Coaches certainly deserve some blame but I've been disappointed in a lot of the players. I think everyone knew coming into the season that the offense would only be as good as the OL and Trace would allow it to be, and I've been disappointed in both. Even before the knee injury Trace hasn't seemed to be nearly as good throwing the ball this year as he has been in the past. No doubt the WRs have dropped a lot of balls and probably had trouble getting open, but there have been a number of throws where Trace has missed guys that were open, or thrown the ball too high or behind the receiver. Not sure what's caused his problems this year, but I really thought he'd be better. His running has been very good up until the knee injury, but now he isn't a running threat on the options so those plays aren't going to work very well. I don't think they ran more than a few options last night and he and Sanders messed up the exchange on one of them. Even when he was healthy it seemed like he wasn't reading the options very well, there were a number of times when it looked like it would have been better if he had kept the ball instead of giving it to Sanders or vice versa. Considering Trace as mentioned as a possible Heisman candidate coming into the season I've been surprised at how out of sync he and the offense have appeared this season. Hate to see his career ending this way.
As far as the D goes, I think it doesn't have nearly the talent it has had in the past. The fact that so many of the guys seem to be incapable of tackling has shocked me. Maybe it is just inexperience, but they really seem to be struggling with basic fundamentals on D. A former player that observed some preseason practices this year said he was surprised at the lack of contact drills during practice and thinks that is causing a lot of the problems we're seeing on D. He understood the lack of contact drills when the team was low on scholarship players due to the NCAA sanctions, but doesn't understand why they are still avoiding contact drills now when they have more scholarship players.