Freezeframe

Just for starters, picture this:

Its 2-11, with 1:38 left, you lead by four and your opponent has one time out. You have the ball on their 48.

Freeze that moment in your mind.

Should you ever lose that game?

Sorry, no way.

Tonight, we managed to do just that, in a 1:02 melt down that is among the most disappointing things I have seen at the Doyt.

We'll deal with the 30,000 square foot stuff in another post, because this should never have happened.

For now, let's just deal with the last 98 seconds of this game...because even behind all the poor play for our game, we should still have won this game.

The first thing that went wrong on 2-11 was that Chris Bullock went outside the tackles, and was pushed out of bounds. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. This stopped the clock, and allowed Eastern to save their final timeout. And he wasn't close to a first down--or it could have been understandable.

Then, on 3-6, we tried a pass and failed, stopping the clock again.

Ivonelli then punted the ball 25 yards with a five yard retrun, netting us only 20 yards and giving EMU the ball on their 23 with 1:21 left.

Had run inside the boundary on second and third downs, we would have forced them to call their last time out on 2nd, and then the third down play would have left the clock running, meaning Eastern with the ball with about :40 left instead of 1:21.

Now, I understand that Eastern, in fact, never did use that time out until after they had scored. (Stop and think about that minute). But, with :40 left, they would have been forced to move 77 yards and their play calls would have been impacted by the fact they didn't have a time out to use if things got bad.

Also, a decent punt or decent coverage could have stuck EMU closer to their 10, a significant difference under this kind of time pressure, and where a touchdown was needed.

Nevertheless, had I chosen to freeze tonight's story at 1:21, with EMU on their own 23 needing a TD, I still believe the team that is winning should win that game.

What happened next was an awful display of pass coverage. EMU moved down the field only slightly faster than they would have if they had been running the plays against no defense at all in a practice drill. 6 plays, 77 yards, :45.

No pressure on Schmitt at all. And yes, our vaunted pass rusher was being single teamed during this stretch. But, let's understand we were not blitzing. We were dropping 7 or 8 into coverage. And receivers were still wide open.

The touchdown play was a broken coverage according to Coach in the post game. They caught another pass directly in front of Mahone, who had only to get a hand on the ball to probably win the game.

EMU scores to take the lead. There's you 1:02---that's the time from EMU's last time out before Bullock ran out of bounds and when they had the lead.

Of course, there was still time for BG to get into FG range. We needed a big KO return, and we got it. Sadly, one of our seniors was called for a dead-ball late hit, and instead of starting at our 46 we were at our 31. Still, we move it well enough, and Vrvilo ends up missing (looked like he made it to me) a miracle 52 yarder that would have tied the game.

EMU's improbable comeback was more or less created by a complete melt down by a team that had the game in its hands, and put it on a platter and handed it back to EMU. Its possible that one or two little things would have changed the outcome.