"Rivalry" Loss: Last Word, Special Teams...DAVIDSON

So, mostly, there are two words to say about special teams:

Joe.
Davidson.

This dude is an absolute beast.  He's probably the best player on our team.  He has a complete game.  He bombed an 82 yarder, which I believe is the longest kick in FBS football this year.  He took two more and nailed them inside the 20 from short range--maybe a rarer skill.

And, he kept the Falcons alive with a 24-yard run on a fake punt when he successfully evaded a defender in the open field to get the first down.  BG was down 2 scores at the time and a punt is just deadly.  Instead, BG keeps the ball, scores and ends up later tying the game.  He's a good athlete and a great punter...a real weapon, especially with our growing pains defense.

Other special teams note is on the pooch kicks, which have a lot of people upset this morning.  First, while the announcers were bellowing about the "pooch" kick that came after the penalty on the Zimmerman TD (he won't do that again, don't worry)...the kick was kicked from the 20 and fielded on the 20....that wasn't a pooch kick.

Obviously, sometimes it was a pooch kick.  Those seem to have come in the 4th q.  BG's first 3 kickoffs BG had were a successfully defended one and 2 touchbacks.  The rest of them came in the 4th Q....I don't know if they didn't think he could get the ball out of the end zone with the wind or what, but of the 3 kickoffs, UT started on the 44, 40 and 34, which is obviously not optimal for a team struggling on defense and trying to make up a deficit.

I don't mind pooch kicks.  A good pooch kick comes down at about the 25 and the guys is tackled right away.  Nothing wrong with that.  Our kicks were shorter and the guy was decided not tackled right away in two cases.  In the end, though, with the way the UT offense moved the ball in the last drive, whether they started on the 25 or 34 was not really the issue.

Will Watson seemed to stabilize the return game, which would be a big help.  We did not try a FG.