sutomcat
No recent Cali or Iggy awards; Mr Irrelevant
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- Aug 15, 2011
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Sorry this is late. It was a very busy weekend.
The tailgate had a southern tier theme. Spedies with great fresh bread (did eat the spedies, did not eat the bread). We brought in someone from down there to help bring us the tastes of that area.
There was pizza from Nirchis (I think), which is apparently an institution in Binghamton. I ate some. It was good. I mostly only ate the top of the pizza but the crust was good and I had some.
There was a deep fryer and from it came delicious wings and fries (yes, I had a few). The usual fare of burgers and hot dogs, sausage with peppers and onions, two kinds of lasagna (looked great did not touch), lots of other delicious looking carby things, lots to drink, etc. Very good spread very professional staged. Outstanding.
Headed up to attend The Walk with JDemo , Bob and son. It was worth the walk. Very well attended. From what I could see it was at least 3 deep on both sides the whole way and places had 5 or 10 people deep.
Really good to see such a big turnout for such a new tradition. The players and coaches arrived on time felt the love from the crowd. There were a lot of families with young kids and I think while the players were receptive to and pleasant to everyone (lots of fist bumps, winks, smiles and high fives), they were especially receptive to children. If you have a kid and want them to have a chance to see and possibly briefly interact with SU players or coaches, get them to this.
It doesn't take long. 5 minutes top from when the police started the procession to when the last player came through. Very nice. The best part was seeing the players genuinely enjoying the interaction and appreciating the support.
We headed back down to the tailgate. It is a pretty long walk. When I headed back up 30 or 40 minutes later, my legs were not happy with having to make that climb two times.
I love that we are doing the walk and am hoping there is a way to make it more convenient for tailgaters to tailgate and attend the walk. A shuttle (maybe use the trolleys SU has) from the west parking lots to near the quad would be a boon towards getting more people to attend the walk. And if it could also be used for people to get up to the dome to attend the game, I think it would make attending football games a lot more practical and attractive for many fans with mobility issues.
I think once the Miron Victory Court (MVC) is finished, you should have trolleys ride up Forestry Drive to MVC, drop fans off there or at Gate A then head back down to the west parking lots. People could enter MVC and come out the other side where they would be close to the Quad and where the walk is staged. Not practical until MVC is finished but I think this is something that should be considered by SUAD for the future. If cost is a problem, I am quite sure people would pay if a shuttle was made available. Better yet, make it available as another way to improve the fan experience on game day. Charge extra for parking in the west lots to offset the expense and everyone wins.
I digress.
Stanford did not bring a ton of fans. My guess is they had about 500 in the visitor's seating area. That said, the ones they brought made some noise and were very enthusiastic. I was hoping to see the Stanford tree mascot but he?she?zim?zir? did not make the trip. No cheerleaders came either. And of course, the Stanford band was a no show as well. Bummer. But I understand. Not many random Stanford fans sitting in the stands either. It is far away though so this was expected.
We saw a bunch of players not dressed for the game beforehand. Weird to have a worse situation with injuries after a bye week than we had before the bye week. Maybe we practiced too hard? Maybe something the staff learned here for the future? Not sure, hope it doesn't happen again for the second bye in October.
8 tubas. Not what you want. Doesn't look like this is going to improve the rest of the season. If I could give 10 kids $50 each to play sousaphone for the rest of the season, I would. That said, the band sounded good and was sharp marching.
I think the dome was darkened more for this night game than ones last year. Some funky colors were used to gentlely light the seating areas. The field itself was pretty dark. Made for a pretty cool look.
The game itself was a dog fight from the start. I give the Stanford coaching staff credit. They saw how much GT bothered us with their blitzing in the second half of that game and emulated that. They brought pressure on seemingly every pass play. Many types of blitzes were used. They did stunts, they moved players late, they did everything they could to make McCord uncomfortable. They played press coverage pretty much all game, and they doubled OG.
We could normally attack deep with Haynes but he was not available, which was a big loss. Hatcher and Gill are good but not the same at Zeed.
And to make things worse, we couldn't run the ball. The OL was dominated by the Stanford DL to a shocking extent. It wasn't just one player. The OTs looked slow and struggled to stop basic speed rushes. Didn't get push on running plays. The inside guys might have been even worse. Someone got past them all game long. Bradford was a mess and Reed really struggled. To be fair to Reed, you can could him limping around and it looked like he got more and more hobbled as the game progressed. He couldn't even get the ball to Kyle on shotgun snaps well. Surprised the staff did not give some of the backups a shot at the inside positions. They did bring in Enrique Cruz for a series at LT and it looked like he did okay but they went back to Big Spoon after that. I thought Washington was even a bigger problem (he was really not moving well) and I don't think he ever came out.
I suspect the staff was reluctant to pull Reed because I believe he calls the blocking assignments and with all the funky stuff Stanford was doing, you want the most experienced guy you can get out there to make those calls. It was another situation where exactly the wrong guy got marginalized at exactly the wrong time. It looked like the SU OL was confused by all the stuff Stanford was doing. They really got into the player's heads. So props to Stanford.
But we have to do a better job of taking advantage of press coverage and doubles on OG. That allowed them to stay heavy on the run and take away our run game. The turnovers made a huge role in allowing Stanford to have a chance to win and couple that with all the stupid penalties (largely unforced) and it is a minor miracle we had a very good chance to win the game.
Really concerned about Reed. We need him 100%. If he was in a boot after the game, I am thinking he is probably going to be held out of the Holy Cross game so he can hopefully get back to close to full health for the last 8 games. The other positions, I think we have capable guys and will be okay if changes are needed. Center, I am not so sure. Josh should be fine for Holy Cross though.
Hopefully we get better at handling the disrupting stuff defenses are throwing at us the rest of the season. Because you know we are going to see it the rest of the year now.
Thought Kyle played pretty well considering how much pressure he was under all game. He had a few poor throws and made a couple questionable decisions but you have to give a QB time to get his throws off and we struggled to do that.
Props to Pena for another excellent game. He benefits from the doubles on OG and has become the go to guy. Surprised to see OG have a game like this. Stanford played him physical, had a couple defenders all over him most of the time (the refs missed a few pass interference calls I think) and he was not able to make a couple catches under pressure. Other WRs and TEs was asked to step up and sometimes were not up to the challenge. Props to Gill in particular for playing tough, even though he is still a skinny guy. It is a shame the Hatcher long pass was called back. I haven't seen any replays other than at the dome and don't know if there was holding there. From the one angle they showed at the dome, I didn't see any obvious hold.
Speaking of holds, I have watched a lot of football over the years and I think there was more holding called Friday night than I have ever seen in a football game. Maybe I am crazy but watching the game live, Stanford seemed to hold on every pass play. We had guys getting tackled routinely. Things that make you go hmmmm.
Ayomanor is terrific. Cisse was solid. We gave Stanford the underneath routes most of the game and they were happy to take advantage. Kind of disconcerting to make it so easy for them to move the ball.
It looked like we went back to our base 4-2-5 defense for Stanford. Did not see Diggs play LB at all. Instead, it was Barron who Wax's spot at linebacker. And I have to say, this looked like a good move. Justin looked a lot more comfortable and for the first time this year, was his dominant self on defense, making a lot of tackles and big hits. I think he stays there at least until Marlowe gets back (if he does).
I think we also moved Grant to Barron's safety spot. Which worked out well. He also looks more comfortable there than at CB and he certainly was more effective at safety. Great pick for him. Barnes got hurt, which is unfortunate because I think he is already our best press defender and probably would have been the guy assigned to Ayomanor on that key fourth down play. However we learn from that play and do better now that the players are assigned to the positions they are best suited to.
Wanted to give LeQuint props. He didn't have a big game statistically but he never had holes to run through, and he played really hard all game long. I wish all the SU players played as passionately as he does.
Also props to the special teams units, which while they didn't do anything great, managed to stop Stanford from doing anything great as well. Good performance other than Malachi running that one KO back that he shouldn't have and the awful late hit by OG. What happened there? Did he just not realize the Stanford returner was done? Didn't he hear the whistle? Sigh.
It will be interesting to see what happens with the OL for the Holy Cross game. If the staff is going to make a change, it should happen before this game.
Hoping Haynes is back playing on Saturday. Hoping our banged up guys (definitely The General and we missed Tank Wilson a lot) are back 100% for Holy Cross. The season is young and great things are still possible.
Sometimes you learn the most and improve the most after the first loss. Let's hope that is the case for Syracuse here.
The tailgate had a southern tier theme. Spedies with great fresh bread (did eat the spedies, did not eat the bread). We brought in someone from down there to help bring us the tastes of that area.
There was pizza from Nirchis (I think), which is apparently an institution in Binghamton. I ate some. It was good. I mostly only ate the top of the pizza but the crust was good and I had some.
There was a deep fryer and from it came delicious wings and fries (yes, I had a few). The usual fare of burgers and hot dogs, sausage with peppers and onions, two kinds of lasagna (looked great did not touch), lots of other delicious looking carby things, lots to drink, etc. Very good spread very professional staged. Outstanding.
Headed up to attend The Walk with JDemo , Bob and son. It was worth the walk. Very well attended. From what I could see it was at least 3 deep on both sides the whole way and places had 5 or 10 people deep.
Really good to see such a big turnout for such a new tradition. The players and coaches arrived on time felt the love from the crowd. There were a lot of families with young kids and I think while the players were receptive to and pleasant to everyone (lots of fist bumps, winks, smiles and high fives), they were especially receptive to children. If you have a kid and want them to have a chance to see and possibly briefly interact with SU players or coaches, get them to this.
It doesn't take long. 5 minutes top from when the police started the procession to when the last player came through. Very nice. The best part was seeing the players genuinely enjoying the interaction and appreciating the support.
We headed back down to the tailgate. It is a pretty long walk. When I headed back up 30 or 40 minutes later, my legs were not happy with having to make that climb two times.
I love that we are doing the walk and am hoping there is a way to make it more convenient for tailgaters to tailgate and attend the walk. A shuttle (maybe use the trolleys SU has) from the west parking lots to near the quad would be a boon towards getting more people to attend the walk. And if it could also be used for people to get up to the dome to attend the game, I think it would make attending football games a lot more practical and attractive for many fans with mobility issues.
I think once the Miron Victory Court (MVC) is finished, you should have trolleys ride up Forestry Drive to MVC, drop fans off there or at Gate A then head back down to the west parking lots. People could enter MVC and come out the other side where they would be close to the Quad and where the walk is staged. Not practical until MVC is finished but I think this is something that should be considered by SUAD for the future. If cost is a problem, I am quite sure people would pay if a shuttle was made available. Better yet, make it available as another way to improve the fan experience on game day. Charge extra for parking in the west lots to offset the expense and everyone wins.
I digress.
Stanford did not bring a ton of fans. My guess is they had about 500 in the visitor's seating area. That said, the ones they brought made some noise and were very enthusiastic. I was hoping to see the Stanford tree mascot but he?she?zim?zir? did not make the trip. No cheerleaders came either. And of course, the Stanford band was a no show as well. Bummer. But I understand. Not many random Stanford fans sitting in the stands either. It is far away though so this was expected.
We saw a bunch of players not dressed for the game beforehand. Weird to have a worse situation with injuries after a bye week than we had before the bye week. Maybe we practiced too hard? Maybe something the staff learned here for the future? Not sure, hope it doesn't happen again for the second bye in October.
8 tubas. Not what you want. Doesn't look like this is going to improve the rest of the season. If I could give 10 kids $50 each to play sousaphone for the rest of the season, I would. That said, the band sounded good and was sharp marching.
I think the dome was darkened more for this night game than ones last year. Some funky colors were used to gentlely light the seating areas. The field itself was pretty dark. Made for a pretty cool look.
The game itself was a dog fight from the start. I give the Stanford coaching staff credit. They saw how much GT bothered us with their blitzing in the second half of that game and emulated that. They brought pressure on seemingly every pass play. Many types of blitzes were used. They did stunts, they moved players late, they did everything they could to make McCord uncomfortable. They played press coverage pretty much all game, and they doubled OG.
We could normally attack deep with Haynes but he was not available, which was a big loss. Hatcher and Gill are good but not the same at Zeed.
And to make things worse, we couldn't run the ball. The OL was dominated by the Stanford DL to a shocking extent. It wasn't just one player. The OTs looked slow and struggled to stop basic speed rushes. Didn't get push on running plays. The inside guys might have been even worse. Someone got past them all game long. Bradford was a mess and Reed really struggled. To be fair to Reed, you can could him limping around and it looked like he got more and more hobbled as the game progressed. He couldn't even get the ball to Kyle on shotgun snaps well. Surprised the staff did not give some of the backups a shot at the inside positions. They did bring in Enrique Cruz for a series at LT and it looked like he did okay but they went back to Big Spoon after that. I thought Washington was even a bigger problem (he was really not moving well) and I don't think he ever came out.
I suspect the staff was reluctant to pull Reed because I believe he calls the blocking assignments and with all the funky stuff Stanford was doing, you want the most experienced guy you can get out there to make those calls. It was another situation where exactly the wrong guy got marginalized at exactly the wrong time. It looked like the SU OL was confused by all the stuff Stanford was doing. They really got into the player's heads. So props to Stanford.
But we have to do a better job of taking advantage of press coverage and doubles on OG. That allowed them to stay heavy on the run and take away our run game. The turnovers made a huge role in allowing Stanford to have a chance to win and couple that with all the stupid penalties (largely unforced) and it is a minor miracle we had a very good chance to win the game.
Really concerned about Reed. We need him 100%. If he was in a boot after the game, I am thinking he is probably going to be held out of the Holy Cross game so he can hopefully get back to close to full health for the last 8 games. The other positions, I think we have capable guys and will be okay if changes are needed. Center, I am not so sure. Josh should be fine for Holy Cross though.
Hopefully we get better at handling the disrupting stuff defenses are throwing at us the rest of the season. Because you know we are going to see it the rest of the year now.
Thought Kyle played pretty well considering how much pressure he was under all game. He had a few poor throws and made a couple questionable decisions but you have to give a QB time to get his throws off and we struggled to do that.
Props to Pena for another excellent game. He benefits from the doubles on OG and has become the go to guy. Surprised to see OG have a game like this. Stanford played him physical, had a couple defenders all over him most of the time (the refs missed a few pass interference calls I think) and he was not able to make a couple catches under pressure. Other WRs and TEs was asked to step up and sometimes were not up to the challenge. Props to Gill in particular for playing tough, even though he is still a skinny guy. It is a shame the Hatcher long pass was called back. I haven't seen any replays other than at the dome and don't know if there was holding there. From the one angle they showed at the dome, I didn't see any obvious hold.
Speaking of holds, I have watched a lot of football over the years and I think there was more holding called Friday night than I have ever seen in a football game. Maybe I am crazy but watching the game live, Stanford seemed to hold on every pass play. We had guys getting tackled routinely. Things that make you go hmmmm.
Ayomanor is terrific. Cisse was solid. We gave Stanford the underneath routes most of the game and they were happy to take advantage. Kind of disconcerting to make it so easy for them to move the ball.
It looked like we went back to our base 4-2-5 defense for Stanford. Did not see Diggs play LB at all. Instead, it was Barron who Wax's spot at linebacker. And I have to say, this looked like a good move. Justin looked a lot more comfortable and for the first time this year, was his dominant self on defense, making a lot of tackles and big hits. I think he stays there at least until Marlowe gets back (if he does).
I think we also moved Grant to Barron's safety spot. Which worked out well. He also looks more comfortable there than at CB and he certainly was more effective at safety. Great pick for him. Barnes got hurt, which is unfortunate because I think he is already our best press defender and probably would have been the guy assigned to Ayomanor on that key fourth down play. However we learn from that play and do better now that the players are assigned to the positions they are best suited to.
Wanted to give LeQuint props. He didn't have a big game statistically but he never had holes to run through, and he played really hard all game long. I wish all the SU players played as passionately as he does.
Also props to the special teams units, which while they didn't do anything great, managed to stop Stanford from doing anything great as well. Good performance other than Malachi running that one KO back that he shouldn't have and the awful late hit by OG. What happened there? Did he just not realize the Stanford returner was done? Didn't he hear the whistle? Sigh.
It will be interesting to see what happens with the OL for the Holy Cross game. If the staff is going to make a change, it should happen before this game.
Hoping Haynes is back playing on Saturday. Hoping our banged up guys (definitely The General and we missed Tank Wilson a lot) are back 100% for Holy Cross. The season is young and great things are still possible.
Sometimes you learn the most and improve the most after the first loss. Let's hope that is the case for Syracuse here.
