Besides the Cobb/Leidner fumble and the phantom Tommy Olson penalty they played fine. Probably took off 10 points off the board. Secondary and D-lines lack of pass rush lost us the game with those completions to Erickson. He had 160 receiving yards. That was the difference. Play calling was fine.
Whatever, dude. This offense got us to 8-3 and playing for the division title, and it scored 24 against Wisconsin, a very good defense. You dance with the one that brought you.
As for the defensive front, it'll get better. Richardson, Elmore, and Stelter all played as true freshmen this year, and all will be better next year.
For now I'm going to focus on bowl bids rather than how much better the team would be playing if I called the plays.
Whatever, dude. This offense got us to 8-3 and playing for the division title, and it scored 24 against Wisconsin, a very good defense. You dance with the one that brought you.
As for the defensive front, it'll get better. Richardson, Elmore, and Stelter all played as true freshmen this year, and all will be better next year.
For now I'm going to focus on bowl bids rather than how much better the team would be playing if I called the plays.
The play calling is not the issue.
Plain and simple.
Afraid to try and score at the end of 1st half, only 1 pass to Maxx, running up the middle when you are down 10 with just over 3 minutes.
The offensive play calling is this teams worst enemy!
For everyone who thinks we still don't have big issues on both sides of the ball, quit the kool-aid drinking for a little while...
Sounds good. Hopefully your focus gets us a better bowl bid. It's totally legit to question our play calling or ability to run a more diverse offense when it's needed. If someone stops your first move do you just keep forcing the issue or do you adjust? We had no answers in the second half.
Defense is fine when it's not on the field all day. No one should be expected to stop that running attack.
Coaches had us in position to win when we got the last touchdown. Defense was not fine since they couldn't stop the Badgers then. By the way, they had a chance to catch their wind then. Worse game our defensive backs have played as a group for a long time. Did you happen to notice the difference between their QB passing and ours? Did you happen to notice how many times there was absolutely no separation by our ends? I admire the hell out of Cobb, but do you think Badger fans held their breath every other time Cobb carried the ball like we did when that damn Gordon ran it?
Chicken**** call on Olson cost us 4 points probably. Richardson was held on the TD pass to Gordon. The lateral was there for Campbell (?) to fall on but he didn't. Those 3 plays go our way and we would have stolen one from the friction' Badgers on the road--a team we still don't match in talent level and then the frontrunners here would have been all smug and happy.
The bunch of fans who start bitching after a game like this on GH think they know so damn much but don't have a clue about what they're watching. Still can't get that you start letting Mitch sling it around and open it up, we're not going to even get a whiff of winning in a game like this. But go ahead and keep bitching.
Afraid to try and score at the end of 1st half, only 1 pass to Maxx, running up the middle when you are down 10 with just over 3 minutes.
The offensive play calling is this teams worst enemy!
Disagree completely. To me this game was lost on defense for the first time this year. Our inability to get off the field and shut down the passing game cost us big. Wisconsin was as good as us running but better passing. The turnover by Leidner at the end of the first half was very costly as well, but our defense wasn't good enough today.
Coaches had us in position to win when we got the last touchdown. Defense was not fine since they couldn't stop the Badgers then. By the way, they had a chance to catch their wind then. Worse game our defensive backs have played as a group for a long time. Did you happen to notice the difference between their QB passing and ours? Did you happen to notice how many times there was absolutely no separation by our ends? I admire the hell out of Cobb, but do you think Badger fans held their breath every other time Cobb carried the ball like we did when that damn Gordon ran it?
Chicken**** call on Olson cost us 4 points probably. Richardson was held on the TD pass to Gordon. The lateral was there for Campbell (?) to fall on but he didn't. Those 3 plays go our way and we would have stolen one from the friction' Badgers on the road--a team we still don't match in talent level and then the frontrunners here would have been all smug and happy.
The bunch of fans who start bitching after a game like this on GH think they know so damn much but don't have a clue about what they're watching. Still can't get that you start letting Mitch sling it around and open it up, we're not going to even get a whiff of winning in a game like this. But go ahead and keep bitching.
Spot on Great Plains Gopher. Can afford to throw deep when you are close or winning. It became really apparent what one of our majors issues was when we either had to pass over the middle, or come from behind late. We couldnt do either. Running gut plays all night long is great but eventually you need to keep the LB's and Safetys at home. You dont always have to do it by throwing over the top of them - as bad as ML has played at times, sometimes we could help the situation by throwing some short stuff for him to get his confidence. I believe his first completion was to Maye on something short. Where was that the rest of the night?
Honestly 2 cripplers to me were inability to rush the passer and the fumble by Mitch. We didn't touch stave more than 3 times all night and the book on him is to rush and get him rattled early and he crumbles (same as Iowa, which we did incredibly well). That was the death toll. You can't expect dbs to Cover for 5 seconds and be in good position when the guy can step into every throw. The fumble was a 6 point swing and we would've actually led for the majority of the 2nd half without that happening