I was pretty unhappy last night, so I just went to bed after the game and figured I'd sort through the inevitable meltdown on the board in the morning.
At least we are not as over the top as the UW board. But it's pretty bad when that is the high point of the morning.
Any time you lose there will be second-guessing of the coach. Shoot, that happens even when we win. I don't know what he was thinking a couple of times, so it is hard for me to just out and out say it was a mistake in any sense other than hindsight. Clearly a number of his decisions did not work out, and many of those seemed to defy common sense. But hey, what do I know?
For me the whole game came down to two things:
- We couldn't get a stop when we needed one on their last 2 drives.
- We couldn't get a first down...even one lousy first down...on our last possession. Or was it our last 2 possessions? I don't recall.
This would not be the first time that we lost an early game to a lower level team that then proved that they were a very, very good team. I hope this proves to be the case this year. USU did their job and earned their win. I'd love to see them run the table. I suspect their offense is as good as it looked in the 4th quarter when their QB got hot and made some really nice throws...some of which were running throws. Many of those completions, particularly the sideline completions, simply could not have been defended by anyone. I don't know if they can do that consistently, but if they can, they will have the top offense in their league. I also have to note that their WR's dropped some passes earlier in the game, but their hands were glue in the 4th quarter.
Their D were not world beaters. They were solid for the conference in which they play, had no really weak spots, and will probably end up in the top 1/3 of their conference for defense...maybe even the top 1/4. There is no way, however, that they should have held us to 23 points...particularly with as many chances as we had to get more than that. Been a while since I've seen that many inaccurate passes, but that was far from the only issue.
There is plenty of blame to go around. Red zone failures. Dropped passes. Missed blocks. Missed tackles. Questionable play calling. Failure to hold the pocket together against a 4 man rush. It looked a lot like the first game of the season...go figure, huh?
Our defense needs to understand why they could not get a stop in the other team's last 2 drives. And our offense needs to decide whether we are, or can be, a running team.
Some soul searching needs to take place on the practice field this week.
At least we are not as over the top as the UW board. But it's pretty bad when that is the high point of the morning.
Any time you lose there will be second-guessing of the coach. Shoot, that happens even when we win. I don't know what he was thinking a couple of times, so it is hard for me to just out and out say it was a mistake in any sense other than hindsight. Clearly a number of his decisions did not work out, and many of those seemed to defy common sense. But hey, what do I know?
For me the whole game came down to two things:
- We couldn't get a stop when we needed one on their last 2 drives.
- We couldn't get a first down...even one lousy first down...on our last possession. Or was it our last 2 possessions? I don't recall.
This would not be the first time that we lost an early game to a lower level team that then proved that they were a very, very good team. I hope this proves to be the case this year. USU did their job and earned their win. I'd love to see them run the table. I suspect their offense is as good as it looked in the 4th quarter when their QB got hot and made some really nice throws...some of which were running throws. Many of those completions, particularly the sideline completions, simply could not have been defended by anyone. I don't know if they can do that consistently, but if they can, they will have the top offense in their league. I also have to note that their WR's dropped some passes earlier in the game, but their hands were glue in the 4th quarter.
Their D were not world beaters. They were solid for the conference in which they play, had no really weak spots, and will probably end up in the top 1/3 of their conference for defense...maybe even the top 1/4. There is no way, however, that they should have held us to 23 points...particularly with as many chances as we had to get more than that. Been a while since I've seen that many inaccurate passes, but that was far from the only issue.
There is plenty of blame to go around. Red zone failures. Dropped passes. Missed blocks. Missed tackles. Questionable play calling. Failure to hold the pocket together against a 4 man rush. It looked a lot like the first game of the season...go figure, huh?
Our defense needs to understand why they could not get a stop in the other team's last 2 drives. And our offense needs to decide whether we are, or can be, a running team.
Some soul searching needs to take place on the practice field this week.