NIU Wrap Up

So, the dust has settled on another long night at the Doyt.  It wasn't a long night for me, because other obligations kept me from the game, though I did hear snippets during the evening.

 I listened to Coach's presser a minute ago, so we can start there....

Coach said, in general, that he was really disappointed in how we played.  He said we practiced well this week, but that we just got "overwhelmed" on the line of scrimmage on both sides of the ball, and that makes it very difficult to win.

He said that we got beat by a better, more physical football team.

Offensively, we are not finishing drives.
We didn't get good O-line play.  There wasn't room to run and Schilz was under constant pressure.
And we don't have a playmaker like Harnish who makes people miss and creates big plays.
It was a game when we needed offense in the 30s, and we ended up with 14 points.

On defense, he was plain outraged at NIU's 56 yard touchdown in the first quarter in which our Safety was making his "base read" which means the one he learned on the first day of practice, and he had his eyes in the backfield and let the WR be alone for a "cheap one."  He said there was "no excuse" for it.

They also ran a good wheel route we missed and pulled a double move on Cam Truss.

He said that their line pushed us around, opened up big seams that Harnish was able to exploit.

He talked a lot about Harnish, who "was better than us."  BG couldn't tackle him, and is big and athletic and he takes the seams his line gives him and he makes big plays out of them.

A few other notes:

Kevin Moore was suspended for half the game as an internal disciplinary matter based on an incident on the sidelines at Kent.

BG actually had a moment where things might happen.  BG got the ball with 1:15 left in the first half off an NIU TD, down 24-7.  BG mounted an 8 play 36 yard drive that included a 4th down red zone conversion to make the score 24-14 heading into the locker room.

BG (and 2 holding penalties) held NIU to 2 net yards on their first drive of the second half and BG had the ball and a chance to make the game competitive again.  The offense made two first downs before stalling out on NIU's side of the field.  Coach felt that for a while we played good defense in the 3rd but the offense could not do anything and NIU eventually got a big play and burst the dam.

We'll have more later, but in the meantime, we just see this:  the Falcons against another team that is better than us.  Coach said that NIU's O-line has 5-yr Seniors and they were blocking mostly freshman and r-freshman, which is true.  I can say this...Clawson is putting a lot on that.  When these players get to be experienced, fans are going to be naturally expecting to see some things improve.

At 4-6, BG now must win both remaining games to end up .500, including an OU team with a lot to play for and 4-8 is not outside the realm of possibility, with a 4 game losing streak coming home.