SWC75
Bored Historian
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- Aug 26, 2011
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- I was shocked when Garrett Schrader went out there as our new #1 quarterback. As the game played out, I came to realize why. The game plane was to use our healthy, veteran line to run the ball down the throat of their defense, which, except for the two tackles, is undersized. That keeps Malik Willis and the rest of those guys who were running up and down the field against us last year on the sidelines. We could wear them down and maybe get some big gains or at least some time-consuming drives in the fourth quarter. Why not go with your best running quarterback? He could be used as a change-up to the constant pounding of our star running back. That approach had its limitations but in the end it worked. It will be interesting to see if Dino sticks with this approach or whether it was just for this game, although he had declared that this was the week when he’d decided on our #1 quarterback.
- Sean Tucker played like a #44. Liberty has a good, swarming defense and they knew he was coming but he gutted it out for 169 yards on 32 carries for 1 score. Everything else we did was to take advantage. He was also tied for our leading receiver with 2 catches for 27 yards so that’s 33 touches, during which he got ‘touched’ plenty of times by the Flames, including one fourth quarter play where he got leveled from the side and was flat on his back for several minutes. But he got up from that make the runs that set up the winning field goal. The post-game show guy on the radio was fond of referring to those Liberty Mutual commercials where they say “Liberty…Liberty…Liberty”. I like the one where the three girls are playing jump rope and they suddenly age and become old ladies. The one who has been jumping rope all that time says, “Yup…I hurt all over”. That has to be Sean Tucker tonight. I brought along a book to read during break about Floyd Little. In it, he says “Throughout my career, I played hurt. I always thought it was important to play as long as you weren’t hurting your team. I believe you only get so many plays in your career and I didn’t want to leave the game thinking ‘I wish I had’ or “I should have’. Not me. The thing is, running get hit so much that you have to be abler to distinguish the difference between pain and injury or you’ll never suit up.” I felt watching Sean play tonight that Floyd would have enjoyed watching him.
- Our offensive line fired out like I haven’t seen in years. On every play for the first three quarters, Tucker of whoever was carrying the ball was getting past the line of scrimmage before he was hit and was able to fall forward for a bit more. We didn’t get explosive plays except for the one 27 yarder by Tucker but we were imposing our will on their defense. I thought we going to succeed in wearing them down but they realized that they didn’t have to worry about a passing threat and put everybody in the box in the fourth quarter and went after us with run blitzes that turned the game around in their favor until our defense turned it back.
- As great as Tucker was, the game ball has to go to the defense, a group that as freshmen were gashed by this team for 338 yards rushing, 520 total yards and 38 points. In this game they rushed for 150 yards, had 369 total yards and 21 points. But the big thing was that magical ending. Liberty had apparently taken the lead on a 4 yard touchdown pass with 9:30 left but a review finds that the player was out-of-bounds. (I’m still not sure of that: his feet were out but his hip looked down in the end zone when he got control of the ball). We stopped TJ Green at the 3 and Willis at the 2 before throwing Willis for a loss back at the three for a classic goal line stand. We had looked like we were wilting until that point. Two Tucker runs got us a big first down. The next play was the one on which he was leveled form the side and without him we couldn’t keep the drive going and had to punt. Willis rant through us for 10 yards on the first play. There were 3:35 left when Cody Roscoe, (who now has 5 sacks in the last two games), Marlowe Wax and Mickel Jones combined for the strip-sack that was Liberty’s first turn-over of the season. A couple of determined runs by Tucker and a keeper by Schraeder got us a first down that allowed us to run the clock down to 0:01, (that’s cutting it close!). In came Andre Szmyt to close it out from 35 yards out and we had what will hopefully be the first win of our ‘revenge tour’.
- 3-1, baby! 3-5 three rest of the way puts us in a bowl game and saves Dino’s job. With the conference looking weak, I think we can do better than that. But we needed to put this one in the books to get it started. We beat a pretty good football team and looked like one ourselves.
- Don’t let the door hit you in ass on the way out, Liberty!
3-1 with 8+ to go
LET’S GO ORANGE!!!
- Sean Tucker played like a #44. Liberty has a good, swarming defense and they knew he was coming but he gutted it out for 169 yards on 32 carries for 1 score. Everything else we did was to take advantage. He was also tied for our leading receiver with 2 catches for 27 yards so that’s 33 touches, during which he got ‘touched’ plenty of times by the Flames, including one fourth quarter play where he got leveled from the side and was flat on his back for several minutes. But he got up from that make the runs that set up the winning field goal. The post-game show guy on the radio was fond of referring to those Liberty Mutual commercials where they say “Liberty…Liberty…Liberty”. I like the one where the three girls are playing jump rope and they suddenly age and become old ladies. The one who has been jumping rope all that time says, “Yup…I hurt all over”. That has to be Sean Tucker tonight. I brought along a book to read during break about Floyd Little. In it, he says “Throughout my career, I played hurt. I always thought it was important to play as long as you weren’t hurting your team. I believe you only get so many plays in your career and I didn’t want to leave the game thinking ‘I wish I had’ or “I should have’. Not me. The thing is, running get hit so much that you have to be abler to distinguish the difference between pain and injury or you’ll never suit up.” I felt watching Sean play tonight that Floyd would have enjoyed watching him.
- Our offensive line fired out like I haven’t seen in years. On every play for the first three quarters, Tucker of whoever was carrying the ball was getting past the line of scrimmage before he was hit and was able to fall forward for a bit more. We didn’t get explosive plays except for the one 27 yarder by Tucker but we were imposing our will on their defense. I thought we going to succeed in wearing them down but they realized that they didn’t have to worry about a passing threat and put everybody in the box in the fourth quarter and went after us with run blitzes that turned the game around in their favor until our defense turned it back.
- As great as Tucker was, the game ball has to go to the defense, a group that as freshmen were gashed by this team for 338 yards rushing, 520 total yards and 38 points. In this game they rushed for 150 yards, had 369 total yards and 21 points. But the big thing was that magical ending. Liberty had apparently taken the lead on a 4 yard touchdown pass with 9:30 left but a review finds that the player was out-of-bounds. (I’m still not sure of that: his feet were out but his hip looked down in the end zone when he got control of the ball). We stopped TJ Green at the 3 and Willis at the 2 before throwing Willis for a loss back at the three for a classic goal line stand. We had looked like we were wilting until that point. Two Tucker runs got us a big first down. The next play was the one on which he was leveled form the side and without him we couldn’t keep the drive going and had to punt. Willis rant through us for 10 yards on the first play. There were 3:35 left when Cody Roscoe, (who now has 5 sacks in the last two games), Marlowe Wax and Mickel Jones combined for the strip-sack that was Liberty’s first turn-over of the season. A couple of determined runs by Tucker and a keeper by Schraeder got us a first down that allowed us to run the clock down to 0:01, (that’s cutting it close!). In came Andre Szmyt to close it out from 35 yards out and we had what will hopefully be the first win of our ‘revenge tour’.
- 3-1, baby! 3-5 three rest of the way puts us in a bowl game and saves Dino’s job. With the conference looking weak, I think we can do better than that. But we needed to put this one in the books to get it started. We beat a pretty good football team and looked like one ourselves.
- Don’t let the door hit you in ass on the way out, Liberty!
3-1 with 8+ to go
LET’S GO ORANGE!!!
