My thoughts on the game

[rbmw263]

First, we absolutely dominated that game in the trenches. Travis had time to throw, and Booker had lanes to run in. Our D-line dominated was somewhat neutralized by Goff’s talent, but it still played a big part in how he played. We butchered their o-line. You do that, you will have a good chance to win a lot of games. Our secondary was GREAT in 1v1 coverage. Something I talked about before the game was how much zone we had been running, and how I expected us to switch it up. From what I could tell, we were mostly in man defense last night, and did VERY well. Very happy with the play on the back end. We did, however, get burned on screens and rubs ALL F#(*#NG NIGHT. I feel like without those 2 plays we hold them below 300 yards.

Like I said, O-line was great, Booker was incredible. Travis and the WRs were not great. I dont think I really need to go into this. They need to be better, and im sure they know that.

I’ve been thinking a lot about why this game was so close, despite being +3 in the TO column. It had me worried last night, thinking that we are not nearly as good as our ranking because of this. As I thought about it today, it wasnt as damning as it looked. What ive come up with, is we simply did not capitalize. We need to take advantage of those opportunities. You can win games largely by winning the TO battle if you just take advantage. We also had some untimely mistakes. We also had some killer turnovers that handed them 10 points, and missed a field goal ourselves. We had some killer penalties on offense in the second half that killed drives when we had a chance to go up 2+ scores. Clean that up, add some more timely execution, and we easily win going away.

Travis and the WRs need to be better if this team is going to be special, but I have no doubt in my mind we can win 10-11 games dominating in the trenches, playing great defense, and riding Booker on offense. This team still has a lot of potential. Time to get better, on to ASU.

[Matthew Thomas Castleton]

Yep. Pretty much my assessment as well.

[Tony (admin)]

Yes it was heart attack close though we were close to blowing open the game. Halftime score SHOULD have been 24-10 but we let them sneak in a score.

Yes we definitely should have capitalized on the TO’s… I thought our not doing that would cost us the win. More success in the vertical passing game would have helped that cause.

[rbmw263]

I agree going into half time only up a score was a huge loss. Needed to hold them on that last drive. Another spot was being up 10 and fumbling in FG territory. That was a huge momentum play. We had a couple chances to push that lead to 17 and basically end it.

[Dhisatake]

I’m going to disagree with you on the O-line play.

They were responsible for causing us to settle for a field goal on the second turnover. Self inflicted penalties backed us up. They were also pretty poor blocking when the defense ran a stunt. Too many times had an O-line guy standing around trying to figure out who he was supposed to block. If the line blocks properly on the trick play to Covey it’s a TD. They didn’t block properly on Travis’ first pick (although he shouldn’t have thrown it either).

Travis didn’t play well but the play calling and the line contributed to that as well.

[Anonymous]

The pitch play fumble out of bounds was rushed to because the olineman whiffed. Wilson had time to pass at times.