Woodshed Part II

So, the sun did come up.

A few more strays thoughts.

I give BG's coaches credit for not sugar-coating what happened.  Yes, OSU is much better than BG, as they should be.  Other MAC teams have hung with them, however, and it didn't have to end up like it did.  I suspect everyone has a lot to look at this morning, from the players to the coaches, head coach on down.  It can still be just a memory, though.  BG had a similar loss to Wisconsin and then ended up at Ford Field.

In other words, it was expected to be bad but it didn't have to be that bad.

I don't think OSU ran the score up.  I'm kind of against that kind of thinking anyway, because you are supposed to stop them.  Meyer said after the game that the score wasn't the objective, but he put his backups in and BG put their backups in and OSU kept scoring.  Nothing requires them to just run out of bounds.

BG's style of offense excaberates the issues in a game like this.  BG had 6 possessions were they held the ball for less than one minute, and until the game's very last drive, BG had never held the ball for longer than 3 minutes.  When you are on and off the field that quickly, you give OSU an incredible amount of time to exploit a clear offensive advantage.

The result of that is OSU ran 94 plays at an average of 8.3 per play.  BG ran 72 at 3.4 yards per play.

Coach said that third downs were big in the first half.  BG was 3 of 16 for the game and OSU was 11 of 13.  Let's not dodge the second number there.  OSU ran 94 plays and only 13 of them were a third down play.  That's all you need to hear.

OSU made 41 first downs on 94 plays.  OK, now that's all you need to hear.

BG scored no offensive touchdowns and had only 16 first downs.  There were inaccurate passes and drops....a couple of them in space where big plays were available.  Remember, the preview here talked about Knapke but he also needed help from the receivers and I think both of them missed plays that were not caused by the opponent being OSU.

Anyway, how many ways are there to describe something like that?  I think we hit enough of them.  Just one last point...teams are supposed to improve the most from game 1 to game 2.  We might not learn that much after game 2, but BG has two very difficult games following that against Middle Tennessee and Memphis, and the performance you saw out there yesterday will result in unfavorable results again.  Middle Tennessee in particular has a high octane attack and BG needs to get the backfield in order before that game, for sure.

Last notes.  First, Will Watson has been suspended for the first 6 games of the year for something that happened in 2014.  This is a very unfortunate development, when piled on top of the Clint Stephens injury.  If there are details on what happened, I haven't seen them.  Watson was dismissed by Babers and then worked his way back onto the team with Jinks.

It didn't appear that the injury situation was too bad.  Terrence Bush was injured and that would be at an area of minimum depth for the Falcons.  The participation report says Schweiterman played, but those are often inaccurate right after the game.

Finally, let the name David Bautista never be uttered in these quarters again.  Ever.