Why isn’t Harding taking heat like Lud was?

[Larry B]

I’m not saying that Ludwig didn’t deserve some of the blame, he definitely did. But when is the last time we had an offensive line that wasn’t pure dog 💩? Do you know what made Huntley and Rising so good? They could escape the pocket and make plays with their feet. Put a pure pocket passer back there and see how he does.

Harding gets so much praise for being a great coach but his product on the field is garbage.

[NashvilleUteFan]

With respect to this year, I actually disagree for the most part. The game on Saturday was a bad performance by the entire offense, o line very much included in that. They played bad. But the ASU game they actually played really well. Opened things up for Bernard and gave a gimpy Cam a ton of time on his drop backs. The protection was good and several of our o linemen have graded out super high by PFF. And looking at the first 5 games of the year, I can’t recall a game where I thought man the o line really stunk up the joint. But perhaps I have a bad memory.

[Ute Dub]

Yes and no. In the ASU game both guards graded in the teens in pass blocking, the rest of the line played well in pass block and run block. But the pressure up the middle was devastating.

[pedro]

I disagree. They gave Wilson time on most plays. But more importantly, TCU blitz a ton. Almost 80% of the time. They had also, obviously scouted out our run scheme and had guys filling the gaps – which is easy to do when you know the play call based on the formation which Lud never waivers from. We could have run double TE’s all game and that might have helped, but that isn’t his call, that is Luds.

[Jim Vanderhoof]

I thought the line played good against ASU. Bad against AU and TCU. Both had an extra week to prepare for our potent or should I say putrid offense. Name one play in the last three games where the other team got burned for blitzing. If’s hard to block when the other team knows your plays. Same shifts and motion. Defense just stands there when we line up. They don’t have to think or adjust. Our defense is running around confused because of different formations and motion.

[Ghost of the HEB]

I think, internally, the heat is on everyone on the offensive staff at this point. But if you’re trying to salvage anything out of this season you’re probably not gonna improve by making mid-season position coach changes. And I also don’t think the OL performance has been a fireable issue.

[jshame17]

I haven’t been a fan of Harding for a while now, but the biggest issues this year is clearly the amount of pressure they are receiving from blitzes.

However, the TEs have been AWFUL blocking this year across the board. Bentley, Kuithe, all of them…

[Xanthis]

I know of at least 1 sack where the TE (I think Kuithe) was given the DE to block and just missed completely. The TEs have been a disappointment and I’m not sure Kuithe should be out there. He doesn’t have the same speed since his injury.

[Central Coast Ute]

A lot lf the problems we see on the O line are on the QB. Firing Harding will do nothing to fix that.

[22Ute22]

He definitely deserve to be on the hot seat. I remember when I was telling you guys that I was worried about the O-line because Mokofisi and Kump are no good, but I was told I was wrong. People on utezone even said that Mokofisi could be a 3rd or 4th round draft pick 😂😂😂

[jshame17]

Oh, Utezone, where every player heading to the draft was going in the first 5 rounds each season with a handful going day 1 or 2.

[Charlie]

I honestly have not looked closely enough to assess the OL. I do know that an OL can break down for many reasons beyond the control of the OL and OL coach. Forcing a defensive front to defend multiple possibilities is an OL key and is deeply seeded in play calling. When a defensive front gets on a roll, again, play calling is important to break up the roll the defense is on and actually punish the exact thing being done. The OL will look much worse than should be by poor play calling. Myself, I did not see plays to counter the run blitz that was almost constant. My guess is the coaching staff, even Lud included, are way ahead of us in the peanut gallery and have accesses play calling to be the root issue. Oddly, I think this assessment began before this last game and attempts to correct have failed for some reason. Mistakes have been made for sure, I just believe the coaches are farther down the road of understanding than we know. As I listened to Whitt after the game and he said everything is under evaluation, I sensed that he was not at the beginning of analysis, I sensed that something that has been bothering him had reached a critical point.

[CityCreekUte]

It would be nice to know more about how the protections are called and shifted. I think the players are solid and since we generally have had good run game you can’t really say the OLine is all bad.

But against defenses shifting and blitzing that seems to be a s**t show in terms of assignment although I agree with those who are putting a big chunk of it on the TE position as well. Seems like the TE just want to be pass catchers to me.

[EagleMountainUte]

Well Whitt said Ludwig approached him. So until Harding comes forward I doubt the 6.5 million coach will have a conversation with the ones responsible for the offensive play calling.

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