SWC75
Bored Historian
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- Aug 26, 2011
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- I left the Dome, as I usually do through the main entrance, where they open the conventional doors and let people file out rather than waiting for the revolving doors. In the past, there was a WOOSH as the Dome slightly deflated and carried the fans through the door on a rapids of air. There was no woosh today but I already felt deflated.
- The defense was excellent, the best I’ve seen here in years but the offense was pathetically bad. Ever since Dino came here I’ve been looking at the stats from his prior teams at:
Eastern Illinois Eastern Illinois - Cumulative Season Statistics
Bowling Green 2015 Bowling Green State Falcons Stats | College Football at Sports-Reference.com
I would have expected to have something at least within shouting distance of those numbers by now and we’ve never come close. Tommy DeVito was supposed to be our version of Jimmy Garoppolo or Matt Johnson but he’s got 27 touchdown passes in 25 games. Garoppolo had 31 in 12 games as a junior and 53 in 14 games as a senior. Johnson was injured in his first year under Dino but in his senior year had 46TD passes in 14 games. Eric Dungey had 15, 14 and 18TD passes. Tommy had 19 in 2019. Our three quarterbacks had 15 last year. The team has none in two games this year.
- DeVito panicked on his first drive and passed the ball to Babers, drawing a grounding flag. One the next play he had a receiver open down the sideline for the first down and his pass, to quote Bob Uecker, was “just a bit outside”. He had a similar pass in the fourth quarter to Anthony Queeley that also would have gotten a first down and the put it in the same place, leading to the decision by Dino to punt the ball. Remember those reports that, even while Dungey was here, tommy had “easily the strongest and most accurate arm” on the team. Where is the accuracy? He’s been accurate enough to complete 26 passes but for only 242 yards and no scores. Where is the strength?
- Garret Schrader came in and failed to put the pressure on Tommy in three possessions. He made one good play, scrambling, throwing across his body and threading the needle for a first done. He also gave up on plays, scrambled and got sacked once and ran for 2, 1, 1 and -5 yards. On that last play he fumbled the ball out of bounds. He underthrew a long pass to Taj Harris by about 5 yards, allowing a defensive back to slap the ball away. He ahs a pass to the corner of the end zone featuring a Juan Marichal style-wind-up that allowed the defensive back to get into position to nearly intercept it. His long balls are thrown on a line and thus require perfect timing and can be batted away. Both DeVito and Harris were four-star talents coming out of his school but they didn’t look like it today.
- Dino expected Taj Harris to have a huge year. So far his head doesn’t seem to be in it. He let a ball get stropped at the 5-yard line to end one drive. Maybe it should have been overturned but it shouldn’t have happened. He also dropped a long ball along the sidelines from Shrader that could have been a first down or more.
- Sean Tucker got off to a good start, getting 30 yards on his first 6 carriers. Schiano made some adjustments and Sean got 0, 0, 3, 1 and 0 before bursting through for the 24 yard TD on his final carry. With one running back and the short list of relatively simple running pays in modern football, it’s too easy to shut down a running game if you aren’t dominating up front. Eventually they went to quarterback runs to provide another threat but Dino has said many times that that’s not the way he likes to go.
- We don’t have all the injuries we had last year but we do have one: Dakota Davis is out and Darius Tisdale was filing in for him. It was Tisdale that got blown up, leading to DeVito’s stripe fumble that produced the clinching field goal. After averaging 6.8 yards per rush vs. Ohio U., we averaged 2.2 today, suffered 5 sacks, 7 TFLs and 2 turnovers.
- Our defense was wonderful, except for one thing. We led the nation in takeovers during the regular season last year with 24. We have one this year and weren’t close today. We could sure have used a big one today.
- Andre Szmyt missed his only field goal attempts. It wasn’t a chip shot but a perfectly makable 46 yarder that could have made a difference in strategy at the end. Trebor Pena let a couple of punts get past him, one of which he bobbled, that cost us yardage. (To be far, Adam Korsak kicks a ball that, per Matt Park, “has nails sticking out of it”. Then there was that weird play where Dino sent in Colby Barber, the lacrosse player form Ohio State who punted in his school, instead of James Williams. Dino said they were trying some special play Barber was better at than Williams. Except he wasn’t. he got off a halftime-contest caliber kick that went a net 8 yards. I don’t think we’ll be seeing that trick play again, at least not with Barker.
- One of the two teams has completed 1 pass to a tight end this season, for 5 yards. The other completed 3 to their tight end for 38 yards and the go-ahead score. That team won.
- Ah, yes, the officiating. Dino was so mad in his presser that, even thought he kept his composure, you could have cooked a dome dog on his head. Greg Schiano was acting like the missing link on his sideline, trying to work the refs. He got a call on Mikel Jones after a third down stop. Dino said the refs told him that Jones had “body-slammed” the runner. Dino, who has never gotten a flag for unsportsmanlike conduct in his career as a player, assistant or head coach, claims that all he said was that he didn’t seem anyone body slam anyone. Rutgers got the first down and scored on the next play. The fumble on Harris’ catch should probably have bene over-turned. We got called for illegal formation 3-4 times. And there were numerous strange spots.
- Despite all the problems, I spent this game thinking that we wee going to win it. Our defense was dominant. We outgained them. I felt we were physically controlling the game. When that call went against Dino, we scored, going 75 yards on consecutive plays. The Dome was rocking. The SU sideline reporter said that Tony White, our defensive coordinator, went over to Tommy DeVito after that to tell him to “be ready – you’re getting the ball right back”. That can be accomplished in two ways but fortunately, the way used was to stop the other team and White’s defense did that with a three-and-out. I felt the whole team was mad about what happened to Dino and was going to win this going away. The rest of the game was Syracuse 0 Rutgers 10. We found a way to lose this one, despite a great defensive performance, thanks the Harris’ fumble, The Szmyt miss, the Babers flag, the crazy punt, the strip-sack, etc. etc. It was like rooting for the Mets.
- The defense was excellent, the best I’ve seen here in years but the offense was pathetically bad. Ever since Dino came here I’ve been looking at the stats from his prior teams at:
Eastern Illinois Eastern Illinois - Cumulative Season Statistics
Bowling Green 2015 Bowling Green State Falcons Stats | College Football at Sports-Reference.com
I would have expected to have something at least within shouting distance of those numbers by now and we’ve never come close. Tommy DeVito was supposed to be our version of Jimmy Garoppolo or Matt Johnson but he’s got 27 touchdown passes in 25 games. Garoppolo had 31 in 12 games as a junior and 53 in 14 games as a senior. Johnson was injured in his first year under Dino but in his senior year had 46TD passes in 14 games. Eric Dungey had 15, 14 and 18TD passes. Tommy had 19 in 2019. Our three quarterbacks had 15 last year. The team has none in two games this year.
- DeVito panicked on his first drive and passed the ball to Babers, drawing a grounding flag. One the next play he had a receiver open down the sideline for the first down and his pass, to quote Bob Uecker, was “just a bit outside”. He had a similar pass in the fourth quarter to Anthony Queeley that also would have gotten a first down and the put it in the same place, leading to the decision by Dino to punt the ball. Remember those reports that, even while Dungey was here, tommy had “easily the strongest and most accurate arm” on the team. Where is the accuracy? He’s been accurate enough to complete 26 passes but for only 242 yards and no scores. Where is the strength?
- Garret Schrader came in and failed to put the pressure on Tommy in three possessions. He made one good play, scrambling, throwing across his body and threading the needle for a first done. He also gave up on plays, scrambled and got sacked once and ran for 2, 1, 1 and -5 yards. On that last play he fumbled the ball out of bounds. He underthrew a long pass to Taj Harris by about 5 yards, allowing a defensive back to slap the ball away. He ahs a pass to the corner of the end zone featuring a Juan Marichal style-wind-up that allowed the defensive back to get into position to nearly intercept it. His long balls are thrown on a line and thus require perfect timing and can be batted away. Both DeVito and Harris were four-star talents coming out of his school but they didn’t look like it today.
- Dino expected Taj Harris to have a huge year. So far his head doesn’t seem to be in it. He let a ball get stropped at the 5-yard line to end one drive. Maybe it should have been overturned but it shouldn’t have happened. He also dropped a long ball along the sidelines from Shrader that could have been a first down or more.
- Sean Tucker got off to a good start, getting 30 yards on his first 6 carriers. Schiano made some adjustments and Sean got 0, 0, 3, 1 and 0 before bursting through for the 24 yard TD on his final carry. With one running back and the short list of relatively simple running pays in modern football, it’s too easy to shut down a running game if you aren’t dominating up front. Eventually they went to quarterback runs to provide another threat but Dino has said many times that that’s not the way he likes to go.
- We don’t have all the injuries we had last year but we do have one: Dakota Davis is out and Darius Tisdale was filing in for him. It was Tisdale that got blown up, leading to DeVito’s stripe fumble that produced the clinching field goal. After averaging 6.8 yards per rush vs. Ohio U., we averaged 2.2 today, suffered 5 sacks, 7 TFLs and 2 turnovers.
- Our defense was wonderful, except for one thing. We led the nation in takeovers during the regular season last year with 24. We have one this year and weren’t close today. We could sure have used a big one today.
- Andre Szmyt missed his only field goal attempts. It wasn’t a chip shot but a perfectly makable 46 yarder that could have made a difference in strategy at the end. Trebor Pena let a couple of punts get past him, one of which he bobbled, that cost us yardage. (To be far, Adam Korsak kicks a ball that, per Matt Park, “has nails sticking out of it”. Then there was that weird play where Dino sent in Colby Barber, the lacrosse player form Ohio State who punted in his school, instead of James Williams. Dino said they were trying some special play Barber was better at than Williams. Except he wasn’t. he got off a halftime-contest caliber kick that went a net 8 yards. I don’t think we’ll be seeing that trick play again, at least not with Barker.
- One of the two teams has completed 1 pass to a tight end this season, for 5 yards. The other completed 3 to their tight end for 38 yards and the go-ahead score. That team won.
- Ah, yes, the officiating. Dino was so mad in his presser that, even thought he kept his composure, you could have cooked a dome dog on his head. Greg Schiano was acting like the missing link on his sideline, trying to work the refs. He got a call on Mikel Jones after a third down stop. Dino said the refs told him that Jones had “body-slammed” the runner. Dino, who has never gotten a flag for unsportsmanlike conduct in his career as a player, assistant or head coach, claims that all he said was that he didn’t seem anyone body slam anyone. Rutgers got the first down and scored on the next play. The fumble on Harris’ catch should probably have bene over-turned. We got called for illegal formation 3-4 times. And there were numerous strange spots.
- Despite all the problems, I spent this game thinking that we wee going to win it. Our defense was dominant. We outgained them. I felt we were physically controlling the game. When that call went against Dino, we scored, going 75 yards on consecutive plays. The Dome was rocking. The SU sideline reporter said that Tony White, our defensive coordinator, went over to Tommy DeVito after that to tell him to “be ready – you’re getting the ball right back”. That can be accomplished in two ways but fortunately, the way used was to stop the other team and White’s defense did that with a three-and-out. I felt the whole team was mad about what happened to Dino and was going to win this going away. The rest of the game was Syracuse 0 Rutgers 10. We found a way to lose this one, despite a great defensive performance, thanks the Harris’ fumble, The Szmyt miss, the Babers flag, the crazy punt, the strip-sack, etc. etc. It was like rooting for the Mets.
