I’ll state another way – with this crew, as a fan, I wouldn’t worry too much about this poor tackling unless it becomes a trend. If it’s prevalent in the next game, it’s a trend.
To break down, probably too much so:
Young, inexperienced players think more and react less. it’s difficult to get into that ‘zone’, some call it ‘flow’. You’re looking, reading, processing vs reflex and reacting. Throw in youth’s propensity to worry about making a mistake, and there’s too much active, concerted, conscious thinking to fully utilize and maximize athletic ability and performance.
In split seconds, you gotta read, process, and then get to the right spot, then flip a switch and go from cerebral mode to BOOM mode and make the tackle.
Another educated guess tells me the tackling was there in the first game because that offense was covered during fall camp. In game two, the players had one week to prepare for a completely different type of offense. Those missing tackles were mostly first year guys, either freshman, or first year playing. They did not have previous years’ game prep to reference and fall back on.
Thus, with game 2 came more thinking, less ‘just play’ing.
It’ll come. Learning curves should be steep, but I don’t think they’re at the base yet. Give it a few more games.
Hopefully, for now, the offense has enough to carry the team. I don’t know much about South Florida, but I’m guessing they’ll be slight favorites. We’ll know a little more about the Wolfpack after game 3, but just a little.
I’ll be estatic if come the FSU game, we can keep it to ‘just’ a 3 TD difference.
