive line does not improve, you could Tom Brady back there and our passing game still would not be fine…

Things have changed so much. With our current facilities, schedule, location, the conference, recent history etc a “bust” these days is losing 4 plus games.

Hoping HC Awhite gets off to a rocking start.

QBs with good vision, quick decision making, and quick release are much better than a scrambling QB to have behind a bad line. Now hopefully Allen fits that description.

Didn’t you complain about people reading too much from INTs and bad plays in practices? I think you are reading way too much positive in the practices. We won’t find out until the first couple of games if plays like running up to the line on 2nd and 1 to do a quick snap with the defense more ready than the offense was a Herman play or an Applewhite play. I hope that play and the terrible bubble screens are not part of the blueprint.

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I’ll hold out reservations until the spring game, but my hope is that the offense outplays the defense in that game. With 6 critical losses on defense and 3 on offense, as well as retention of almost all of our offensive staff, the offense should be ahead of the defense at this point. However, as many have said, a lot will depend on that offensive line. I do like the addition of Coach Scelfo, and another year for a lot of these guys will help; on the flip side, losing Denley and Noble is a major negative.

Question will be if our coaching staff is better now. Good possibility that they are better coaches, but the results on the field may not show that, especially on defense. The amount of NFL talent that the last staff was able to work with is amazing–Jackson III, McDonald, H.Wilson, B.Wilson, Bowser, Roberts, Malveaux, Oliver–as well as guys like Stewart, Taylor, Singleton, Adams, and Davis. To me, our defense was lacking a bit last year, especially in our losses so hopefully, D’Onofrio can shore some of that up.

No doubt there was some really bad play calling on offense last year. Hard to say whether it was Applewhite or Herman. For his part Herman could be bull-headed about running something until it worked. Remember the pathetic UCONN loss in '15? But you are right. We won’t know until the first couple of games. Let’s just hope Applewhite is a bit more flexible than Herman was. We should be running plays that work, and not just running them “until” they work.

Well to add to that, even if those plays were Applewhite plays, it doesn’t mean our new coordinators will have them in their offense. Maybe they have their own set of plays to drive us fans crazy. haha

One big potential difference between this year and last year that I want to see play out is Kyle Allen’s arm strength with the speed of Marquez Stevenson, Courtney Lark and Keith Corbin. We had some really good possession receivers last year and have all of them back except for Chance Allen. What we didn’t have last year was speed that could take the top off a defense, except for Isaiah Johnson who didn’t play much and never really developed good enough hands to catch the deep ball. And as much as I love Greg Ward, his downfield arm strength and accuracy was lacking. There’s no guarantee it will be better this year, but we have some different pieces that could make this a wildly different offense. Having deep threats on the field at all times with a QB who can get it to them keeps defensive secondaries honest. I’m looking forward to seeing how it plays out.

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Definitely, we lacked speed from our wideouts which contributed to our running game problems as well as limited Ward.

I wonder if Bonner will move outside this year and allow us to have a speedier slot receiver.

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Having watched Allen quite a bit, ha CAN make throws that Greg Ward simply didn’t make - and that is not a knock on Greg. So it will be interesting. Every QB has benefits, the other does not.

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I would love to see Bonner moved outside. His hands are so good and he is fantastic at high-pointing the ball. Like Dunbar, he’ll be able to win battles against CBs. I think we would benefit a lot from a speedier guy in the slot since he’ll be drawing coverage from LBs. Should open things up for us.

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Didn’t he get moved to slot because of injuries? He was outside right?

Marquez is pretty fast, but maybe his strongest suit is how shifty he is. Crazy shifty.

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I think you’re right. He only played slot because Samples and Stevenson were both hurt. So it should only be natural to move him back outside.

Yep, they moved him inside because of the Samples/Stevenson injuries. He was going to be the 3rd WR on the outside behind Dunbar/Allen. Coaches really didn’t want to move him, but they felt they didn’t have any other options.