Falcons Lose in Oklahoma

Well...on the bright side, that was a 43 point improvement over the last time we played Tulsa.

There were other bright spots.  Don't have any numbers in front of me, but the defense seemed to play better in the second half than they did in the first half, which was pretty poorly.

Matt Schilz had moments where he looked pretty good and moments where he made some freshman mistakes, which is to be expected.  Kamar Jordan certainly had a big night.

We also had a couple nice special teams plays, including a big return by Ty Pronty.

On the negative side...well, there was plenty.

The offensive line seemed to be completely overwhelmed for much of the game.  It sounded like Geter was getting hit behind the line a lot, and Schilz faced a lot of pressure.  Teams have to be seeing that he is a different QB under pressure.  And then Ben Bojicic was injured, and he is probably our best lineman and our  C, making him the QB of the offensive line.

We brought Nick Torresso in to play C, and he wasn't even an offensive lineman until this year.  We also had a holding penalty on what would have been a TD.

We were completely torched in the first half by Tulsa's offense.

2 of the 3 Tds for the offense were on short fields (one of them a 1-yard field), so we probably scored above our weight in this one.

We had a chance to claw our way back in as we drove in the 4th down two scores, but we threw and INT and that was pretty much the end of it.

I'll have more on this tomorrow, including a recap of Coach Clawson's post-game presser.

In general, I think the weak parts of this team were exposed by Tulsa, and it is not a terrible surprise.  We just have to get better in those areas as our games progress.  And no time like next week.

Update:

From The Blade...

“In the second half, that’s the best our guys have played,” Clawson said of his defense. “It’s a young group, but every time we see little steps of improvement.