SWC75
Bored Historian
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- Aug 26, 2011
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- We gave up a school record 845 yards. The old record was 654 yards in that horrible 0-43 home loss to West Virginia in 1993. That can’t be spun. And it wasn’t just because they had Lamar Jackson.
- Coach Baber said that the problem was that we had no way to simulate Louisville’s speed in practice. That tells you that our problems haven’t just been in our style of play but in who was playing for us and it’s still going to be a problem for a while yet. Babers seemed resigned to it, saying he wasn’t mad at his team. That bothers me.
- I felt we would have a hard time competing with this team but I didn’t expect the awful defensive performance. I realize that Louisville is full of speed and talent and can make defensive players look bad, as Coach Babers explained after the game. But the virtues I thought I saw in the Colgate game: keeping everything in front of you, (which is what the Tampa 2 is all about), staying in lanes to ensure containment, closing fast and making good tackles of the type we saw in that “Hawk tackle” video), were basically absent. Matt Park described those first 4:11 as “An NFL team vs….air”.
- On that first play, we had a 5-8 safety one on one with a 6-1 wide receiver. It was Tampa 1. How does that happen with 7 guys in coverage?
- Then we got sucked in on Jackson’s untouched 72 yard run, one of four one play scoring drives for the visitors.
- The biggest touchdown was probably their sixth. We’d crawled back from 0-21 to 35-21 and halftime, (and missed a field goal at the gun). We got the ball to start the second half. If we could make it 28-35, now we’ve got the shoot-out we wanted. We go 3 and out and Louisville drives down the field and scores on an end-around with two complete whiffs by SU tacklers, both of whom were in a positon to stop the play. We came back to score before the final collapse but I thought those two possessions- and those two missed tackles- sealed our fate.
- Matt Park and Chris Gedney both described Louisville’s last two scores as “disappointing”. They weren’t scored by Lamar Jackson. They were scored by Brandon Radcliff and Jeremy Smith: two good players, no doubt but not “the one guy” Babers talked about in post-game presser. Neither were touched. I was ready to write about how our players “never gave up” and lost by, hopefully, something like 35-48 to a top team, winning the rest of the game after the horrendous 0-21 start. Instead it was a 28-62 blow-out that just affirmed out lowly status. Those last two scores did that and that pisses me off. No, we did not keep fighting to the end of the game.
- We gave up a school record 845 yards. The old record was 654 yards in that horrible 0-43 home loss to West Virginia in 1993. That can’t be spun. And it wasn’t just because they had Lamar Jackson.
- I was also pissed off by the fans, many of whom did not even show up for a game against a ranked team in which 90 points were scored. Attendance was 32,184, barely 1,000 more than the Colgate game – with no state fair or concert to compete with. And most of those fans left by the end of the third quarter, when the game was still 28-42. One of them, dressed in the obligatory orange but not bleeding it, sneered are no one in particular “I’m sick of this sh t!” I’m sick of that sh t. I think one of the reasons we couldn’t hold on to Doug Marrone was fan apathy- why should he bust his ass to give us a winner if we don’t seem to care? I wonder if Babers was thinking the same thing.
- It was obvious that Bobby Petrino was not dealing from the top of the deck with all those cramps Louisville players had, most of them when we were getting into a rhythm on offense, (all the ‘cramps’ were suffered by Cardinal defensive players.” But again, I have to get on our fans. One of those occasions came on the second play of a drive after the first play went nowhere. It was a hot night. The Dome was a sauna. And this was football. The guy could have bene legitimately hurt but the fans were booing. What if he’d torn up his knee? How would the booing fans feel then?
- Our offense was productive but not when we most needed it to be in the third quarter. it was fast passed but looked strategically limited. All the running plays looked like the same play, (are we ever going to fake the handoff and actually throw the ball? Does every running play have to be right up the middle? Do we need more than one such play in down series? A sweep would be nice. An end-around, (as we saw early in the Colgate game), could be a big play.
- We never seem to pass over the middle while other teams kill us over the middle. We also seemed to abandon the short pass as we feel behind in favor of long throws, which need to be set up by successful runs or the short passes. AET and Erv Phillips have 20 catches a piece this year. Steve Ismael and Brisley Estime, our top guys last year, have a total of 16 catches. We need to use their talents, as well.
- Trying to look at the bright side when it was 0-21, I said “Well, we should get pretty good at returning kick-offs in this game- maybe we can bust one. It was a game where a huge kick return at the right time could have been huge. We returned 11 kick-offs for 189 yards, (17.2 per kick-off). There were no touchbacks so each was an opportunity for a big return but we never got past the 35, (our only time past the 26) and our average starting point was our 23 yard line. We also returned two of 5 punts for 4 yards. We didn’t do any better vs. Colgate for the year we are averaging 17.0 yards on 13 kick-offs and 25 yards on 4 punt returns, (of 15 punts). We have all kinds of guys who could be dynamic as kick returners and we getting nothing out of them.
- Lamar Jackson is an amazing runner but not an amazing passer. He had several of his passes dropped but they weren’t all perfect passes and he only completed 20 of 39 with a pick and, amazingly that first play was his only TD pass. I don’t think he’s an NFL passer, although I do think he’ll be an NFL player. His runs were not so much of scrambles where the issue was to keep him in the pocket. They were designed running plays. He’ll have a great year and may wind up in new York for the Heisman but I think DeShaun Watson is the better quarterback.
- Louisville is a team with elite talent and their games with Florida State, Clemson and Houston have the potential to be some of the best and most important games of the season. Their fans should have a lot of fun rooting for their team this season. But if they don’t clean up the sloppiness with the 3 turnovers, dropped passes and 9 penalties for 100 yards, (which gave us 5 of our first downs), they aren’t going to win those mega0-match-ups and the season will not be as fun as they have reason to hope it could be. I want them to have a great season so this game won’t sting as much. I’d rather have lost 28-62 to a 12-0 or 11-1 team than to a 9-3 team.
- The ACC is on steroids this season. Louisville, Clemson and Florida State are all national title contenders and they are all in our division. It’s our turn to play Notre Dame and Pittsburgh is looking good. We are going to be swimming upstream this seasons, especially if we don’t play any defense.
- Coach Baber said that the problem was that we had no way to simulate Louisville’s speed in practice. That tells you that our problems haven’t just been in our style of play but in who was playing for us and it’s still going to be a problem for a while yet. Babers seemed resigned to it, saying he wasn’t mad at his team. That bothers me.
- I felt we would have a hard time competing with this team but I didn’t expect the awful defensive performance. I realize that Louisville is full of speed and talent and can make defensive players look bad, as Coach Babers explained after the game. But the virtues I thought I saw in the Colgate game: keeping everything in front of you, (which is what the Tampa 2 is all about), staying in lanes to ensure containment, closing fast and making good tackles of the type we saw in that “Hawk tackle” video), were basically absent. Matt Park described those first 4:11 as “An NFL team vs….air”.
- On that first play, we had a 5-8 safety one on one with a 6-1 wide receiver. It was Tampa 1. How does that happen with 7 guys in coverage?
- Then we got sucked in on Jackson’s untouched 72 yard run, one of four one play scoring drives for the visitors.
- The biggest touchdown was probably their sixth. We’d crawled back from 0-21 to 35-21 and halftime, (and missed a field goal at the gun). We got the ball to start the second half. If we could make it 28-35, now we’ve got the shoot-out we wanted. We go 3 and out and Louisville drives down the field and scores on an end-around with two complete whiffs by SU tacklers, both of whom were in a positon to stop the play. We came back to score before the final collapse but I thought those two possessions- and those two missed tackles- sealed our fate.
- Matt Park and Chris Gedney both described Louisville’s last two scores as “disappointing”. They weren’t scored by Lamar Jackson. They were scored by Brandon Radcliff and Jeremy Smith: two good players, no doubt but not “the one guy” Babers talked about in post-game presser. Neither were touched. I was ready to write about how our players “never gave up” and lost by, hopefully, something like 35-48 to a top team, winning the rest of the game after the horrendous 0-21 start. Instead it was a 28-62 blow-out that just affirmed out lowly status. Those last two scores did that and that pisses me off. No, we did not keep fighting to the end of the game.
- We gave up a school record 845 yards. The old record was 654 yards in that horrible 0-43 home loss to West Virginia in 1993. That can’t be spun. And it wasn’t just because they had Lamar Jackson.
- I was also pissed off by the fans, many of whom did not even show up for a game against a ranked team in which 90 points were scored. Attendance was 32,184, barely 1,000 more than the Colgate game – with no state fair or concert to compete with. And most of those fans left by the end of the third quarter, when the game was still 28-42. One of them, dressed in the obligatory orange but not bleeding it, sneered are no one in particular “I’m sick of this sh t!” I’m sick of that sh t. I think one of the reasons we couldn’t hold on to Doug Marrone was fan apathy- why should he bust his ass to give us a winner if we don’t seem to care? I wonder if Babers was thinking the same thing.
- It was obvious that Bobby Petrino was not dealing from the top of the deck with all those cramps Louisville players had, most of them when we were getting into a rhythm on offense, (all the ‘cramps’ were suffered by Cardinal defensive players.” But again, I have to get on our fans. One of those occasions came on the second play of a drive after the first play went nowhere. It was a hot night. The Dome was a sauna. And this was football. The guy could have bene legitimately hurt but the fans were booing. What if he’d torn up his knee? How would the booing fans feel then?
- Our offense was productive but not when we most needed it to be in the third quarter. it was fast passed but looked strategically limited. All the running plays looked like the same play, (are we ever going to fake the handoff and actually throw the ball? Does every running play have to be right up the middle? Do we need more than one such play in down series? A sweep would be nice. An end-around, (as we saw early in the Colgate game), could be a big play.
- We never seem to pass over the middle while other teams kill us over the middle. We also seemed to abandon the short pass as we feel behind in favor of long throws, which need to be set up by successful runs or the short passes. AET and Erv Phillips have 20 catches a piece this year. Steve Ismael and Brisley Estime, our top guys last year, have a total of 16 catches. We need to use their talents, as well.
- Trying to look at the bright side when it was 0-21, I said “Well, we should get pretty good at returning kick-offs in this game- maybe we can bust one. It was a game where a huge kick return at the right time could have been huge. We returned 11 kick-offs for 189 yards, (17.2 per kick-off). There were no touchbacks so each was an opportunity for a big return but we never got past the 35, (our only time past the 26) and our average starting point was our 23 yard line. We also returned two of 5 punts for 4 yards. We didn’t do any better vs. Colgate for the year we are averaging 17.0 yards on 13 kick-offs and 25 yards on 4 punt returns, (of 15 punts). We have all kinds of guys who could be dynamic as kick returners and we getting nothing out of them.
- Lamar Jackson is an amazing runner but not an amazing passer. He had several of his passes dropped but they weren’t all perfect passes and he only completed 20 of 39 with a pick and, amazingly that first play was his only TD pass. I don’t think he’s an NFL passer, although I do think he’ll be an NFL player. His runs were not so much of scrambles where the issue was to keep him in the pocket. They were designed running plays. He’ll have a great year and may wind up in new York for the Heisman but I think DeShaun Watson is the better quarterback.
- Louisville is a team with elite talent and their games with Florida State, Clemson and Houston have the potential to be some of the best and most important games of the season. Their fans should have a lot of fun rooting for their team this season. But if they don’t clean up the sloppiness with the 3 turnovers, dropped passes and 9 penalties for 100 yards, (which gave us 5 of our first downs), they aren’t going to win those mega0-match-ups and the season will not be as fun as they have reason to hope it could be. I want them to have a great season so this game won’t sting as much. I’d rather have lost 28-62 to a 12-0 or 11-1 team than to a 9-3 team.
- The ACC is on steroids this season. Louisville, Clemson and Florida State are all national title contenders and they are all in our division. It’s our turn to play Notre Dame and Pittsburgh is looking good. We are going to be swimming upstream this seasons, especially if we don’t play any defense.
