Re: Johns Hopkins 2021
Posted: Sun Apr 04, 2021 6:55 pm
Playing with fire is right. I won't pretend to know the circumstances here; what's really happening behind the scenes. It seems crazy that PM would risk burning so much good will and alienating his best player (with connections to the university) unless there was good reason.nyjay wrote: ↑Sun Apr 04, 2021 7:50 pm PM's public statements have all been very good since the hiring. He hasn't really done anything that I've found questionable. These quotes, though, and I hope it looks different behind the scenes, really are playing with fire. The College Crosse guys are tweeting about it and even got a response from Joel Tinney to the effect the Epstein's 6 goals won them the first Michigan game and maybe PM should stick with him. I really hope this was well thought out, but hard not to get some Chip Kelly vibes, which is disconcerting and really out of character with everything else the guy has said since he got the job.
Honestly he looked similar today to the guy he was then. All their best offense came from him beating his man off the wing and drawing slides and then finding a skip pass or especially DeSimone cutting from behind. Earlier in the year he looked less explosive and that may have been because of his first games back from the injury and no fall to get used to working on that knee again.FlyEaglesFly wrote: ↑Sun Apr 04, 2021 8:43 pm I do not agree with benching Epstein and I definitely don’t agree with the public quotes criticizing him. But I’d like to separate both of those from this observation, and question - what honestly happened to Epstein? He’s not even close to the same player that lit up the Big Ten as a freshman. Explosiveness is gone it looks like to me. It is kind of sad - and I totally disagree with the way it’s being handled. I get he is a captain, great leader, etc.. But does anyone else notice this as well? Unbiased responses please. Maybe he just hasn’t recovered from the injury, which is really a bummer.
I hear you with all that. But just from the eye test - doesn’t seem like the same guy that jumped off the screen in 2019. Really nothing to do with point totals.jrn19 wrote: ↑Sun Apr 04, 2021 8:50 pmHonestly he looked similar today to the guy he was then. All their best offense came from him beating his man off the wing and drawing slides and then finding a skip pass or especially DeSimone cutting from behind. Earlier in the year he looked less explosive and that may have been because of his first games back from the injury and no fall to get used to working on that knee again.FlyEaglesFly wrote: ↑Sun Apr 04, 2021 8:43 pm I do not agree with benching Epstein and I definitely don’t agree with the public quotes criticizing him. But I’d like to separate both of those from this observation, and question - what honestly happened to Epstein? He’s not even close to the same player that lit up the Big Ten as a freshman. Explosiveness is gone it looks like to me. It is kind of sad - and I totally disagree with the way it’s being handled. I get he is a captain, great leader, etc.. But does anyone else notice this as well? Unbiased responses please. Maybe he just hasn’t recovered from the injury, which is really a bummer.
Playing on the wing is going to naturally deflate his point totals a bit compared to playing at X because X attackmen just have the ball so much more these days. But it did feel like he was being used way more as strictly a wing shooter earlier compared to today when he got out there he was making things happen. Maybe that’s because he’s getting better on the knee or maybe it was a coaching staff decision to utilize him that way earlier.
I agree, early on he didn’t. But he also was used in a very different role. I don’t know if the decision to really just use him as a wing off ball shooter was because they felt that was better or partly because of his injuries. Today he did more dodging and on ball work and looked very good - when he was out there of courseFlyEaglesFly wrote: ↑Sun Apr 04, 2021 8:55 pmI hear you with all that. But just from the eye test - doesn’t seem like the same guy that jumped off the screen in 2019. Really nothing to do with point totals.jrn19 wrote: ↑Sun Apr 04, 2021 8:50 pmHonestly he looked similar today to the guy he was then. All their best offense came from him beating his man off the wing and drawing slides and then finding a skip pass or especially DeSimone cutting from behind. Earlier in the year he looked less explosive and that may have been because of his first games back from the injury and no fall to get used to working on that knee again.FlyEaglesFly wrote: ↑Sun Apr 04, 2021 8:43 pm I do not agree with benching Epstein and I definitely don’t agree with the public quotes criticizing him. But I’d like to separate both of those from this observation, and question - what honestly happened to Epstein? He’s not even close to the same player that lit up the Big Ten as a freshman. Explosiveness is gone it looks like to me. It is kind of sad - and I totally disagree with the way it’s being handled. I get he is a captain, great leader, etc.. But does anyone else notice this as well? Unbiased responses please. Maybe he just hasn’t recovered from the injury, which is really a bummer.
Playing on the wing is going to naturally deflate his point totals a bit compared to playing at X because X attackmen just have the ball so much more these days. But it did feel like he was being used way more as strictly a wing shooter earlier compared to today when he got out there he was making things happen. Maybe that’s because he’s getting better on the knee or maybe it was a coaching staff decision to utilize him that way earlier.
Moving to the wing, reducing the amount the ball is in stick, Desimone being the primary initiator, changing players all over the field. He physically looks fine to me. He's just not in a spot on the field and with players to his right and left that allow him to do what he did in 2019. When you have to think too much, you slow down.FlyEaglesFly wrote: ↑Sun Apr 04, 2021 8:43 pm I do not agree with benching Epstein and I definitely don’t agree with the public quotes criticizing him. But I’d like to separate both of those from this observation, and question - what honestly happened to Epstein? He’s not even close to the same player that lit up the Big Ten as a freshman. Explosiveness is gone it looks like to me. It is kind of sad - and I totally disagree with the way it’s being handled. I get he is a captain, great leader, etc.. But does anyone else notice this as well? Unbiased responses please. Maybe he just hasn’t recovered from the injury, which is really a bummer.
The whole thing just seems entirely inconsistent with everything else the staff has done since they’ve been hired. And it’s not going away quickly - you got Ed Lee dm’ing with Tinney to talk about it more.HopFan16 wrote: ↑Sun Apr 04, 2021 8:37 pm We now have a number of alums openly criticizing the staff on social media about this...the whole thing is a debacle of the staff's own making. Ill-considered, shallow, misguided. Like a FanLax post come to life. I'm really disappointed, because I was buying what Milliman and co. had been selling. I thought they had the right idea about a lot of things. And they still might. But right now it's hard not to just be demoralized. I fear that it's going to be an ongoing distraction that will hurt the team both on and off the field. God, what a mess.