This has to be fairly short as my granddaughter is coming over and we need to baby sit.
Great tailgate. I got there 4 hours before kickoff and the parking lot was 3/4 full. I assume some people who had a pass to the West lot did not get in. It always fills up fast but it is a real mess now. You shouldn’t have to get to the game more than 2.5 hours before kickoff to get a spot in a parking lot you bought a space for.
Major props to the tailgate team for putting on a wonderful tailgate. Lots of compliments for the food, especially the Mac and cheese and the smash burgers. We bought a Blackstone griddle this summer and this will allow us to serve some things we could not do before (like smash burgers). John did a great job cooking them. I don’t know everyone else who chipped in but Nell did a lot of great work and the O’Briens were great as well. I think Rich was on the big grill. Great job by everyone involved.
We were worried about the weather and it rained briefly a couple of times but I don’t think it was a big problem for our well prepared crew.
I missed the walk. Time flew and I blew it. Will go to the next one. Glad the first one went well. Hoping someday SU starts a shuttle to bring fans tailgating from the big lots (like the west ones) to and from the dome. There are a lot of fans who struggle with the walk and asking them to do it twice to support the walk is asking a lot. If there was a shuttle, a lot of fans would attend the walk that never will otherwise.
My first time in the dome since the seats were installed. I have pored over the pictures with great interest and loved what I saw and am happy to report it looks as good in real life as it does in the pictures. My seat was wide than I expected and very comfortable. I missed having the ability to stretch my legs out on the bench in front of me )that option is gone now) but the benefits outweighs the costs by a large margin.
Looked around for the many TVs installed to aid navigation and didn’t see any. No biggie, I don’t see this as an important problem that needs fixing anyway.
Only 7 tubas. That was disappointing. Last year we had 9 or 10 for the home games. Not sure if we had a student who was a game time decision each game or what. But only 7 this year. I assume we just don’t have enough students that want to carry that heavy sousaphone around with them. Hopefully the tuba count will improve as the season progresses.
The SUMB sounded great. Wanted to single out the young lady in SUMB who sings the alma mater and NA. She has a wonderful voice (and is as beautiful as she is talented). Her parents should be very proud. Will try and find out what her name is.
Coach Fran did not lead the team down the field like Dino loved to do. He.looked good in his white top. I know he felt but abut losing his composure as some of the calls but I thought he did well given what he was up against. I know I need to work on keeping my composure in these situations.
I haven’t seen any replays except what they showed on the center hung so what follows is based on what I saw live. Some of it, perhaps a lot, could be very wrong.
Thought the defense played reasonably well most of the game. A lot of their successful plays it looked like we had a guy in position to make a play but he missed the tackle. Some of our linemen clearly did not know where the ball was and let a ball carrier go right by them. Was disappointed with the line play. Looked like our linebackers and safeties missed their share of tackles too. Some might have been because they wanted to deliver a big hit but a lot of it was overrunning plays. Poor discipline. This kind of stuff can be cleaned up and I hope it will be for the GT game, or it is going to be a long game. Most disappointed in Barron, who is a fifth year player that should know better. Making stupid penalties at this point in his career is not acceptable. But consistent with his career. I think we have to keep in mind he is playing a similar but new position and that he, like everyone, has new responsibilities and will need some time to grow into their new role. Hopefully this happens quickly.
With all the problems the defense had, if not for a long run of penalties called against the defense, many drives would have ended much sooner. Anxious to see how many of the calls against SU were legit.
Defensive blocking below the waist? Defensive holding the next play? Dice had an interception that looked to be in bounds that was just waved off. It seemed like everything they got a controversial call there was no review but we never got a review when it looked like it would benefit us. Maybe part of this is on our coaching staff for not asking for reviews. But I thought the refs asked for reviews on close important calls. The focus should be on getting the important calls right. They didn’t seem to be important to this crew in the least.
Feel badly for Marlowe. I know he worked his butt off this off-season to get in great shape. You could see it in his face and body. If his season is over, it really stinks. Always feel badly for kids who get hurt early in a season but especially if they are a senior. Let’s hope for a minor miracle that allows him to return for the second half of the year.
Though Diggs, Watson, Perry and Jobity looked good. A little concerned the staff thought the other guys playing inside deserved to play the most minutes but maybe they just had bad days and will get better as the season progresses. I hope so.
Thought McDonald struggled some and looked pretty slow. Wax even struggled some before he got hurt. Heard looked okay and I thought Sparrow did well. What did they do, split series between Chestnut and Buxton? Thought both looked good. Thought Clark was solid. Looked like they played a lot of soft zone with Lewis and Grant and let Owen run underneath coverage to get good yardage whenever they wanted. Seemed like a pretty conservative game plan but I did notice we blitzed a few times early and Navarro checked into a play designed to beat the blitz and we indeed got burned. That put an end to that.
Later we started to play Barnes and I guess we like him more playing press coverage. He looked good at that.
Thought special teams did well. Denaburg kicked off great and made all his kicks. Solid. Stonehouse nailed all his punts. Good hang time too. Stellar. Our return teams didn’t do anything, which was disappointing. Congrats to Malachi for getting the role as featured also return guy his first college game. Hopefully he gets a lane to run through soon.
The big issue was the roughing the kicker penalty that allowed Ohio to continue a key drive. No good review was shown on the scoreboard. I don’t think they showed one period. Not sure if it was legit but a coupe friends swore it was an Ohio guy that hit their punter. Sigh.
Thought the offense was our best unit. Looked like the OL started a little slow and get progressively better as the game went on. I think we wore them down some. I saw Washington get beat a couple times and the holes were not very big early but they got better over time. I think there was one hold and one da k allowed which isn’t great but is a huge improvement over last year.
Allen looked really polished. Ran hard, made some nice catches too. Especially the one for a TD to tie right flat. He was covered pretty well but McCord out the ball where only LeQuint could catch it and he made a really nice grab.
Speaking of McCord, he made an awful throw direct to an Ohio player with his first throw but got his act together and ended up having a terrific game. 4 or 5 NFL type throws to a small window where the call could be caught. It looked like he, Pena and Gadsden have played together for years. They work together really well. Haynes sosnMt get a lot of targets but did well when he did. Great catch on a pass where he was interfered with (rare flag on Ohio) but Zeed caught it anyway. Told me a lot about of this kid will fight for 50-50 balls. Hatcher had a similar ball thrown to him. He also should have drawn a flag as the Ohio DB interfered with him but the ref chose to ignore the clutching and Hatcher inexplicably stopped trying for the ball, letting the DB get a gift pick. This was a problem for Umari last year and it has to stop.
Back to Kyle. Let’s limit the rollouts and try and keep him healthy. I think he gets drafted and pretty early too.
Gadsden btw looks like a lock for getting drafted. Great to see Pena, who has struggled with injuries most of his career, have a big day. A really big day.
Crowd was good. Lots of empty seats on the 300 level on the visitors side, which tells me we screwed up our pricing for season tickets. Whoops. But the people that showed were loud and I don’t think the new seats made much of a difference in loudness.
Thought the new host was okay. I don’t think a host is needed or appropriate for college sports events. It seems like a minor league type thing. But the kid does a good job and at least we aren’t subjected to ear-splitting seizure-causing high frequency blasts of sound like when they kept attacking us with the female in game hosts in recent years.
We were supposed to have a DJ, which I think is an even more stupid idea that is inappropriate, unwanted and unneeded but we keep getting new people in SUAD that do not know the history of implementing these ‘new’ ideas. Sigh.
Anyway, I don’t think the DJ showed. Maybe someone convinced the powers that be this was never going to work? I hope so. But I doubt it.
Good effort. I am happy with things so far. Let’s hope we improve our run defense for Saturday!
