Sweet Victory #2: The Defense

The first half could in Kent could not have been comfortable for Falcon defense.  Highly touted and coming off a shutdown performance....and facing a team without its best offensive weapon...you had to think that they were going to have their usual success.

That was not the case for the first 30 minutes.  Kent shredded the BG defense with running and passing.  For the first half, Kent averaged 8 yards a play.  It was completely one-sided.  Their QB--Colin Reardon--looked like a senior.  He was running the option for yardage, he was scrambling and finding guys who were left all alone in the confusion.  Their runners were getting big yards and the team was generating big plays.  In Coach's words, "we were on our heels."

The defense made some locker room adjustments.  Coach said they involved keeping a safety outside some kind of arc and then bringing more pressure.  It worked.  For the second half, the BG defense was the defense we expected to see and probably more, holding Kent to 2.0 yards per play.  The defense threw a shut-out in the second half and held Kent to 55 yards.  In other words, total domination.

You could definitely sense the pressure.  Reardon was running for his life a lot more and even though BG did not get to him, his accurate passes in the first half became inaccurate.  (He also got hit and was injured in the 2nd Quarter and I thought his passes became less accurate after that, but those might not be related).  Even better, though, was that when Reardon scrambled BG players picked up the receivers on the fly and left Reardon with no options.

Kent had the ball for about 9 minutes in the 2nd half.  On their first five drives in the second half, their highest yardage gained on a drive was 13.

That's just a great job by our coaching staff and they deserve huge credit.  Mike Elko and the assistants really excelled Saturday.

Individually, Gabe Martin had a huge day, with 9 tackles, a sack, 2 TFL and a hurry.  Ted Ouellete had 6 tackles and 2 hurries from the inside.  DJ Lynch also had a sack.  Whether they show up on stats or not, though, everyone was performing at a high level in the second half.  There's no stat for having a guy covered and forcing the QB to throw the ball away.