My 2 cents about tomorrow.

[edowd26]

Marrone is not a fool. He knows the mob (casual fans) are fickle. He can't afford to promote the hell out of this game and lose it, because it would wain interest for the rest of the season in terms of future attendance. That is why I think this is somewhat of a ruse. My guess is our impact players are starting/playing a majority, and he fully intends to fool shady and win this damn game. I don't doubt that they were/are banged up, but I bet they are juiced up and ready to rock tomorrow at noon. We come out hot and roll all game 31-17. LGO.

 

[orangehomer]

i agree about the importance of the game, but i don't think the injuries are a ruse. i do think that he is playing the adversity card to the team though. i also think that shady will have some fresh gimmicks for tomorrow, up to and including sanu in the wildcat and god knows what other stupid ideas.

 

[IthacaBarrel]

Marrone is not a fool. He knows the mob (casual fans) are fickle. He can't afford to promote the hell out of this game and lose it, because it would wain interest for the rest of the season in terms of future attendance. That is why I think this is somewhat of a ruse. My guess is our impact players are starting/playing a majority, and he fully intends to fool shady and win this damn game. I don't doubt that they were/are banged up, but I bet they are juiced up and ready to rock tomorrow at noon. We come out hot and roll all game 31-17.

There will be several key people not playing tomorrow and I don't see any big surprises in the game plan, if anything it will be very vanilla just hoping to grind out a win

 

[kcsu]

No ruse. We are truly banged up. Playing is one thing being at full speed is another. My biggest fear is our secondary. Looks like we are going with the walking wounded tomorrow. Lets hope that Desir and Reddish are ready to play some D. I think Shafer is going to play it much closer to the vest tomorrow and make Rutgers drive the field. Expect to see us play a little softer than usual

 

[edowd26]

i was just hoping... you guys crush my dreams.

 

[OrangeMuskyFish]

Marrone is not a fool. He knows the mob (casual fans) are fickle. He can't afford to promote the hell out of this game and lose it, because it would wain interest for the rest of the season in terms of future attendance. That is why I think this is somewhat of a ruse. My guess is our impact players are starting/playing a majority, and he fully intends to fool shady and win this damn game. I don't doubt that they were/are banged up, but I bet they are juiced up and ready to rock tomorrow at noon. We come out hot and roll all game 31-17. LGO.

I agree that Marrone is no fool, but what worries me is that he hasn't tried to appease the fans at home. He knows the support sucks, but he plays so damn conservative at home, I just don't get it. Just like last week... to me the debate between the need to finally establish the run vs. how much more effective we would have been if we had gunned the ball all game, is six in one hand, half-dozen in the other. So the winning factor for me is that we were presented with an opponent where we could have won a 55-38 game, that was a missed opportunity to show fans that the offense is on the way. Injuries or not, I am worried we are going to come out and play grind-it-out ball once again, when we could get up by two scores, pin the ears back, and crush Dodd. Especially if Gulley is out, or the rumors of unleashing AAM are just that.

 

[orlandoorange]

Marrone often mentions that there are more distractions at home than on the road, a good way to eliminate some of those distractions would be to close off practice and make the players unavailable to the media... seems to be pretty much what he has done this week.

 

[Upstate]

The presence of ESPN doesn't help, I think thats part of why he held them out of interviews/closed it off. Theres already so much going on around the kids, its probably easier for them. Personally, I don't know how these kids sleep before a game. I can't even get a good nights sleep the night before.

 

[chakka3421]

I think this game could be really close - what we really don't know about is RU as they don't seem battle tested yet. But I do think it comes down to who wants this game more and RU has a lot of reason to want it more.

 

[JoeSU]

Marrone has shown he likes to "throw our hat over the wall" to challenge the team, as he did at the beginning of last season when he announced an ambitious goal of playing in a bowl game. I think he sees this as a game we need to win, and as he's said many times, a large, noisy crowd provides a huge home field advantage.