Inside the Huddle, Week 4: An Inside Look at Aztec Football

[Pumph]

On the field, we faced what we felt was a pretty weak Hawai'i team. So to experiment slightly, I did not change a single thing in my depth chart or roster. How is that experimenting? Well, it gives me a better idea of how that plan works against a different opponent. How much was game planning? How much was randomization? How much was talent? Well, we beat up on the Rainbow Warriors a good bit, winning 34-7. The interesting thing is that even though we played a weaker opponent, the running game was far less effective in this one. The passing game, however, was deadly. Just 15 completions, but 332 yards and 5 TDs. Yet, my #1 WR only had 3 catches for 22 yards. That means that the other 12 completions went for 310. Think about that for a minute.

So we have clearly been a big-play team. I feel like there is a lot of that going on around the nation though.

 

Off the field, we continued to put points on a number of recruits. But this week, we did splurge a bit, trying to make sure we got leads on a couple of them, heading into the period where we might start to see a few of them sign. There were two recruits, in particular, where we spent more points than we had previously, and when the results came, we had wound up as the only team listed. Do we expect the other teams to give up? Probably not. But we went from having 7 recruits with another team listed on the board, to just 5. One of those is a player that I will doubt that I will contest unless I find myself with spare points after players start signing. But everyone else on my board is a player that I will attempt to win. I will go about them in different ways to keep teams guessing and not make myself an easy target for poachers. I did resist the temptation this week to add anyone new to my board. Again, I tend to be more conservative when picking targets, and I figure with the way affinities work, if there is anyone I am interested in, it is best to add them when the next affinity window opens rather than just tossing points on them now.

 

This week, we'll face UNLV, a team that seems to have been very aggressive in picking recruiting targets. I imagine they'll be just as aggressive on the field, so you will not see the same gameplan from me this week. I'll mix things up a bit on both sides of the ball and see what comes of it.