What a night. What a clusterf*ck. A night of ridiculousness--for the rules, for special teams, for our fans. A night we will talk about for a long time.
First, we had a pretty fair crowd of about 15,000. Sadly, the idiotic NCAA rule that requires a stadium evacuation when any lightning strike hits within 6 frickin miles of the stadium is a disaster for fans. Perhaps I missed the epidemic of people getting struck by lightning. But it seems to me that a reasonable approach to the weather would be to look around and see where the storm is, what direction it is going in, etc. An arbitrary six mile rule is just dumb.
The first delay was reasonable. The second delay--when it barely rained, was ridiculous. The picture of the police and event staff going section to section clearing out the people and forcing them to go under the stands while the skies were bright and clear above looked like something out of a movie.
I know what the University will say. "It is an NCAA rule we are enforcing."
Question. Are you a member of the NCAA?
Answer: Yes.
Retort: Then shut up.
Sadly, our OK crowd then turned into a lousy crowd, and cranky, too. What followed was a 3OT victory over a team that went into OT with Temple tied 3-3.
We'll break down the offense and defense in a second. There is only one reason this was a game at all. Bowling Green simply had the worst special teams performance in memory. Single handedly, our special teams kept Buffalo in the game and nearly cost us a game we could not afford to lose.
Urban Meyer once said when he coached here (paraphrasing) that "we can't have the best offense in the country. We can't have the best defense. But we can have the best special teams." And they were good. We blocked punts, we executed, we were strong.
Today, we have the worst special teams in the country. And let's be clear. When the fans booed the special teams yesterday, it wasn't for the players. It was the coaches. Special teams were a problem all last season, and yet, after a full set of Spring and Fall practices, nothing has improved. (Remember, punts cost us two scores against Wisconsin, too).
Let's review, the special teams disasters.
- 94 yard kickoff return off low kick from Rojas--the punter kicking off. Coverage is awful.
- Ellis blocked FG on a really, really low kick.
- Blocked punt gives UB a 2Q TD (BG in the hated spread formation.)
- 55 yard punt return for Buffalo (BG in tight formation gives up big return. Is there a happy medium?)
- Buffalo takes short kickoff 29 yards to our 48 on first play of 3Q
- Ellis blocked Xp. Very low kick.
- BG takes blocking in back penalty on downed kick.
- Rojas shanks kick for 15 yards.
- Rojas (punter now placekicking) misses xp in second overtime that would have won game.
On balance, though, I don't think its close. The special teams were terrible, giving Buffalo two first half touchdowns, and allowing them to lead at halftime.
Here's the point. We can't keep saying that we're a good team whose special teams keep the opponents in the game. If that's true, then we are not a good team. Lose the illusion.
When asked about this coach said we made nearly every mistake you could make (pretty much true) and that he doesn't know (really) what to do to fix it. He says "the answer is out there." It should be, but if anything, a situation has gone from bad to worse since last year.
Other elements of the game were good. BG had 570 yards in offense. Turner was 23-127 and 1 TD, and Freddie was 20-99 for 2 TDs. Macon was 12-97 and 1 TD. So, you almost have three guys with 100 yards. That's good. We had 58 rush attempts...43 of them were Turner and Barnes. I can't believe we can live forever on that, but it did generate yards. We did stall some drives since it was obvious our QB was going to run--especially when we were in the empty set.
Lost in the sauce was a good passing game. AT was 16-23 for 204 yards and 3 TDs, including a clutch pass to Brandon Jones in 2OT. Admittedly, it was on a skinny playbook, probably to lessen mistakes (passing game yielded a pocket fumble and an INT in the second half). We also had a nice long pass to O'Drobinak.
The defense was also effective. Buffalo was held under three yards per rush, and while they were 21-32 in the air, they only made 138 yards on all those attempts. (Talk about a skinny playbook). The defense also made the play of the game in 3OT, with a 4-1 stop from their own 16 to end the game. They still don't tackle well, in my opinion, but they do seem to be running to the ball better and I think they have some talent.
So, what's next? On balance, you have to recognize that all these numbers were generated against a team that might well only win two games all season. Or they might do better. Regardless, two key questions have to be answered.
- Can we improve special teams so that they stop keeping our opponents in the game.
- Can we sustain this offensive and defensive performance well enough in the tough games in the early season (OU and CMU) so that we can enter November with one conference loss?
As of right now, there are no gimmees for this team. We could lose absolutely any week.
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