Avery Johnson

[stlcatfan]

You mean that coach admitted there was a limited play book for this game with the intent of not hurting the only football scholly QB on the roster? Shocking......SMDH But hey, let's all blame the OC. Should have been calling flea flickers, hook n ladders, double reverses, and everyone's fan favorite the statue of liberty.

Aside from all the whining, I'll say it now we had better be scouring the portal for another quality RB because outside of DJ there is a massive drop off. We desperately need quality of depth at the skill positions.

Hard to critique the RBs when the backups got a total of ONE carry the entire game. Really expected to see Joe Jackson play. Not sure how many he played this year

I was a little surprised that the backups didn't get more carries. I know DJ was having a great game and kept some pressure off of Avery, but even as a change-up, give the young guys a couple of carries. Maybe the coaches felt the game was too close to risk putting a green RB in there for blocking and carrying the ball. Who knows?

[bahweepgronnaweep]

Avery Johnson gets an A from me for the way he played today. He was smart and threw the ball away without trying to force it in to a dangerous spot which i thought was very impressive for a freshman qb. He ran when he needed to and kept himself from getting hurt which was a worry for me with how skinny he is right now. What frustrates me tho is the fact that Johnson can extend a play for several seconds and ksu doesnt have one wr that can get open down the field....i cant see the whole field watching on tv, but somebody has got to get themselves open.

I agree with every word of this. After watching the OU QB turn it over 64 times, Avery looks like a veteran making smart choices. But by God, someone needs to send this tape to some top notch receiver recruits. Any half decent 4* received has to think they can win the Biletnikof just from catching passes on the scramble drill.

[Tbonespop]

Avery Johnson gets an A from me for the way he played today. He was smart and threw the ball away without trying to force it in to a dangerous spot which i thought was very impressive for a freshman qb. He ran when he needed to and kept himself from getting hurt which was a worry for me with how skinny he is right now. What frustrates me tho is the fact that Johnson can extend a play for several seconds and ksu doesnt have one wr that can get open down the field....i cant see the whole field watching on tv, but somebody has got to get themselves open.

I agree with every word of this. After watching the OU QB turn it over 64 times, Avery looks like a veteran making smart choices. But by God, someone needs to send this tape to some top notch receiver recruits. Any half decent 4* received has to think they can win the Biletnikof just from catching passes on the scramble drill.

We have some highly ranked WRs on our commitment list coming in next year. Hopefully there are some gems. I think HCCK REALLY wanted to win the game last night and limited the players he played to guys he trusted to not make mistakes. I seriously do not believe Seth Porter (God bless him) has more ability to get open and catch passes than Tre Spivey. Anyway, I'm with you in hoping we bring in some elite WRs to go with what we have now. Also hoping we pick up another elite RB because I'm really concerned about what we have behind DJ.

[bhoovy]

I think there’s lots of fair comments about the bowl game. My thoughts, Avery looked very good. Besides having incredible talent and speed, what’s made him very good is his football IQ and the fact the moment is never too big for him. He played calm and under control.

As far as the OC, I get that the play calling was likely somewhat limited, so maybe it’s not fair to call out Riley as not being creative or whatever. I was one who was critical during the game. But my concern is we have a Ferrari or Lamborghini. We’ve not had one of those before. So I guess I’m just not comfortable handing the keys to that luxurious car to someone who hasn’t been an OC before. I’d rather it be put in the hands of a proven OC. And even more so the QB coach. I just feel we need a very good QB coach, and maybe Avery should even have a voice in that hire, as it needs to be someone he really connects well with.

As far the the rb situation, I am really surprised we didn’t give someone else a handful of carries. Here’s our current rb room.
DJ Giddens, Jordan Schippers (sr), La’James White (so), Evan Cantu (R-fr), Troy Engram (fr) and Joe Jackson (fr).
Jackson was supposedly someone they were very high on. Some saying he might end up being the better all around back than Dillon Edwards, but no carries. Schippers is a transfer senior, but no carries. White got one carry and I believe was in for 2 snaps. This concerns me because we can’t rely just on DJ next year, he’ll get worn down. And all we currently have incoming are frosh. They’re high on them, but they’re still frosh.

And the other thing I was a bit disappointed in was not seeing a few other wrs. Where was Spivey or Davis. We don’t have a wr over 6’ tall playing when it seems everyone else has 2-3 wrs that are 6’2” to 6’4”. That’s Spivey and Davis. And while we seen more of Keagan, I’m not seeing this blazing speed they were talking about. I think we tried to throw the ball deep one time to him and he had no separation.

[SCKSCat]

So which has a more profound impact on his future. Playing well in his first game or winning the game as the starting QB?
I will argue doing what needed to be done to get a win was way more important than doing stuff to look like a stud QB. There are a lot of good looking quarterbacks that never develop the ability to lead there teams to victory.
Josh Freeman was a talent, but not a winner. The opposite was Bishop, talented and a winner.

[PurpleOnWhite]

Did Fabris see the field? I don't remember seeing him.

[Tbonespop]

Even so, the play calling left a lot to be desired imo. But, all Riley had to do was make Klieman happy. Not having Ward and Sinnott certainly impacted the O.

100 percent accurate. In all five seasons there have been lots of criticism of the two OC's and at the end of the day that is the style Kleiman feels most comfortable with. Certainly nothing flashy and doing things behind a physical o-line. Whoever the next OC is will be carrying out the wishes of the head coach. I personally would prefer an uptempo offensive with a lot of plays being run a really pushing it, especially with Avery. Gut feeling is Riley gets the job and things stay the same. Avery is a special talent and we need to tailor this system to his strengths.

Let's recap the situation of the offense last night and understand some nuances related to the play calling / OC: True Freshman starting QB in his first career start as QB, only 1 football scholly QB available to play in the game (AJ), limited play book available due to not wanting to risk injury to the only QB we had available and clearly HCCK wanted to win this football game for his Seniors after the debacle with ISU , vastly experienced and talented OL, 1 elite quality RB on the roster, no Ben Sinnott or the ever reliable Brooks, and marginal at best WRs. Playing the #18 9-win P5 ACC team in the country with a quality defense. All that factored in, we still put up 435 yards of offense and 28 points while closing out the game inside the 10 yard line and could have added at least a FG if absolutely necessary had we needed it to win the game. So we put enough offense out there to get at least 31 points with a true freshman QB starting his first game against a ranked top 20 P5 team on a neutral site. That ain't bad folks. Not sure what your expectations were.

As was mentioned last night, the QB run game is a key aspect of our offense. It always will be. RPOs aren't nearly as effective if there is no possible threat of a QB run out of the RPO. If there is no threat there, the defense will key on the RB and cut off the short WR routes. During the first half of the game, NCSU was really respecting AJs game film as a very talented runner and they were expecting him to take off on some of the RPOs. They played that straight up. This is why DJ had a monster first half running the ball between the tackles. Clearly at half time, NCSU defensive staff pick up on the tendency that AJ wasn't going to run it off the RPOs and started keying on DJ. So that shut that down in the 3rd quarter. That is what a quality opponent will do BTW. We adjusted to that early in the 4th quarter and started calling some variations to get the balls to WRs which opened the interior running game back open. I also want to point out that Seth Porter dropped a key 3rd down conversion that hit him in the hands. Oakley also dropped a key 3rd down conversion that hit him in the hands. Those were drive killers.

All that above, we still put 28 on the board and could have gotten 31 points with 435 yards of offense. I'd give that effort under the circumstances a B to B- rating. Could it have been better and adjusted earlier to NCSUs half time adjustments? Certainly. This was far from a stellar job. Outside of that, I was ok with what took place in the first half and 4th quarter. Am I 100% sold on Riley as the OC? I don't think there's enough there to say one way or another. He didn't have the luxury of having an experienced future NFL Skylar Thompson available in his first game as a signal caller like Klein did. It's up to HCCK to make that call on the OC. But as pointed out, this is HCCK's offense. Its what he did at NDSU and he has done at KSU from day 1. We're always going to be a program with a quality bully type OL, 2 RBs sharing snaps (barring injury or portal crap), a mobile RPO QB, and an offense that runs the ball 1.5 times as much as we throw (1.5:1 run to pass ratio) - and runs between the tackles on +80% of the first down on each possession. That's what we are. Its not going to change based on the OC or QB coach we have.

[powercat5000]

Lil bro was upset after their loss last night…Cobee made a promise last night, our qb thought it was funny.

[tmcats]

Lil bro was upset after their loss last night…Cobee made a promise last night, our qb thought it was funny.

ha, ha, that's rich after losing 15 straight. good grief.

[Gorhoops]

I read through some of the posts on this page from right after the bowl game and noticed how some were discussing why other RB's didn't get any carries in the bowl game and that we needed to scour the portal for another RB.

Thought it interesting yesterday in Coach Riley's presser that he was asked that very thing, are you guys looking to add a RB from the portal and he said no, they feel really good about what they have in that room and unless something changed, like an surprise transfer, they were good at RB.

I know some were upset that Joe Jackson didn't get any run in the bowl game but it reminded me that I was upset at the end of the bowl game against LSU two years ago that Jordan Schippers got a few carries but DJ Giddens never saw the field, I thought that was concerning as it related to DJ. But then 2022 rolled around and DJ was outstanding in his time filling in for Deuce, so maybe what happened in the bowl game really didn't have a whole lot of impact on whether Joe Jackson or someone else will be in the mix next season.