Oh, hey, it’s me again. You’re *never* going to guess what I have to say…

SPOLIER ALERT: You’re about to read the word ‘youth’ a few times. Please take all necessary precautions as turbulence and rioting are anticipated. Barf bags are in the seat back pocket and pitchforks are in the barn, but you can bring your own damn torches (it’s a liability thing; this season is already coated in kerosene and I don’t want to be financially responsible if one of you lets a fleck of molten ash ignite David Williams’ mustache. Our hets are indeed wet, but that ain’t water you’re smelling.)

It’s going to be Seinfeld reference kind of day.

No sparks, please.

(I was going to go with this one by simple virtue of finding it hilarious and feeling that it properly captures the absurdity of what we’re watching between the lines, but like our founding fathers said "If your blog post doesn’t have a cohesive theme it doesn’t have sh*t." … History was by far my weakest subject…)

I fully appreciate the fact that the collective angst much of the fanbase is experiencing right now has more to do with how we’ve looked in our 5 losses – and during our two wins – than the fact that we’re 2-5 (though that record certainly doesn’t help). I happily continue to discuss the mistakes the coaching staff is making and have never argued that they’re doing an exceptional job. That said, I also continue to balk at the insinuation that the last 7 games necessarily represent what this team, staff, and program could look like if the coaches are given a reasonable amount of time to institute completely new schemes on both sides of the ball, the young (you were warned) players are given a reasonable amount of time to learn and gain muscle, the seasoned veterans are cut some slack due to playing new roles in these schemes, and the coaches are afforded a full recruiting cycle.

Mason has already signed the highest-rated recruit in the history of this program (Lealao), so maybe let’s see what he can do in a full year or two? Nifae clearly thought enough of Mason as a coach and a person to leave his verbal to Stanford and follow him to Nashville; why not see what their first full class or two looks like? Our current – relatively small – 2015 class averages 3.11 stars on Scout, whereas Franklin’s last two classes (2012 and 2013) averaged 2.86 and 3.06, respectively. Those Franklin classes are still young (ok, I admit, that one was excessive) but immensely athletic/talented. If Mason keeps recruiting this way we could have 4 classes worth of that kind of talent. Could our current record cause some attrition? Maybe, but instead of wild speculation why don’t we just to see how it plays out over his first two cycles.

A few quick hitters about the game:

- Despite throwing a ball to the wrong shoulder of a double-covered receiver in the 4th quarter with a slim lead, McCrary played pretty well. 10 of 16 for 169 and a touchdown, picked up a couple of first downs with his legs (taking a late hit out of bounds is a skill, damnit), and used his mobility to avoid what would’ve been a soul-crushing game-losing safety and nicely lofted a pass on the run for the most important play of the game. I’m also going to put a lot of that interception on the offensive staff, because even though most vertical pass plays have underneath routes or the option to just throw the ball away, we called 3 or 4 late developing passes on 3rd and short. That’s still a dramatic improvement over earlier in the season (and teams are bringing safeties into the box against us, so at some point you have to throw over that), but a short slant wouldn’t kill us in that situation... Forgive me, Karl, they made me do it. It’ll never happen again, please don’t publish those pictures…

- Also, our problems this season are mostly of our own doing, but holy hell has our self-derailment been aided by bizarre review results and phantom calls (the former not playing a role in this game, finally). We had 4 first downs called back during the second half by highly questionable holding calls thrown well behind the play after the official watched us pick up a large gain or first down. I never got a good look at the flag that negated the 45 yard run that would’ve ended the game, but the other three looked painfully weak from the stands and on the jumbotron. Having not watched the replay I could be convinced otherwise, but that helped to kill off our already hemorrhaging second half offense. They negated runs of approximately 16 yards (for a first down), 9 yards, 8 yards (for a first down), and 45 yards (for what would’ve been a game-clinching first down). Yes, holding typically leads to big gains, but the infractions being penalized were unconvincing and mostly well away from the action. I’ll grant you that Mason probably didn’t do a great job of ingratiating himself with the officials by running onto the field and confronting the line judge on the first defensive series.

- Regardless, it’s a win. By a margin thinner than Jordan Cunningham’s calves (have I mentioned that he’s skinny? … sigh, that reference was more fun when our most talented returning receiver was still on the team…), but it’s a win. And for those who say it felt like a loss or that there’s no significant difference between a one point victory and a one point defeat, think looooooong and hard about how you’d feel and what else you’d be saying about this coaching staff if we’d been on the other side of this one. Yes, if a few plays had gone differently we could’ve lost. Well, that’s true of most games that aren’t blowouts. A couple of key completions, tackles, drops, etc. generally end up making the difference. I’m far from braying about a nail biter against an FCS opponent (albeit a not-completely-terrible one), but considering how we’ve looked this year any win is a good one and there were some awkward positives to extract from it. More on that later.

A pair of confounding factors involved in this season, listed in descending order of how severely many of you are going to take exception to them being used to explain some of the wombat grooming we’ve been witnessing. If you’re now thinking that animal metaphor made absolutely no sense, well then y… ok good point:

1.) Why not play Free Bird as soon as I walk on stage?: How old is our average starter? Our players are literally fetuses still tethered to their mothers’ wombs by the umbilical cords they require for sustenance (what has two thumbs and went a long damn way to avoid using ‘youth’ in that sentence?).

A case study in how much a team growing up and getting a second year under a new staff can matter - look at Kentucky. Last year with a new head coach they went 2-10 (0-8 in the SEC) and frequently looked bad doing it. Based on the similar 2-10 record they produced the year before that, their community had much lower expectations for their new coach’s first season than what we anticipated coming off consecutive 9-win seasons. And rightly so, but the concordant problems facing both the 2013 Wildcats and 2014 Commodores are striking. Look at the number of guys they had with 2-or-fewer years of college lifting and practice experience in significant roles on the depth chart for their 2013 squad compared to this year (true freshmen, redshirt freshmen, or sophomores – difficult to tell from their provided data which of their sophomores redshirted at some point):

2013: 14 starters, 35 on the 2-deep

2014: 7 starters, 21 on the 2-deep

And then compare that to VUFB's situation on Saturday:

2014: 17 starters, 33 on the 2-deep

Again, Kentucky looked pretty bad a majority of the time in 2013 en route to 2-10 in Mark Stoops’ first year. Now look at them just one year later. The second half of their schedule will be tougher than the first, but they’re sitting at 5-1 (2-1 in the SEC… I’m still counting their win against us as an ‘SEC win’.) Do UK fans wish they'd run that staff out of town at the end of last year? What happens in 2015 when our depth chart looks like their 2014 depth chart? Maybe nothing good, but I for one think we should give this team and staff that opportunity.

Calling youth an excuse may help to bolster the contentions of the vocal majority on this site, but it doesn’t make it any less true or any less impactful. College football is an exceptionally difficult environment for an 18-year-old to learn on the fly. Why do most successful programs redshirt the vast majority of their freshmen each year and start a large number of upperclassmen? That time in the weight room, position meetings, and practice is absolutely crucial to avoiding some of the issues and mistakes we’ve witnessed thus far. Many of them could be mitigated by our coaches putting these guys in better positions to be successful, but there’s a certain volume of errors inherent in sending out droves of guys still hung over from their senior prom. The effect is exponentially increased as you add more and more inexperience to the field because there’s fewer veterans out there to mitigate their mistakes.

I’ve seen several people confuse – whether unintentionally or through willful obstinence – what I and others mean by "our team is the youngest in FBS". When you add together the class that just finished redshirting and the class currently redshirting, most teams have approximately the same number of freshmen on their roster as we do (generally around 40-45). What matters is how many of those guys are getting significant playing time, which in most cases is only a fraction of them. Not so for us.

Teams like Tennessee have acclimated better to playing with a large number of freshmen, but in their case they have a few more experienced leaders at important positions (such as MLB) than we do and are in their second year under a new coach and system . Having to concurrently deal with inexperience from the younger guys and unfamiliarity with new schemes from the older guys creates a lot of trouble. And ok, fine, UT is better coached than we are. No one’s ascribing every one of our problems to this single issue, but denying its importance is as silly as it is factually inaccurate.

There are other coaching staffs (including our previous one) that would have gotten more out of our young talent this year, but how much more is questionable. If our previous regime had stayed the system would’ve been consistent for a 4th year, so at least everyone other than the true freshmen would have a functional understanding of their roles and responsibilities.

The last several years showed us how you can hide a team’s shortcomings by being flexible and creative. We’ve definitely seen less of that this year and that’s a fair criticism of this staff. "I don’t care about the fact that many of our starters and significant contributors were in high school or had never taken a single snap of game action 4 months ago" is not, however. It doesn’t matter if we’re sick of hearing that a non-insignificant portion of our struggles this year are related to our players’ youth; it’s still a very real issue. How to plan around it and diminish its effects is up for debate, but whether it has any effect on our performance isn’t. It’s simply going to take a lot of hard work over a 12-24 month period. Fewer brain sharts from the coaching staff would certainly expedite this process, but not anywhere near completely.

2.) Strength of schedule.

At one point our schedule was ranked as high as the 4th most difficult in the country, and through the first half of the season it was 6th. Getting stomped by the 2nd and 13th ranked teams was hard to watch, but they’re ranked that high for a reason. Remember how after opening night I said Temple was better than we were giving them credit for and that they were most likely bowl-bound this year? They’re 4-1, 24th in the country in points scored, and 4th in fewest points allowed. They did play one cupcake out of conference game against the hapless "Commodores" (I may not be pronouncing that correctly), but word on the street is that Temple thoroughly wetted their hets.

Fun fact, we’ve played the 2nd (Ole Miss), 4th (Temple), 13th (Georgia), and 15th (Kentucky) best scoring defenses in the county so far. Less than ideal when your QB options are a concussed future physician, Chris-Weber-McYelly-at-His-Own-Coach-Pants in a walking boot, and two freshmen. If that’s not a sitcom waiting to happen, I don’t know what is. It’ll be just like Seinfeld, only the twist is that instead of losing Junior Mints in open abdomens they just lose every replay challenge.

The schedule has been front loaded, but starting with yesterday it’s getting easier. Missouri, Florida, and Tennessee are still winnable games if we get our act together. We're not the only SEC East squad with painful wounds, though ours are indubitably the ones most floridly festering. We'll likely be favored against Old Dominion whether or not it's warranted (taking the points against your own team would be some Pete Rose level chicanery, but if you need a quick buck that week it’d probably be less damaging to your soul than robbing a convenience store… but only barely).

Improvement:

Something I have no doubt many will try to disagree with: I believe we’re a bit better than we were at the beginning of the season. That has *far* more to say about where we started than where we are now. Whatever, up is up. As I typed that I felt a great disturbance in the force, as if millions of voices cried out "Fire Karl Dorrell" and were suddenly silenced by the fact that you can’t divide by zero and therefore we’re better. Comparing how we played overall against Temple, Ole Miss, and UMass to how we played overall against South Carolina, Georgia, Kentucky, and Charleston Southern, I think we marginally improved in certain small ways. It’s a Festivus miracle!

Examples? I gots ‘em:

1.) Clock management has gotten generally better, with the 30-second drill at the end of the first half as evidence. Still a long way to go, but the offensive coaches are getting plays into the QB a few seconds sooner and McCrary seemed to get the team in and out of the huddle more sharply (… sharper? … with more sharpness?... eff it, grammar is hardly the most controversial aspect of this piece) than we’ve witnessed recently. There’s a chance that the stress-induced vertigo of white-knuckling our way through the 2nd half made me miss more than 0 or 1 timeout(s) called to avoid a delay of game penalty, but we were generally getting to the line of scrimmage more promptly.

2.) Substitutions are getting crisper. The occasional cat herd erupts every now and then but it’s generally more organized than some of the clown-carring we were doing before. Unless I missed something from the stands we had 11 guys on the field during every play. Roll your eyes all you want, but that’s an improvement on both sides of the ball.

3.) Our guys are making more orderly shifts and pre-snap assignment changes on defense. Still a lot of panicked pointing going on, but on numerous occasions last night it resulted in getting another body to the side towards which they were running the option and created tackles for a loss.

4.) The playcalling is glacially improving. This, too, still has cavernous room for improvement. Before one 2nd half series I turned around to the offensive press box and yelled something to the effect of "Run the ****ing football" before realizing I’d said it almost directly into the face of a 7 year old boy. Sorry little buddy, but sometimes a man has to shout incomprehensively and you get caught in the crossfire. I swear I saw him sprout a chest hair before his mother made him leave. Our offense still sucks, but by calling a few more screens and continuing to run when possible we’re slowly putting a toupee on this chrome dome of a system (oh hush, I know these metaphors no longer make any sense but it’s really late, I’m exhausted, and there are still a few gifs I’m desperately trying to fit into this piece come hell or high water).

5.) The coverage is getting better. We had a number of passes broken up yesterday, one or two of which were in the endzone. Small things like that, particularly when superimposed on one another, make an enormous difference. In fact, the defense as a whole is starting to figure some things out. We gave up a fair amount of yardage yesterday, but the defense was only responsible for 13 points against a tricky and fairly proficient offense. Why we didn’t go max-protect on that punt at end of the first half after witnessing several close calls is beyond me.

6.) Limiting turnovers. 7 against Temple, 9 total over the next 6 games. I’m not welling up with pride over 1.5 TOs/game, but that beats the stuffing out of 7.

Alright, so these aren’t accomplishments worthy of the Guinness Book of World Records (well, number of quarterbacks used in a season, possibly), but they demonstrate identification of some issues and strides made in ameliorating them. These plodding incremental improvements are inconsistent and meager, but they exist and we don't need to blithely dismiss them to ratify our dissatisfaction with the performance of the coaches and the product we're putting on the field. We lose a substantial amount of credibility when we abandon truth in exchange for fleeting catharsis. It's partly a defense mechanism, and not a very good one.

Quick aside: Those who are arguing that Mason doesn’t take responsibility for the team’s issues or his own failings are either letting anger manipulate their perception or simply not paying attention to his public statements. Yes, he often describes our problems as deficiencies in execution, but he usually follows that by correctly stating that ultimately those things are up to the coaching staff to get fixed. I take zero umbrage at him stating facts about the way we’re playing. In the first 90 seconds of the coach's show following the Georgia game he states twice that the in-game issues are on him as a head coach. 45 seconds per admission of responsibility is a pretty good clip in my book. In regards to the 15 yards he cost us last night by essentially devouring a ref’s face, in the postgame interview with Joe Fisher he readily admitted that he needs to do a better job of maintaining his composure.

Mason demonstrating how to stop them on 3rd down but still not get off the field.

The several recent rapid turnarounds in college football created by the likes of our last coaching staff and Gus Malzahn have, quite frankly, given people skewed expectations of the time it usually takes in this sport to institute new schemes and recruit players to those systems.

If at the end of next season we still haven’t demonstrated substantial overall improvement it’d be reasonable to start moving in a new direction. But making significant coaching changes after a single season serves to further destabilize a program and puts your athletic department in a huge financial hole due to contract constraints. Pink slips aren’t a panacea. There are no quick fixes to the problems we have right now; the coaches need to keep working and we need to exercise continued patience. Some serenity, if you will. Take it away, Costanza: