The Red Episode (UConn Preview)

The greatest episode that ever was or will be. Featuring Red and Red only. Find out how USF will beat UConn. They will beat them right? Maybe not. Just listen. 

Transcript

0:01

Hello. Anyone there? This thing on Puka. Where the fuck are you, man? Thought you were just joking when you said you were done. Oh, well let's do this thing. It is carrying and cord. I'm Red. Pook has got the week off. That's between him and our producers. Not sure if he ended up suspended for Yukon again, or mental health reasons. Could be s st D treatment, or he might be on the run from the law, actually I think he's getting married for the fifth time, but you're stuck with me anyways. The polling and focus groups tell us this is literally the last thing you guys wanted and might tank the podcast entirely, but the show must go on. I'll try to keep it short and sweet, no retractions this week. I'll save that for when Puka is back so he can admit how he was wrong. first thing I want to get started with is a random factoid about James Madison. They're up to ninth in the nation in the old Coley Matrixx rankings, and that was before their win last night. just crazy story of them making the transition to F B S football and they're actually led by a former U S F great quarterback Jordan McLeod. So that's a name some of y'all might remember. Just continues the story. Success of quarterbacks who leave our program and go on to do better things elsewhere. It also kind of transitions to a general note about rankings overall. They're all just a crapshoot. I mean, you can do, whether you do it through people or through statistics and computers or whatever you have, I mean, they tell you who's about in each other's league, but they're not gonna tell you who's gonna win any given game each week. just a reminder, f a u was ranked above us last week in the sp plus rankings. I mean them U A B, rice, Navy, us, we're all in about the same. Rankings or were, and as we look ahead, there's two teams that are above us pretty, you know, there's a gap with Memphis and U T S A and there's three teams who are pretty far Gap below us as well with Temple, Yukon and Charlotte. So if you go three and two in those, that still gets you to six and six, beat the teams you're meant to beat. And even despite the, the big loss of us losing to U A B and f a u. We really haven't changed our rankings. That's about what the rankings said we were. They knew who we were. as we go to our own internal predictions. Puka was wrong last week with the loss to f a u this week. He's, his preseason prediction was a win. I also had a loss still. We'll see how that pans out. We're really just going rapid fire through this thing without Puka adding in his commentary. One new little segment I'm gonna do since Puka isn't here to stop me, is I wanted to analyze specifically the three and outs that we had on offense last week. It was four drives and Coach Go talked about this specifically in his press conference too, about how he's noticing and the stats are bearing out like first and 10 when we do awful on first and 10. That just sets up the drive. So the first three and out we had, we tried to do a quick outside screen to a wide receiver, got tipped. Then the second play we max protect. We have the post open and miss it, and then third and 10, we just try to do a deep shot down the sideline that's covered. No idea what was with that play call, but you know, you had the right idea on a first down. You're trying to do an easy, quick pass trying to pick up some yardage. Doesn't work. Second down, you really had the play you wanted doesn't work. So that's one, three and out. second set of three and outs run under the shadow of our own goalposts. First down run for a loss handoff. Horrible O line blocking. Two defensive linemen are in the backfield. It's awful. So you're behind the sticks. Second down, actually our first successful play here, QB option Run. Brown keeps it, gets positive yardage, but not a first sound. Third down, we go back to the wider receiver screen. Trying to keep it simple. Get something positive. Simmons makes a bad cut. Doesn't get to the first down, just inches short. You could tell how badly we wanted to go forward, but couldn't, so that's frustrating. You're, but, but at least there you saw some play sequencing. Third three and out, this is to open the second half. This is after we've managed to get some offensive success running the football with Quan Wright. And we just try to over adjust and say, Quan's gonna be the only thing we do. We maybe we don't anticipate what f A U'S gonna change coming outta halftime. And that's just first down run, no gain. Second down, run kind of successful, moderate yardage, complete missed horse collar tackle by the refs. And then third down, we try to go to Quam right in the flat. just nothing. And so it's just like we're trying different things on all these different play calls, but the most important thing is we're not getting the first down success. And then the final fourth three and out, we're down 21. We're just trying to do too much. We, again, run our wide receiver screen. Wide receiver runs all the way across the field, run laterally, no gain. then we try to do an end around a little trick play on the next one. Again, lost no gain. And then the third one, we finally run a traditional drop back pass dropped ball wide by the wide receiver. So it's just, it's not there, but they are trying to Go to different areas of the playbook, and I think they're almost trying too hard. Instead of just finding what's successful, what's our bread and butter? Do that and do it over until it stopped. But the common theme for all of those is that they all started with no success on first down in particular. So try not to get too much in your own head, but really watch those first downs and we'll see if, if there's no no gain on first down, you might be starting to already predict that we're gonna go three and out as you're watching the game. That was Red's special three. And Out analysis segment doesn't have a name yet. We need Puka for that. Sorry, but that was last week. We're here to talk about Yukon Yukon's, a name all U s F fans should be familiar with. Unlike Rice or U a b or f a u, this is a, a storied history and much, much closer. What I would consider a rivalry. maybe U s F fans won't be as upset that way if we lose, just'cause it's, it's a name, name recognition and perception. But Yukon's not good right now. the overall record is, 12 and five in favor of U Ss F and that's five and four on the road up at Yukon, which is really hard for me to believe because East Hartsford was just a house of horrors for a long time. It's a eight game winning streak in U S F's favor right now, including four on the road. prior to that it was a four game road losing streak for U S F. So, that's, that's, that's what I remember about East Hartsford. But apparently, Not, not so much recently. Sanjay on the Bulls pen, he listed out the, the storied history of between U Ss, F and Yukon. Much better than I could. but it's got some, some crazy, stories and games in there. Voodoo five, there's a snow game. There's pka infamously flicking off the camera. there were games where ucomm beat us without ever scoring an offensive touchdown. It's, it goes on and on. but for this year, U s F is favored by two and a half. I don't get it. What the fuck? We're favored still after those last two weeks. A that's why the odds makers know what they're doing and I don't. over under is 53 Yukon. They're won in five. They lost to NC State. Lost to Georgia State. Lost to f i U, lost to Duke, lost to Utah State. But they did beat Rice two weeks ago. They had a buy last week. So let's talk about that, that win over rice. Early first quarter, rice is leading 14 to nothing. Everything's going well. Turnovers bite in the bass, two fumbles and four plays under two minutes. All of a sudden it's 14, 13. It bit tied if it wasn't for a blocked, extra point, but that's how quickly the game could turn on you. Rice had four turnovers overall. they outgained Yukon 474 yards, 319, 26 to 12 in first downs. It's just domination all over the place, but turnovers let Yukon into it and let them eventually come back and win the game. another note out of that, Yukon's just highlighting their bad off their two for nine on third down, conversions on offense. That's gotta, we gotta be able to take advantage of that bad offense. other notes about Yukon. They're led by, old ball coach Jim Mora. He's been around in college and N F L forever. he's gonna run a discipline team, more traditional kind of offense and defense. another connection. Todd Orlando in his past was the Huskies defense coordinator for a while. back when we were talking about those crazy games that U S F had against Yukon, But yeah, I don't know what else to say about him. I don't think he's gonna have any insider knowledge of their team currently. But the real story is their offense is just bad. 322 yards per game. We talked about the third downs just a second ago. But again, we said the same thing last week, the U S F defense is the perfect remedy for that. Just can't be. It can't be. We're gonna, we're gonna play some defense this week, I think. they're led by their backup quarterback, just like team last week. quarterback number six, Taquan Roberson. he's Penn State Transfer, but did not play. All there this year. He is got 970 yards passing, seven touchdowns, two interceptions, and it has about 60% completion rate. their biggest offensive weapon is running back 22. Victor Rosa 75 carries for 400 yards and two touchdowns. He's been lacking in the touchdowns department, but we'll get to that reason in a second. In the passing game, their biggest threat is tight. End 17. Justin Jolly 23 catches 291 yards and a big touchdown against rice. They're secret weapon and the guy, I guess not so secret, but I mean, if you haven't been following Yukon, you probably don't know about him, but I'm gonna tell you about'em right now. D Lyman number 97, Jelani Stafford. I'm not here to talk about what he does on the defensive side of the football. I'm sure he is solid there, but he's got five rushing touchdowns. There's a full back in their goal line package this year. So if they get down into the goal line, gotta stop him. Gotta stop him. I don't know who Who on our team's gonna tackle'em. It's gotta happen. Just key'em. If they end up hitting you on play action or something, so be it. But you gotta take away the primary threat. The other things you wanna see from U S F as we talk about keying on Jelani Stafford, I also wanna see them just simplify What we're doing. Not so much worry about Yukon. Yukon's gonna play their game. U S F just needs to do what U S F does. What we were doing prior to these last two weeks can't go down 14 to nothing. I wanna see a game where even if we don't end up pulling out the win, it's at least competitive for the full 60 minutes. And I think the key to that is simplification. And I goldish mentioned this too, obviously we don't wanna run the exact same play every time.'cause then that just gives the defense. An advantage. They know how to play you, et cetera. But I do think we need to simplify and make our guys confident in what they're doing out there. Our offense, despite all its struggles and frustrations, it's number 37 in the nation in yards per game. we can hit plays, we gotta play like it. I wanna see Byron Brown Cook Ball should be in his hands the majority of the time. And get out of our head. It's both players and play callers. We've had some drops the last couple weeks. We seem to be trying to be too cute, too safe. Just play, play fast. Go out there, do your thing. Defense very similar. We, we guys gotta play ball. We gotta figure out how to communicate in the back end. Get your coverages aligned. Get everyone set up. See what's in front of you. See a ball. Run to the ball. Make the tackle. Make a play. we are slipping dangerously down the rankings on defense towards that, that number one 30 spot. We're currently 123 yards per game. And, but despite all the yards and the points, it's, the statistics say we're not as bad when you look at win success rates, all that type of stuff. So there's the ability to make plays there, just gotta go out and do it. Finally. We gotta get the win. We need to, I'm not confident it's gonna happen, but leave it all out there before the bye week. Know that you got a week to rest up. I mean, the bye week can be great. If we win it, then you're celebrating for two weeks. You're having the confidence as you, as you come back afterwards. Or it could be real, real dark with, with, especially with our, probably what's our hardest game of the season against Memphis after the buy. even Coach Go. I, I did like that. He talked about how he's glad we didn't have the buy this week, that after the loss he wanted to get out there. Best thing you can do, go play some football. Correct it on the field. but that could backfire. If, if, if things don't go well this week, flying along in this podcast. I love it. Who needs fucking puco? It's, you guys can get everything you need in like 10 minutes. All right, we got case pumper dump now. He was two in one last week in non U s f picks, but his one loss was a real bad beat. Houston hit the Hail Mary on Thursday night on the last play, and man, that's a tough way to lose one. But otherwise, he was right on the money. F S U Strolled, Navy had a shutout against Charlotte, so those were his two wins. Let's get into this week's picks. He's got the over 31 and a half points in the Iowa, Minnesota game. That's Iowa's Chase for 3,325 points for their offense coordinator this season, he's got Ohio State covering four and a half against Penn State, north Texas covers plus 21 at two lane. And Kay says, stay far away from anything U S F related. He's not betting on it. He's way too emotionally invested. Can't be a smart, smart decision maker there. Puka has actually sent in his prediction for the U s F game as well. Hi, um, puka. This game's gonna end in a zero zero tie between U S F and Yukon. No one's gonna win, but actually U s F's gonna win 42 to 35, but I don't know how we get 42 points or hold them to only 35. I have a big dick. I'm really good at predicting football. Well, thanks, puka. That was a great, great prediction. Hope you're right. I'm going a little off the cuff. I'm going nine to seven. Yukon beats us without scoring a touchdown, but I'd still be impressed that our defense only held them to nine points. yeah. Well, not much more to say about this one. It's a 3:30 PM kick this Saturday on C B S Sports Network. Thank God for that small blessing of not having the same e s, ESPN two crew for another week. for those of you going, it does look like it could be cold and wet. I'm sure that won't be another excuse for us to lose or anything. And with the Bye Week and pka being out, I don't know when you'll hear from us again, but it'll be sometime before Memphis and it'll hit all our socials when it does. So follow, like, subscribe, and go both Googles. The End