Back Home, Great Time in Cleveland
We had a great time in Cleveland, and we're back home again. It was a great night, I was happy with the 30K crowd, and I think the Browns did a great job of making the venue really work. Even the end zone seats were pretty good. I hope that, under the right circumstances, we can do this again. We want to avoid doing it too much, though, because novelty is part of the deal.
As an overview, I felt we played pretty well, and I think that if we can put together a performance like that in the future against MAC teams, we do have a shot at winning the East. Now, for the mind numbing, obsessive details.
First and foremost, as Coach mentioned in the post game show, we absolutely took ourselves out of the game with the lousy punting. There is no reason for this. We had awful punting last year, and brought in what we were told was the #1 HS punter in the nation. He's a freshman, so I understand some growing pains. He's not getting his best shot, though, due to our spread punting formation which fails to work again this year.
We had an early block that gave up a TD, and then we gave up a late first half TD when a really poor punt from our end zone left Wisconsin with a return inside our 20. We lost by 3 TDs, andd there's two of them right there. The rest of the team played with Wisconsin.
Coach has consistently defended the spread punt formation, and says we don't execute it. OK, fine. My opinion is that the formation sucks, adds nothing over the old school formation. I have seen other teams flirt with disaster, too. I think we should just revert to the old formation. Even so, just to acknowledge that Coach is a football coach and I am not, let's grant that the formation can work and we do it wrong.
If it isn't the formation, it is the coaching. We were awful last year, and didn't really fix it. But we had spring and fall practice to get this fixed. And we did not. That's coaching.
Don't get me wrong. I really felt our coaches did a great job with the team Saturday, and set up an excellent game plan with limited resources. It might have been one of our more innovative offensive performances. The punting just has to be fixed.
Our offensive game plan was pretty one-dimensional. We put Freddie in the shotgun, snapped the ball to him, he did some faking, and then ran. He ran 29 times for a school QB record 158 yards and two TDs. It was an absolutely heroic performance. He had next to no help (Macon was only 13 for 42), and Barnes took some serious punishment. But he kept our team in the ball game. Earlier in the week, Coach compared him to Joshua Cribbs, and that is exactly how he looked.
He was 12-19 throwing, but only for 82 yards as he worked with a very slim playbook.
Now, of course, the questions emerge. Coach Brandon did not equivocate in the post game.
- Turner is the starter. He won it in the Spring and kept the job in the fall.
- They will find a way to get Barnes on the field. "He won't be standing next to me," Coach said.
Note: Maureen Fulton in the Blade this AM writes that Brandon has one of college football's most innovative offensive minds, and they're going to work this week to figure it out.
If we can get a little downfield passing to combine with the running attack we showed, I think we can score enough to win, and--just as importantly--keep our D off the field. We won time of possession Saturday.
Speaking of the D...really, I think it was a promising performance. Yeah, we still don't tackle well, but being as young as we are, you take away those two punts and they did pretty well against a Big 10 team that steamrolled us last year. I'm not going to make direct comparisons to last year (like others have), because I didn't see Brian Calhoun back there. Even with that, essentially, they gave up 21 points.
They also did that without Antonio Smith, who was injured early, and without Terrell White, our best LB, who was suspended. They had a great goal line stand, picked up an INT in the end zone. Wisconsin only ran 57 plays.
They're young, but talented, we hear. I think that D has the chance to gel in time to beat Akron and Miami. I was encouraged.
One more big play. The fake punt in the 3Q, which preceeded our second TD, was a huge play and a gutsy call that kept us in the football game.
The other key play was on 4-5 on their 20. We score, and its 28-21 and a brand new ball game. Instead, we don't convert (Freddie threw incomplete to Brantley on the left sideline. It was almost there), and they ram it down our throat for their last TD.
So, a defeat is disappointing, but does not deter us from our ultimate goal of winning the MAC. I was encouraged on both sides of the ball, and pleasantly surprised on D. If we can button the punting down and integrate Freddie into the game, we could be a tough out when the weather gets cold.
Posts
No comments :
Post a Comment