Defeat to Arch Rival....Nation in Mourning

Well...it was disappointing.  I know, intellectually, that BG played a much more solid game than they have in a few weeks, and that BG was in a position to win the game in the 4th quarter.  And, I certainly feared a game like last week's.  Still...essentially, UT decided in the 2nd half, as teams do against us, to just run the ball down our throat and BG was essentially defenseless.  When you cannot stop the run and you cannot make one yard when you need it, it is very hard to win football games.

And, as a long-term fan, it seems like those two specific weaknesses have existed in our program back to the first Brandon season...so it has gotten a little tiring.

Coach Clawson said we lost this game in the trenches, and that's really a way to say the same thing.  The Falcons absolutely had chances to change the course of the game, but ultimately got a very uneven performance from its passing game and at the same time could not power run at all.  The defense, for its part, held BG in the game during a first 20 minutes in which BG had precisely zero first downs.

I give our coaches credit for a couple of things...we certainly were willing to do what we had to do to win.  We ran a flea flicker and a fake punt to stay alive.

In short, we were not good enough to win this game.  We were good enough to hang in, but not good enough to win.  Certainly, it was better than last year's game, but at the end, the Rockets were posing for pictures in front of our scoreboard.