">
Headed in the right direction – now what?
Cuse knows where they are headed (via Frank Ordonez)
All signs point that after two games the Orange Football team is headed in the right direction. Now comes the tricky part. What comes next? Is it too quick to ask for victory? Not if you listen to Dave Rahme. To him it is either an A or an F. And so far the Orange has drawn only failing grades.
Yet, there were plenty of quotes from Penn St players and JoePa himself, saying that things are looking up. So again the question remains, can the Orange turn all this feel good into some Ws? How soon? Can we finally bag a team from the Big 10?
Northwestern comes in this week and if it is to happen there is really one side of the ball that needs to step up its game and its the offense.
Brian Bennett has already taken to the time to point out that at this ridiculously early point in the season, the Orange ranks 111th on offense.
The reasons for the lack of production are really quite simple. Installing a new offense is going to take time. And we have been trying to iron out the kinks against some pretty good defenses. I guarantee that our offense will get better with Maine, Akron, and yes most of the BE coming in the schedule. Mike Williams has to start catching the ball, doesn’t he? The Stallion continues to add wrinkles and Ryan Nassib is even getting the chance to fling the ball around some. The Oline is still having some protection issues, but I was impressed with the lack of penalties against a pretty aggressive front 7 in PSU and on the road.
The Defense held PSU to under 100 yards on the ground and has posted yet another stop on 4th down. I thought Doug Hogue and Derrell Smith had nice games and just missed getting some big sacks. I think they will have success next week against a QB in Mike Kafka that hasn’t thrown a TD pass in either game for Northwestern despite it being against two lesser foes.
If you listen to Coach Marrone, he sounds like he is making sound decisions in his gameplanning. Now all we need is for both sides to start executing. This week starts a nice 6 game home stand. With some improvement and execution, the Orange could win as many as 4 of these games. If the offense stays stagnant it also could be just one win. We know which way the team is headed, will it be enough to get a win? I’d like to think so.
