Falcons Lose to Marshall

Well, after two games when we left more or less satisfied with the effort, it was bound to happen that we would leave a game feeling disappointed, and that happened to night from Hungtington.

Marshall beat Bowling Green 17-10, against a team you would like to think we could beat.

I just listened to Coach Clawson's post-game, and his analysis was that we were "out-physicaled" on the line of scrimmage both ways. It is hard to argue with that conclusion, and, I might add, it is nice to have a coach who talks that way.

In the end, for the second straight game, a team just plain ran over us. We are going to have to figure out how to stop the run, or it is going to be a long season.

On offense, we had only 20 runnings attempts. If you remove Sheehan's 9 carries, we only gave the ball to the RBs 11 times in a game where we lead well into the second half. Coach said in the post-game that we couldn't establish the run, but I would have to wonder why we only tried 11 times. We did get 42 yards on those carries which isn't awful.

Anyway, we threw 62 passes in the end, which are Brandon-at-Minnesota like numbers. In fact, most of those were slips and screens and shovels, which Coach said he did because he didn't have confidence we could protect the QB given the lack of a running game.

And we did give up six sacks.

Freddie Barnes broke his own school record with 17 catches, which is slowly evolving into a playstation like season.

Again, I'll have more tomorrow, but for tonight, you this is a tough loss and I think you could hear some frustration in Coach Clawson's voice. Even when we were ahead, he felt we had been more lucky than good on defense, and failed to convert too many times on offense.

Even with all that, we were at the 20 at the end with a chance to send the game into overtime. We moved the ball downfield against prevent, but then they were able to step up the pressure. Perhaps the most disappointing part was when we hit Bullock on a hot route and he did catch the ball. Apparently he had a shot at scoring if he holds on.

With Boise coming in next Saturday, we are staring a 1-3 start right in the face. Of course, these were not conference games. We have to figure some things out, however, most notably, how we are going to play good football on the line of scrimmage. This was a setback for a team that has been exceeding expectations to date. There is a lot of time left to play.