Son of a bitch..sun came up this morning. Devin Gardner was the difference in the game. Defense needs to figure out how to cover the other teams WR's. Hopefully we can get well vs Purdue. Still a lot of football left to play.
I thought the first PI was close. The defender did push the receiver out of the way to get position but there was contact on both sides before that. The second one was PI. The defender held the receiver throughout the route. In the replay you can see the receiver's jersey stretched out from the hold. Terry, I heard Mack Brown said that Texas would have won last night in Colt McCoy hadn't gotten hurt. :wink:
I must be on an island. I thought both PI calls were legit. The second call clearly was correct. The defender had a handful of jersey well before the ball arrived. On the first call, the last move prior to the arrival of the ball was a clear push by our defender. Regardless of what happened prior to the push, it was that act that got called. I didn't like it, but I understood why it was called. I thought our front 7 played very well. For the most part we stopped the run. Gardner is exceptional. He's going to destroy a lot of teams this year. It's evident that the secondary is our Achilles heel. George used the words "abused" and "clueless" to describe two of the DBs. I sadly must agree. I believe we can contain the rushing game of most of our future opponents, but if we don't do something about our pass defense, we are going to be lit up by accurate-passing QBs. One other high point: our kicking game appears to be in good shape thanks to Brindza. All in all, I believe we have a good team that is capable of winning every game remaining on our schedule, but we have some serious problems to address. How we deal with those problems going forward will determine how well this season turns out. Caveat: I've said before after early-season losses to MI and/or MSU that we lost to a better opponent who is going to have a great season. I've been proven dead wrong in the past. I believe the 2013 Michigan team has an excellent chance to win the Big10. We'll see.
KP somebody said last night on the Texas board that Mack Brown is like Old Yeller and it's time to put him out of his misery! Positive...how about Kyle Brindza? Punted, KO'd and FG's were alll excellent and did anybody notice we actually returned some punts?
On Michigan's last drive they hit a back in the flat running a wheel route. This is the same play that killed us 2 yrs. ago on the second to last play. Once again, there wasn't an ND defender on the screen when the back caught the ball. "If you don't learn from history you're doomed to repeat it."
Game thoughts: -No one here thought the first PI call was legit, but the 2nd one was. -I won't miss the Michigan series at all. -Gardner was the difference in this game. -Our offense stops itself way more than it is ever stopped by opposing defenses. -I don't understand the love affair with Rees, but I can't blame him either. He is what he is, and he is still a very limited QB. His limitations are not his fault. The staff has put him out there and Golson got into trouble. Rees is the guy who wanted to be there bad enough to do the little things. I commend him for that. Of course, that doesn't mean he's good. -Super unpopular opinion time: Dan Fox is horse ****. Name one non-service academy opponent where Fox would start? (We just saw Temple's LBs were better) Fox makes good plays when 3 things happen a)Carlo sacrifices himself to eliminate the A gap support (C,G,FB), b)Jaylon shuts down one-third of the field. c) The opponent fails to account for him. -We miss Te'o way more than we would like to admit. -The last INT was 100% on Rees and that was a freshman play. Kelly was 100% correct to ask him as he came to the sidelines "Why throw that ball?" -GA3 should have to earn something at some time. I agree with you guys that he should be replaced as starter. He shouldn't be junked. I just feel that he's better in a support role. Like Rees, he's got ability enough to burn you when you forget about him. He's just not the guy who can carry a team on his shoulders. -Mr Nix pisses me off this year. Michigan's last drive showed why. When he gets mad, he can't be stopped. I thought he was going to break Troussant on the last tackle. Where the f*ck was that for the previous 3 quarters? -Michigan's LT is the best LT in the game right now. That is the kid who beat Clowney's ass all night long in the bowl game last year. It was a blown call that led to 'the hit.' I said it then, and I still mean it today. Had the kid not blown that ONE CALL, we wouldn't have the Clowney mania that we have today. It was the only play Clowney made all day. All that stupid fan girl **** aside, that kid is the real deal.. barring injury, he'll play in the NFL for a very long time. Everyone plays the Clowney hit against Michigan on loop. Why don't we see the previous 50 plays where Clowney was put on skates and pushed around the field? Man, that kid is good. -We're good enough to not lose again this year and bad enough to lose 4 games.
Corey, I have watched most of SC's 1st 2 games and I think Clowney has taken himself out and been on the sidelines for 1/2 of each of those games. Maybe he's saving himself for the NFL. :roll:
:idea: re: Clowney Today he wants to switch positions, because "Georgia was able to take me right out of the game." So it's the coaches fault that he can't find anyone to tackle? If he keeps this up, he'll get plenty of action. Teams will run right at him. He's in danger of becoming the new Brian Bosworth... re: GA III We have better running backs. Sooner or later they will replace him as the starter. re: Farley We have better safeties. Don't forget Shumate, Hardy and All-World freshman Max Redfield... http://www.und.com/sports/m-footbl/mtt/max_redfield_856719.html re: Dan Fox I don't agree.
ND <t>well I'm not going to rehash or try to analyze the game. I'ts over, we lost, fair or not. The defense couldn't handle the Mich QB. We'll get them next year in SB. we probably win that game with Golson at QB but heh....it is what it is. There were some good things I saw but I just want to move on. <br/> <br/> We can complain all we want but we have Tommy Rees at QB at that's not going to change the rest of the season. He's a fine young man but doesn't bring the dynamic to the QB position someone like Golson does. That's why Mich won, plain and simple and why we would have with Golson.<br/> <br/> We have 10 more regular season games that are winable even with the limitations of Rees. <br/> <br/> Let's move on, personally I can't wait till Sat and the team rolls into W. Lafayette, Ind and kicks the crap out of purdue.....yes, I said purdue. My prediction........pain. Wake up Boilers, we're comin straight at you! Somebody please start the thread!!!</t>
I can't quite let this one go. I do think if Golson had been the QB we would have won, he was primed to have a great year and with WR/TE weapons he would have had we would have scored more than 23 points. Mich wouldn't have been able to pressure him and force him into rollouts that he's not comfortable in like Tommy. But we are what we are. I am still disappointed in our defense. I know we lost Motta, Kap, Spond and Teo and those were big losses esp in the leadership. I like Fox and given our depth, that he's a captain is evidence of our lack of Sr. leadership. We did stop the UM running game other than Gardner of course, their RB's got less than 100 yds. so our DL is pretty good and we did get some pressure on Gardner at times but he was able to escape and make big plays out of it. That's what Golson would have done as well. I hope we see more of Garrett at ILB and less of Carlo to tell you the truth. Too bad Carlo could have been bulked up to play NG, he'd be a bad ass NG. On offense I hope Kelly gets some confidence in the running game. Amir looked good and even GAIII was good running the ball. Maybe against Purdue we get Bryant and Folston involved even more. I like Cam but I fear he's just going to be the odd man out. He's not got the potential that Bryant and Folston have and he isn't the player that Amir is...but he'd be a player on a lot of teams in college football. I don't think we can win 10 games unless Kelly gets confidence in the running game and sticks with it, it's the best way he can help Tommy Rees. If Rees throws it 50 times a game we are going to lose a lot. Anybody hear of UM fans, cough Bobda, doing rain dances in the Dakota's?
Still lots of talk about the Mich loss. Esp our Red Zone offense where we had something like 20 RZ plays and Kelly went empty backfield on 19 of them. I'm not really into picking apart every possible mistake in play calling that Kelly/Martin make like so many over on NDNation are prone to do. But with Rees not being a threat to run the ball I do have to wonder why they went empty backfield so much in the redzone. I could see it somewhat if you had Tim Tebow, or Cam Newton or Vince Young or even Devin Gardner back there....those guys force the defense to stay home lest the QB take off on them. But not Rees, they can pretty much ignore him as a runner. So I think it's a legit question on their play calling.
at this point in time, we'd just be arguing about whether or not the ball was too high to get out of the yard..
Finally back home, TOK, after a 14 hour car ride from Custer, SD. Caught the game at a sports bar and pretty much agree with Corey and your analysis that Gardner's playmaking and ND's abandonment of a running game that was gnashing us were the key factors in this game. Right now, my major concern is finding a doggy psychologist for Lloyd to treat him for PTSD. Our first day there, I woke up at 630 am or so and decided that it was as good as time as any to take him out for a short walk. As we walked off the front steps and started to turn past the front of the small cabin, he started to softly bark which was unusual since his infrequent barks tend to be loud. It was still somewhat dark and, at first, I, still really groggy, could not figure out why he was barking. Then, as I looked in the direction of where he was looking, I realized there was a friggen buffalo quietly grazing about 15 feet from us. A joint decision was then made to quickly retreat back into the cabin until our neighbor decided to move to a much more distant grazing locale. My guess is that L's canine instinct caused him to bark but that he decided to severely muffle the sound of his bark so as not to piss off a 2000 lb. beast. During the remainder of the trip, L would,when leaving the cabin, peek around the front of the cabin to make sure no bison were around and had daily nightmares involving whimpering and soft barking. Anne and I enjoyed the trip and thought that the beauty of Black Hills and Badlands made for a memorable trip but I think L would prefer not to go on any more " commune with Mother Nature" vacations.