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Message: [QUOTE="SWC75, post: 343672, member: 289"] - We lost. This was one of the “toss-up” games that will probably determine whether we got to a bowl. We actually dominated most of the game but gave it away on two long punt returns, a tipped pass interception, a brain-dead play and a dropped interception that would have virtually ended the game. We can’t get this one back and at the end of the season we may be a 5-7 team looking back at this game as the one that we coulda shoulda woulda won if….much like last year’s Rutgers game. - If we wind up 5-7, Jerome Smith’s failure to fall on the backwards pass he couldn’t catch will be remembered the way Philip Thomas’s dropping of the interception that could have put us up 20-3 vs. Rutgers last year. If hope it doesn’t wind up that way. The season will be a battle to make that play irrelevant. We lost that battle today. - We had 12 penalties for 72 yards. When you look for reasons we lost, take a moment to look past the big plays and look at that. - Those first two trips to the red zone produced two field goals. Look at that, too. - There’s a lot of talk about Keon Lyn being called for a late hit that let Northwestern off the hook on that final drive. Was it a good call? Should he have made any contact with a guy who was just trying to go out of bounds? But that play doesn’t matter and we are celebrating a victory if a pass four plays earlier is intercepted. The ball was almost thrown directly to a linebacker, (I saw a ‘5’ as part of the player’s number so I’m guessing it was Dyshawn Davis), but he almost fought it off and the ball bounced behind him where a D-Back, (Lyn?) dived for it but couldn’t get it. - The heat was supposed to cause Northwestern to cramp up and wilt down the stretch. But we had more guys flat on their backs than they did, although every one got up and got back in the game. - Our offense was certainly productive. They were able to covert a lot of short passes and get a lot of first downs which allowed them, (along with the no-huddle look), to get off 95 plays. But Ryan Nassib’s yards per completion was 10.7 and his yards per attempt was 7.2. Last year it was 10.4 and 6.7. The average top 25 quarterback averaged 12.7 and 8.2. Basically we still are dependent on the same short passing game we were last year. We just got more of them off in the no-huddle and Nassib was very efficient. The one long pass he completed was aided by a defender who fell down. Most of the passes were what I call “dart throws”, where multiple receivers go downfield and turn toward the quarterback, who throws it to the one most open. There aren’t many plays where he has to hit a receiver on the move. Nassib is a very good dart thrower. But it’s still limited offense, even if they do a lot of different things within 15 yards of the line of scrimmage. - This offense still has more of the tortoise in it than the hare. It still depends on receivers and runners to break tackles or juke defenders to get big plays, which our guys don‘t do very often. It still requires long drive to score unless they get set up by the defense or kicking game. The scoring drives that began in our own territory were 8 plays, 14 plays, 14 plays, 3 plays- the 50 yarder- 10 plays and 7 plays. That means you’ve got avoid major errors for 10-12 plays a possession to score. That’s hard to do. In that final possession, we really had no chance to got 80 yards in 44 second to win the game, (or even 50 to set up a makeable field goal). We had nothing in our offense that could produce such a result. The last play wasn’t even a Hail Mary. It was dump-off pass to Gulley over the middle. [/QUOTE]

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