Repeat Edition

The Falcons did something that they haven't done since last year's end of the season run, and that's put together a two-game winning streak. And, they did it in handy fashion, dominating a team for the first time since the Wyoming game.

It was good to see. The fault-finders will be telling us that OU isn't a very good team, and they aren't. But, had we dominated two other bad teams (EMU and Miami), we'd be sitting pretty. Dominating a bad team is an improvement.

The primary driver of this victory was the defense. They pretty much shut down the OU attack, and it was actually better than the defensive numbers show, because OU did get some yards during garbage time in the 4th Quarter.

The Bobcats had only 3.9 yards per play, and even if you take the sacks out of their rushing stats, you don't have them with 4 yards a carry. They completed only about 40% of their passes. BG went and got 2 interceptions and four sacks. We had two red zone stops, and, you know, OU didn't get a touchdown.

The offense was a little less shiny. AT, Geter and Bullock collectively had only 8 carries, so the rushing game consisted of Jason Rice (our leader with 32 net yards), Andrew Beam and Tyler Sheehan.

Still, I give our guys credit. They stayed with the running game, with 31 carries against 32 passing attempts. Both Rice and Beam represent a resourcefulness that marked last year's season-ending rush to the finish. And we did score 28 points.

The passing game was very efficient. Tyler was 22-29 and Beam was 1-1 (a TD pass to Sheehan), and we had over 200 yards. Not the playstation numbers of days gone by, but a solid effort that kept the chains moving and won the game. Corey had a number of clutch catches, and we used nine different receivers.

We also took advantage of the OU turnovers, and that's obviously a key thing.

I think the two storylines from the game are:

1. The defense. Are they putting it back together?
2. The offense? A gritty effort that gets the job done.

Things certainly look better than they did two weeks ago. We still need some help, but we can start to see how we might be able to close out with a division title.

We have a huge advantage with the break before the Buffalo game. Hopefully, we can get everyone healthy, and with the confidence we have earned in the past couple weeks, beat a pretty good Buffalo team at the Doyt.

Update: Just listened to Coach in the post-game. He was pretty jacked up....he calms down in the press room, but when you catch him still on the turf, and he's still jazzed. Anyway, he made a good point I missed. One big key to winning the game was a 16 play, 6:00+, 80 yard TD drive coming off OU's FG. It not only ate up a significant portion of the clock, but it snuffed out any momentum they might have gotten from the FG.

The drive featured two nice passes to Corey, but 12 runs, including six straight by the QB.