SWC75
Bored Historian
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- Aug 26, 2011
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- The first half totally belonged to Army. Everything was working exactly as they would have wanted it to go. Dino Babers, after the Cadets had taken the opening kick-off against San Antonio and put on a 16 play, 75 yard TD drive that chewed up 7 minutes and 8 seconds, elected to defer our getting the ball first until the second half and then watched Army drive 75 yards in 18 plays and score a touchdown while chewing up 9 minutes and 25 seconds. Babers said with all his experience in playing service academies, he’ll go against the analytics an take the ball to start the second half. I have to agree: if we’d had our opening three and out first, off of the way the game went in that first had, I believe they’d gone 75 yards in 18 plays over 9:25 anyway. But it looked bad.
- When Army went on a 19 play, 64 yard drive that took up 9:20 of the second quarter, I was in despair that we just couldn’t stop these guys and the whole game was going to look like this. What was worrisome is that our tackling started out being done by linemen and linebackers and now it was being done by defensive backs. The defense seemed to be wearing down.
- Our plan had been to hit them deep early, get a lead and make such a drive impossible. We did that in the second half. Why wasn’t the second half the first half? Imagine if he had taken a 26-0 lead, (and not given up the 80 yarder because the reserves would not have been sent in). Those long drives never would have happened because Army would have to abandon their game plan. The second drive resulted in just a field goal for one reason: the Cadets had gotten to our 21 and they didn’t have time to run it, gaining 3-4 yards per play. So they went to the air after 15 runs in 16 plays, threw two incompletions and had to settle for a field goal with 29 seconds left. Those last two incompletions are what their second half would have been like if we had that 26-0 halftime lead.
- Garrett Shrader almost made the first half a total disaster. He underthrew a sideline pass and it would have been a pick-6 on our first possession but Cadet Cameron Jones dropped it. Then when we were trying to get a score – any score – in those last 29 seconds, he threw into coverage and got picked by Jones, who wriggled his way through both teams and was off to the races before Omari Hatcher and LeQuint Allen caught him.
- Allen had a frustrating first half: 4 rushes for 16 yards and a trip to the locker room to access an injury. Then he open the second half with 6 yards on 4 more carries before the line found a way to give him an opening.
- Hatcher had a shot at a big play as Shrader make a perfect throw down the sideline that Omari could have caught in stride if he did pull to find the ball and then accelerate to make up for it. It was just beyond his reach. In the end, we didn’t beat Army with long bombs: they did it with surgical short passes.
- D’Marcus Adams made another one of those diving catches on a punt and got replaced by the guy he was behind in the depth chart anyway, Trebor Pena. Adams is an exciting guy but sometimes he creates a little too much excitement. Possession is 9/10ths of punt returning.
- Brady Denaburg made the fourth quarter more interesting than it needed to be by missing that extra point: a 19 point lead is two touchdowns, two tries for two and a field goal. A 20 point lead requires three touchdowns to overcome. More importantly, we’ve now missed two extra points, (the other being a muff against Colgate) and a makeable 44 yard field goal vs. Purdue.
- Obligatory complaint about the officials: There weren’t a lot of controversial plays but Pena was tackled out of bounds, (horse collar?), on a punt return and all we got out of it was holding against us. Then Hatcher caught the TD that put us ahead and was called for “unsportsmanlike conduct. I didn’t see him do anything and neither did the guys in our booth. Maybe he said something. Then there were the several times the ref stood in front of Garrett Shrader to prevent him from getting off a play while a Army defender was running off the field. I think there’s a rule they put in about that a couple years back to slow offenses down but was it supposed to cover tardy players?
- Tim Leonard did a good job subbing for Matt Park in the SU both when Matt had to miss the game because of a “family problem”. I hope everything is OK for Matt and his family.
- I also hope Andre Miller will be OK.
- When Army went on a 19 play, 64 yard drive that took up 9:20 of the second quarter, I was in despair that we just couldn’t stop these guys and the whole game was going to look like this. What was worrisome is that our tackling started out being done by linemen and linebackers and now it was being done by defensive backs. The defense seemed to be wearing down.
- Our plan had been to hit them deep early, get a lead and make such a drive impossible. We did that in the second half. Why wasn’t the second half the first half? Imagine if he had taken a 26-0 lead, (and not given up the 80 yarder because the reserves would not have been sent in). Those long drives never would have happened because Army would have to abandon their game plan. The second drive resulted in just a field goal for one reason: the Cadets had gotten to our 21 and they didn’t have time to run it, gaining 3-4 yards per play. So they went to the air after 15 runs in 16 plays, threw two incompletions and had to settle for a field goal with 29 seconds left. Those last two incompletions are what their second half would have been like if we had that 26-0 halftime lead.
- Garrett Shrader almost made the first half a total disaster. He underthrew a sideline pass and it would have been a pick-6 on our first possession but Cadet Cameron Jones dropped it. Then when we were trying to get a score – any score – in those last 29 seconds, he threw into coverage and got picked by Jones, who wriggled his way through both teams and was off to the races before Omari Hatcher and LeQuint Allen caught him.
- Allen had a frustrating first half: 4 rushes for 16 yards and a trip to the locker room to access an injury. Then he open the second half with 6 yards on 4 more carries before the line found a way to give him an opening.
- Hatcher had a shot at a big play as Shrader make a perfect throw down the sideline that Omari could have caught in stride if he did pull to find the ball and then accelerate to make up for it. It was just beyond his reach. In the end, we didn’t beat Army with long bombs: they did it with surgical short passes.
- D’Marcus Adams made another one of those diving catches on a punt and got replaced by the guy he was behind in the depth chart anyway, Trebor Pena. Adams is an exciting guy but sometimes he creates a little too much excitement. Possession is 9/10ths of punt returning.
- Brady Denaburg made the fourth quarter more interesting than it needed to be by missing that extra point: a 19 point lead is two touchdowns, two tries for two and a field goal. A 20 point lead requires three touchdowns to overcome. More importantly, we’ve now missed two extra points, (the other being a muff against Colgate) and a makeable 44 yard field goal vs. Purdue.
- Obligatory complaint about the officials: There weren’t a lot of controversial plays but Pena was tackled out of bounds, (horse collar?), on a punt return and all we got out of it was holding against us. Then Hatcher caught the TD that put us ahead and was called for “unsportsmanlike conduct. I didn’t see him do anything and neither did the guys in our booth. Maybe he said something. Then there were the several times the ref stood in front of Garrett Shrader to prevent him from getting off a play while a Army defender was running off the field. I think there’s a rule they put in about that a couple years back to slow offenses down but was it supposed to cover tardy players?
- Tim Leonard did a good job subbing for Matt Park in the SU both when Matt had to miss the game because of a “family problem”. I hope everything is OK for Matt and his family.
- I also hope Andre Miller will be OK.
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