Miami Blows BG Out

Another game, another blowout.

After the start of the season--where we saw a team performing better than expected and better than last year--we knew it was succeeding over a low bar.  The hope was the team would continue to improve, because better than last year was a long way from where we needed to be.

We have not progressed any further and its possible we have regressed.  There was a crazy win over Buffalo, but in the UT and Miami games the Falcons were blown off the field.

Coach Loeffler said as much:

Disappointed. We got our tails kicked up front. We started out dropping a touchdown pass and getting a punt blocked. Our immaturity and our youth showed up today and it was disappointing. Our intensity, our attention to detail, all the things that we preach didn't show up at all today and I'm really disappointed. 

Our defense, I thought, did some good things at times, but I was extremely disappointed. We wouldn't even get lined up fast. I mean our urgency to align, do what we do, it was awful. 

Yeah, they got two good pass rushers. We know that, but they dominated the line of scrimmage and it's the second week in a row that we couldn't do anything. You get dominated at the line of scrimmage the way that we did these last two weeks, it's hard to do anything.”

To make the point, you can have patience with you but you want to make incremental progress.  I understand that guys need to get stronger in the off-season and that will help and this year can be a learning experience.  You'd like to have a little learning along the way.

BG got a 62-yard run from Stewart to score first.  The defense got a 3-and-out.  The offense dropped a wide-open TD pass, lost 5 yards on a pass to the flats and gave up a sack and then had a punt blocked.   Flash forward, with 5 minutes left in the third, it was 34-7 and BG made 5 first downs over that period of time.

BG finished with 258 yards on 65 plays.  Take away the Stewart run, and you have 196 on 64, with 3.1 yards per play.

McDonald was sacked on 8 of 36 dropbacks, that's 22%, an unbelievable rate.  There were 2 official hurries as well.  And there were 8 penalties for 50 yards, meaning they were pre-snap type penalties.

Meanwhile, Miami did what they do--which is score without making any yards.  They had 346 total yards of offense.  In addition to the blocked punt they also recovered a fumble and got good field position when BG intercepted a pass on 4th down, when they should have knocked it down.

There's not much to work with here.  Coach Loeffler said that next year is "time."  I'm sure our fans feels the same way.  We knew the line would be a struggle all year, but you'd like to see a little progress here and there.

One more game, in front of what promises to be parents and girlfriends on Black Friday.