So, I watched the Loeffler presser this week. He's in one of those situations--he needs to be positive and yet when he does, he sets people off who see it differently and don't need to be positive.
Having said that, it was a doozy. Overall, beyond the specifics, there was a kind of bizarro world tone-deafness to the whole thing--and the video the department made from the game. It's like losing to EKU was just part of the "process."
He sat down and said he watched the tape and there were "a lot" of positives. Which, you know, there were positives. "A lot" might be grading with a curve. But, you know, it wasn't all terrible. It just wasn't good enough.
He said we won the "daily double," which means that we won the turnover battle and the explosive play battle. If you win the daily double, he says you will win 85% of the time. AND THEN, if you block a punt, there should be no way you can lose, like 99%,
But we did lose.
He said that we made too many mistakes at the wrong time. That is surely right....coaches, even him, always say that a football game comes down to a few plays. Like, four or five. In this case, Coach cited the bad snap, the 18-yard conversion in overtime and the missed FG...you could add in the bad punt, too. Of course, EKU would have their own list and BG benefited from the completely lucky KO carom to start the game.
We did have some ill-timed mistakes.
This whole probability thing...it reminds me of the old joke where they show the professor a working prototype and the professor says "I know it works in practice, but does it work in theory?"
He also cites a lot of offensive injuries, at RB, WR and OL.
Which has grown thin as well.
The media lapped this up. Follow-up questions about all the positives came toward Loeffler.
No follow-up to a statement like he was "really hoping" the game would be over in regulation.
Or, to when he said that Alex Bayer is telling the team BG started 1-3 when they won the 2015 MAC title. This is, of course, completely wrong. BG was 2-2, with 2 Big Ten wins and a loss by 3 to a Paxton Lynch-led Memphis team and NO FCS game on the way to a 10-4 record. Comparing this team to that two-time defending division championship team is ridiculous.
He said that in college football, it doesn't matter the emblem on your helmet--you can win a game. He was referencing Marshall-Notre Dame. I guess the sad thing is that it does seem to matter when it's our emblem.
He then went on to say Marshall might be the best team we play all year---the equivalent of a Big Ten team, and that's a direct quote.
Finally, while we "want to win every game," it's the MAC games that really matter. Which I agree with. Problem is, he says the EKU would be a competitive team in this conference. Look at the EMU game! Even if that's true--and we'll have to see how they do in their own conference--we're supposed to beat teams like that....like EMU did.
Note: Bob Moosbrugger logged into the live feed a few minutes after it started.
Other Note:
Here are the three questions the media should be asking:
Can you explain why the level of play you say you saw in camp hasn't translated to the field?
Can you describe how you prepared in practice for the possibility that Jakari Robinson's waiver might not come through?
Why didn't you prepare for the departure of your kicker and punter before the end of last season?
Last thing, I looked at the game notes. Robinson is now listed behind Jalen Grant at C, with Zimmerly OR Dunbar at RG.
It sounds as if he is trying hard to coach-speak his way out of this and failing BADLY. This is insulting of our collective intelligence at this point. Fire him now. We have seen enough.
ReplyDeleteEKU proved they were a MAC level team against EMU. They almost beat EMU. They barely, by the skin of their teeth, beat us. Would we be having the collective freak-out if, say, we had barely lost to Miami or WMU in Week 2? Of course not. When our schedule designers make our "easy" game comparable to a conference game and our next "easiest" game to a team that beat Notre Dame, with PAC-12 and SEC road games tacked on just for fun, the team is not being positioned to achieve success and come into conference play fresh and confident.
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