Falcons Lose to Rockets

 Football is back...long night for the Falcons at the Glass Bowl.  They started out playing about as badly as you can, stabilized the effort for a while and then ran out of gas as the Rockets piled onto the margin, ending up with a 38-3 margin.

As noted in the preview here, this team has a long way to go. 

The defense actually had some decent moments.  The offense really did not.

BG got the ball first and went three and out.  The snap to punter Matt Naranjo was wide of him by quite a bit and he was forced to panicpunt, and UT started on the 21 and scored to go 7-0.  

On the next possession, it was third down and McDonald threw a pick and UT started on the BG 25 and scored to go up 14-0.

BG was making some progress on its next possession, with Tyrone Broden catching a pass and running inside the Rocket 30 when he fumbled and the Rockets recovered and went down the field and scored again, leading 21-0 with 3 minutes left to play in the first quarter.

BG did battle back.  They stabilized on defense and UT didn't score again until there was about 6 minutes left in the 3rd.  You need a score to make it interesting and the offense failed to get into the red zone during that time and turned it over once.

After the Rockets scored to go up 28-0, BG got to the Rocket 2, ran a brutal series of plays, had a false start and inexplicably kicked a FG.

As noted, this team is still a ways away.  BG played 13 true FR, and 6 redshirt FR, by my count.

I think you're going to see that you gave up 38 points and think the defense got torched.  No doubt, they can improve, but the offense made it way harder, with turnovers and few sustained drives.

BG averaged 4.8 yards per play.  BG's running backs were 22 for 57, as the line had trouble making space for them most of the time. McDonald was 8 of 30 passing...that's a correct number...with 2 picks.

McDonald is better than that, and it was his first meaningful snap in a long time, so let's give him a little time to settle in.

Doesn't change the fact that the offense did not pull anything close to their weight.

Also, Andrew Clair appeared to be injured early in the 3rd and did not return. I thought I saw him standing next to Coach Loeffler in a sling.

BG had 15 first downs, 5 of them after it was 28-0.

The defense didn't end up with great numbers but it wasn't awful.  The UT backs average 5 yards a carry.  Peters completed 20 of 32 for 214 and 4 TDs.  That's 10.7 per completion, which is not  a huge amount of yards.

After the first 3 scores, BG held them scoreless on 8 out of  9 possessions.  BG defenses in the previous few years have folded in that situation, but this one didn't.  They're still very young and unproven, but they showed heart.

Well, that's that.  We hand the trophy back after a little more than a year.  Next up is KSU, on Tuesday.