They were clipping our guys all game long, especially on those screens.
This game was full of woulda's, coulda's and shoulda's. I hope Marrone has Lyn watch that OOB hit over and over again. You just can't hurt your team like that at crunch time. Gotta be smart. There's no telling if they still get a first down on 4th and whatever it would have been, but their play options would have limited on a 4th down, and we could have brought the blitz.
Missed 2pt conversion (dropped ball), the shanked FG (he came across that ball and not through it), the Wales fumble, the Sales tipped ball (Nassib threw too low), the backwards pass (how do you not play that out like it could have been a fumble?)...there is blame to go around everywhere. The most important thing to me was seeing our boys NOT QUIT. I had just said to JoeCollege that it looked like they had given up when the 2nd QB came in and drove them down the field for TD. Then it was like a switch went on. All of a sudden we were making plays again. Hackett's play calls were far less conservative. I was never so happy to eat my words.
The ending hurt. Bad. But, in the end, we beat ourselves more than Northwestern did. And that can be fixed.