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Well, that was a gut punch. The only thing I can say good about yesterday is that without the team having gotten better — without bowl eligibility having been unexpectedly put within our grasp — no one would have cared. You can’t get the highs that a successful game or season give you without being willing to live through the lows. But man, was that a low.
An offense devastated by injuries at the skill positions executed perfectly for a half. Yes, poor tackling helped turn smaller gains into larger ones, but the offense threw the ball, ran the ball, didn’t turn it over, avoided too many penalties, and was perfect. Not explosive but perfect. And then came out of the locker room after half time and stunk to high heaven. No execution. No imagination. Too many mistakes to ever get anything going. Just an absolute, devastatingly poor 30 minutes against a defense that shouldn’t have been able to shut them down like that, even without so many of our weapons. This wasn’t on our defense. Yes, it fell apart late, but it just wore down because the offense, like the second quarter in Utah and against our three BCS opponents, couldn’t keep them off the field. So yes, the D fell apart but only after giving the O more than enough chances to put this one away, or even start possession the ball long enough for the D to get a break and continue its play. Was it all about play calling? I doubt it. I think we got too conservative but the play calling looked worse than it did because of a total inability of anyone on that side of the ball to execute anything or even avoid stupid mental errors. Very disappointing.
Did I think the refs were one sided. Yes. Does that mean I think they must have been cheating? Please. Most of the calls they got wrong were very close. The only call that was clearly wrong was removing the unnecessary roughness call on the helmet to helmet hit on Aaron Turner. There, I think like the Larry Taylor non-fair catch call, the refs just got confused and choked. I think the replays made a good case that an ejection was not required — I think Aaron Taylor’s head as he was going down moved into the plane of the defender’s helmet, and I can see overturning the ejection. And I think the refs got confused and forgot that you could overturn the targeting ejection and it still was a penalty, which it clearly was. I’m not even sure you are allowed to overturn the penalty, as opposed to the ejection. But most of the other calls we’re all whining about were damn close. Unfortunately, we were so close to being able to put the game away for so long that any one of them going the other way might have put the game out of reach. But make no mistake — we lost because our offense shot itself in the foot too many times. Take away the Rosa fumble on a play where there was no reason to be going all out for 2 extra yards, and the receiver who tries to make a move after having been shoved back 10 yards, taking us out of FG range, and we probably win anyway. Yes, it was a gut punch but we deserved it ultimately.
I’m glad we all have the week off. Players, coaches and fans all need it. But I’m going to hope that when we suit up again in two weeks both Houston and Marion are in uniform. We’re 3 and 5, and the odds of winning 3 of 4 are pretty low, but they’re not zero, and none of the games are games we can’t win if we get healthier and play well for 60 minutes, and not just 30. So we all need to recover emotionally, have players heal and hope that we continue to improve as a team, which through 30 minutes yesterday was clearly the case.
But none of that means yesterday wasn’t devastating. It was, because we had to do everything in our power to fail from winning.
An offense devastated by injuries at the skill positions executed perfectly for a half. Yes, poor tackling helped turn smaller gains into larger ones, but the offense threw the ball, ran the ball, didn’t turn it over, avoided too many penalties, and was perfect. Not explosive but perfect. And then came out of the locker room after half time and stunk to high heaven. No execution. No imagination. Too many mistakes to ever get anything going. Just an absolute, devastatingly poor 30 minutes against a defense that shouldn’t have been able to shut them down like that, even without so many of our weapons. This wasn’t on our defense. Yes, it fell apart late, but it just wore down because the offense, like the second quarter in Utah and against our three BCS opponents, couldn’t keep them off the field. So yes, the D fell apart but only after giving the O more than enough chances to put this one away, or even start possession the ball long enough for the D to get a break and continue its play. Was it all about play calling? I doubt it. I think we got too conservative but the play calling looked worse than it did because of a total inability of anyone on that side of the ball to execute anything or even avoid stupid mental errors. Very disappointing.
Did I think the refs were one sided. Yes. Does that mean I think they must have been cheating? Please. Most of the calls they got wrong were very close. The only call that was clearly wrong was removing the unnecessary roughness call on the helmet to helmet hit on Aaron Turner. There, I think like the Larry Taylor non-fair catch call, the refs just got confused and choked. I think the replays made a good case that an ejection was not required — I think Aaron Taylor’s head as he was going down moved into the plane of the defender’s helmet, and I can see overturning the ejection. And I think the refs got confused and forgot that you could overturn the targeting ejection and it still was a penalty, which it clearly was. I’m not even sure you are allowed to overturn the penalty, as opposed to the ejection. But most of the other calls we’re all whining about were damn close. Unfortunately, we were so close to being able to put the game away for so long that any one of them going the other way might have put the game out of reach. But make no mistake — we lost because our offense shot itself in the foot too many times. Take away the Rosa fumble on a play where there was no reason to be going all out for 2 extra yards, and the receiver who tries to make a move after having been shoved back 10 yards, taking us out of FG range, and we probably win anyway. Yes, it was a gut punch but we deserved it ultimately.
I’m glad we all have the week off. Players, coaches and fans all need it. But I’m going to hope that when we suit up again in two weeks both Houston and Marion are in uniform. We’re 3 and 5, and the odds of winning 3 of 4 are pretty low, but they’re not zero, and none of the games are games we can’t win if we get healthier and play well for 60 minutes, and not just 30. So we all need to recover emotionally, have players heal and hope that we continue to improve as a team, which through 30 minutes yesterday was clearly the case.
But none of that means yesterday wasn’t devastating. It was, because we had to do everything in our power to fail from winning.
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