[Keith Lee voice] Conner played like shit this weekend. Let’s talk about it.
Our beloved Fightin Texas Aggies lost to the #7 or whatever ranked Notre Dame Fightin Irish and it was the worst kind of loss because a win was right there to be had. When you get blown out at least you’re like well scrap everything and start from scratch, but when you’re tied with 1:54 left to go in the game you can nitpick so many damn details that could have gotten you the win.
One thing that’s for certain is that Conner had a really bad game. And there’s a lot to unpack about the game he had. So this is my effort to unpack the factors associated with Conner’s bad game
NOTRE DAME
There are tweets going around right now about the effectiveness of Notre Dame’s defense on elite players last year. They have a very very good defense, bolstered by a very very good secondary. Have to give them credit.
This is not an excuse for how poorly Conner played.
THE OFFENSIVE GAME PLAN
The general consensus from all the #Football #Guys i know is that the game plan this weekend was intentionally very conservative, with Elko and Klein deciding to run a “dont fuck up and let’s win with defense” type of game plan. We can argue the effectiveness of such an approach on QB performance and I’m sure Elko and Klein are second guessing themselves, but I will say too that their game plan put us in position to be tied at the end of the game despite being -2 in turnovers.
This too, is not an excuse for how poorly Conner played.
CONNER ON FILM
Conner Weigman has potential to be an elite QB. We’ve seen the PFF tweets and we’ve seen the passes he made against Miami where he climbed the pocket beautifully and made throws while staring down the barrel of a hit. He’s got the toolkit to be a really good QB.
Potential doesnt mean shit. You cant feed your family with potential. Conner on film is very good, but there’s so little film because Conner is inexperienced. We’re not talking about a 3 year starter having a bad game so we’re all shocked. We’re talking about a guy with 8 starts prior to this one and three of those starts included <60% completion rate. He has the potential to be the guy we all think he can be. He’s not there yet.
When someone doesn’t meet expectations we have to ask ourselves whether our expectations were too high.
But this too, is not an excuse for how poorly Conner played.
CONNER DURING THE GAME
Bro I dont know what the fuck happened. I dont know if Notre Dame was giving him looks that he wasnt used to, or if he doesnt trust that foot, or it’s just rust after the 11 month lay off but it was a different Conner out there. The one play that all of us have discussed ad nauseum was the INT to Noah. That was a schemed up easy completion (see above comment about game plan). And we’ve seen enough videos from PFF to expect Conner to climb to his left into the pocket set his feet and make the throw.
I do not know what happened there. I believe Conner is better than that. I don’t really have an excuse for how he played. I dont think he does either.
CONNER AFTER THE GAME
I appreciate Conner taking ownership for his fuck up this past weekend. Every loss is a team loss and team losses are made up of individual losses so there’s no blame but there is responsibility for his contribution to what we saw. He said all the right things and I am optimistic that we will see a different Conner this weekend and the weekend after.
There is a fine line between redass and dumbass and yanking your QB1 after one bad performance against an elite defense favors the dumbass side of the line. Sometimes one game is just one game and you evaluate that one game and you fix things from that one game and move on to the next game.
That being said, context matters and the points listed above are what I’m using as context to evaluate the position moving forward. I would assume the coaches are too.
BTHO mcneese.