Time for a change … no, not what you think. The discussion today has been good and it seems like a fine time to shift our focus from what’s being written and said about the team to what needs to happen with this team. Everyone worries about the problems but they’re in the past I worry about solutions. There are some issues, so let’s examine them and maybe teach each other a thing or two. At the very worst, it helps to get off your mind and out in the open. Feel free to chime in on the interaction.

I begin today with the most surprising: The offensive line has been surprisingly inconsistent.

Really, how many of the problems go back to this? Can’t win because it can’t score points. Can’t score points because it can’t sustain drives. Can’t sustain drives because it can’t convert short yardages. Can’t convert short yardages because it can’t rip off big gains. Can’t rip off the big gains because it can’t run the ball effectively.

It’s uncanny.

We can table the talk for now about this being the best line in the country. The tackles are fine and though the center has a glitch from time to time, he does his job pretty well. It’s the guards, though, that are having a hard time, so much so that they’re splitting time now — and since it’s a true freshman and a redshirt freshman jumping into the mix, it might only be a matter of time for them.

Defenses have had success with bitzes and line twists and stunts that attack the interior. Some runs are predictable because the guards — any of them — line up off the line of scrimmage and give away he fact they’re pulling. Stewart pinned a handful of failures against Colorado on the line’s mistakes, basically because the backs couldn’t get to the line of scrimmage. Oh, and the penalties. It’d been so long since I’d seen chop blocks called that I almost forgot it was a penalty. I know now.

Again, it’s uncanny, but it’s curable. It takes fixing small errors on a small margin for error. There need to be consequences now. Make a mistake and you come out. Make more mistakes and you lose your spot. It just takes getting the five guys together and playing them the most. That it hasn’t happened yet is unfortunate, but it must be getting close.

“If you run for 300 yards on the road,” Stewart said, “you must be doing something right.”