Sweet Victory: The defense

OK, one last post.

Some thoughts on the defense.

These guys had a rough day, most of the time.  Miami was up and down the field quite a bit.  Miami ended up with 7 yards a play and ran 87 plays.  That's 612 yards of total offense.

They only punted 3 times.

They completed 55% of their passes for 15.6 per completion, which is a lot.  They had 238 rushing yards on 44 carries, which was 5.4 yards per carry, which is also pretty good.

Even with all that, they kept battling.  Both Miami turnovers came in the red zone, with a Stephens pic in the end zone and the Harris fumble recovery.  Miami was on 4 of 12 on 3rd down.  And on the final drive, they forced a bunch of Miami incompletions.

You can really see the difference having Clint Stephens out there.  Gardner got his catches....and he's going to because he's a really good player, but Stephens won his share of the battles.  (He had 8 tackles, 1 INT and 4 breakups).

Armani Posey is really turning into a player.  He was in on 16 tackles and broke up one pass. 

BG needs to get better up front.  There were a couple of hurries but there was only one tackle for loss and in general the Miami QBs had plenty of time to throw.

Beyond all that, though, the defense has a ways to go.  Hopefully they can get some support from the offense moving forward.  OU can score and that's going to be a challenge.  Coach has said that confidence has been the issue, so I look forward to seeing BG build on the win and get an improved defensive performance.