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Thoughts on game

SBG

Administrator
Club Member
Junta Member
1. TClem and Prich stepped it up. It helps that EB was calling more passes downfield than he has in most previous game. Utah ran man coverage a lot of the game, but those guys were mismatched against their DBs.

2. Our LBs play out of position and don't play assignment football very well. This falls on Cabral. Sure, there is something to be said for instincts, but everyone should know their gap assignment. Seems like Mankhe was doing better Major and Webb in that department.

3. Hansen's 4th down run for a first was great. With the struggles Oliver had with blocks it was great to get him a chipshot.

4. We dominated in nearly every phase of the game, except ST. The O struggled and should have put up more points especially in the first half, but we had a ton of 60+ yard drives. That nasty RB was steamrolling our LBs in the second so that was a good adjustment by them. We had no answer for him and I was pretty scared he was going to run away with the game. Polk laid a great hit on him!

5. They played a field position type of game with the QB they had. Their punter was the MVP. Holy crap, he pinned us deep and often, but the O was able to get what it needed. It was great seeing a lot of 3 and outs.

6. Utah's kicker had perhaps the worst game I've seen for a kicker in a very long time. I would feel bad for the kid if I wasn't a Buff fan, but I am so I'll take it. 3 missed fgs and he had a beautiful onside kick that luckily Webb recovered. Utah recovers and they drive down the field and get a TD.

7. Utah fans are whiners. They was a lot of booing for what amount to nothing. Every big hit was somehow a personal foul or cheap. I wonder if it was like this for their other games.

8. Our punting was awful throughout the day. O'Neil was pretty good throughout the season, but had some awful kicks yesterday. Hopefully he's not getting a good leg because a good punter can change the game with the type of offense that EB and Embree want to run. In fact, it's a requisite. We don't have Oregon's offense.

9. It was horrible that Speedy missed most of the game. With Speedy in there they were respecting the playaction. The guy is a game changer and we will miss him.

10. TJ runs angry and has a good ceiling. One cut and downfield. He had some good runs, but unlike Speedy seems have a harder time improvising. He needs an OL that opens things up, but he isn't afraid of contact. He was running to the outside given that our interior OL was just getting dominated throughout the game and did a good job of that.

11. EB called a beautiful game. That TD pass to Harrington was allsome and unexpected. Was that his first of the year? If there is a FB out there that we are recruiting we need to show that pass.

12. Embree had perhaps one of the worst challenges I've seen ever in college ball. Absolutely terrible. It hurt us later when that Utah receiver caught it and the ball hit the ground. That may not get overruled, but it would have been a better challenge. Clemons also was down at the 3 yard line. We all thought the ball was going to get pushed back from the 1 (as it should have).

13. We got up for this game! Embree and EB were fired up. Allsome. Embree couldn't even conduct his post-game interview because he threw out his voice. Love it. It looked like we finally believed we could win.

14. Mentioned in another post, our D had 2 sacks and a TFL on that last Utah series. Worth mentioning again. We were in full meltdown mode after they went 80 yards on the opening drive of the second. :lol:

Anything I missed?
 
15. Besides the Clemons spot that was challenged for a TD (put on the 1, but should have been put on the 3) I can't remember a game that had worse reffing. Truly awful. Jones gets that facemask called and the Utah never gets another shot. Orms pf should not have been called either. He did him a bit high, but he didn't hit him with his helmet and the receiver still had a chance of catching that. It hit his hands. Orms' job is to make sure he doesn't catch that. Textbook tackle. I'll take the penalty risk every time with a hit like that (because it wasn't a cheapshot). Receivers need to fear going over the middle. I do feel bad that he got the wind knocked out of him, but it wasn't a cheapshot.
 
16. Utah knew our snap count. They jumped early every time. They were never offside, but holy **** something was tipping them off. That gave a huge leverage advantage to the Utah DL. Their DL was coached very well. They pancaked our OL several times due to the fact that they knew our snapcount.

17. How many fricking false starts can we have? We had more false start penalty yards than Utah had on offense in the first half.
 
Very good post, good comments in total.

On a couple of them
#2 Major has been playing slow all season, he clearly isn't recovered from the knee injury. Doesn't have good speed, doesn't change direction like he did before he was hurt and is just now starting to get back to driving into guys. Hopefully he will be able to rehab well over the off-season and return closer to his pre-injury abilities. Webb is also showing the effects of his ankle injury.
#4 We have had trouble all year with physical runners, we are just to small and weak on defense. Need to recruit some nasty guys. Would this RB have run through Thad Washington?
#6 About time we are on the recieving end of some missed FGs, nuff said.
#7 That seems like a carryover from the WAC/MWC days. Watch any MWC game and you will see more marginal late hits, cheap shots, dirty plays, etc. than any other league. There is a long history of doing it and a long history of whining about the other team doing it while ignoring your own team doing it.
#8 O'Neill is very talented, hopefully an off-season of coaching will help him with his consistency. On the subject of kicking can we please find someone who can kick off and consistently start the other team inside their 30. We may never have another Mason Crosby who put the ball through the uprights on a regular basis but just get the ball close to the goal line with a little hang time to let the cover team get under it.
#9-#10 I love Speedy but honestly don't think we lose much if any with TJ, he isn't as shifty but runs through tackles better. With coaching he will learn the screen game (but can't drop balls like he did in the second half) and is improving a lot in his blocking already.
#11-#13 Our coaches are learning and getting better as well. They are as inexperienced as a lot of our players and will make mistakes but also will develop. Embree has to learn to channel his emotion which is both his strength and his weakness.
 
Also agree on the officiating, it sucked completely.

As bad as we were with false starts, etc. we are way better this year on discipline issues than we were the past few years, that is part of the culture that is being changed.
 
Utah had a personal foul early in the game that led to our first TD. I don't think they had any other. We needed a TD on that drive to establish early momentum. While I hate PFs, the O needed the 15 yards to help establish a rhythm.
 
MtnBuff said:
Very good post, good comments in total.

#4 We have had trouble all year with physical runners, we are just to small and weak on defense. Need to recruit some nasty guys. Would this RB have run through Thad Washington?
Click to expand...

Or even Rippy. While Rippy isn't as good as Bad Thad, we missed him in this game. The front 7 definitely need to get bigger. We also whiffed a couple of times on tackling, and not because this RB was Barry Sanders. I think sometimes the LBs play out of position because the DL is undersized and a lot of people on the team feel like they have to make a play. Under Hawk we won games because of guys like Dizon or TWheat or Abe Wright or Bad Thad because they would step up (above that Collins defense, UGH!!). That mentality also needs to go and bigger bodies will help that.
 
18. This team is terrible with the silent count. Absolutely abysmal. That falls on OL coaching and the QB. It's not like we were playing at the bugeaters' place where you can't hear your own thoughts.
 
the staff really needs to study and adjust the blitzes they run. They seldom overload the O and create the situation of more rushers than blockers in an area.
 
Really good all-around game and I thought the coaches had a gameplan that complemented each phase quite well. It was nice to see a team play with fire from start to finish and also answering Utah's rally with that big TD drive in the third quarter.

As far as things to address this offseason:
1. Yesterday highlighted our issues at LB. Webb gets lost when playing physical teams and we really miss Rippy because he was the only guy to play with any consistency this season.
2. We still have some work to do on special teams. Our returners are really bad. The kickoffs are bad. O'Neill still has issues in getting hang times on punts. I would expect an open competition for the punting job when spring ball rolls around.
 
RedDirtBuff said:
the staff really needs to study and adjust the blitzes they run. They seldom overload the O and create the situation of more rushers than blockers in an area.
Click to expand...

Some of this is talent, but I agree. Polk was never used on a zone blitz or a delayed blitz and he's a burner. Because our other safety wasn't as athletic as Polk we couldn't afford to use Polk that way. That is frustrating because I think he'd be good at blitzing and he isn't afraid to lay the wood.

We never disguise our blitzes. We show what we are running 90% of the time. We only ever have one delayed blitz a game. I'd love to run a blindside CB blitz too, but Hendo would be our only guy to do that and there is no way in hell that was going to happen with our DBs this year.

Instead, we show what we are going to do, the OL makes their adjustment and we attack the strong side and can't get any pressure. That's a huge fault of GB because our blitz packages are rather pedestrian. He does prefer a lot of stunts and twists, but we lacked lateral quickness on the DL to do that very effectively too.
 
I agree on lb, we simply dont have the size to stand in at the point of attack. Hard to stay gap sound when we cant take on blocks and instead try to go around them. Saw that quite a bit yesterday, especially with Webb. The thing that was pissing me off about the false starts was it seemed to be from them shifting late. Only problem is, they did it the whole ****ing game. You'd think a certain guard would have picked up on that especially being a senior. The officiating was well bad. I wonder how Christopher is feeling today, he got lit up not once but twice. Orms layed the wood to him, holy **** was beautiful, and he led with his shoulder right to the sternum. Isnt that what the powers that be want now?
 
A couple things
1) The false starts were crazy for this late in the season. I don't know exactly who got them all but it seemed to me that Adkins had a vast majority of the false starts.
2) Officials were terrible. I hate bitching about the refs especially after a win but seriously no facemask call followed by a VERY ****** personal foul call. PS they didn't throw a flag until the receiver was writhing in pain on the ground.
3) LB's- I think missing Rippy was a bigger deal than anyone realized. Major is really the only other true LB we had and he was overwhelmed with it yesterday. I like Mahnke and co. but they are not classic D1 LB's that we need. Patrick is really a SS playing LB, Webb is gonna be better but young.
4) very impressed by TJ filling in for speedy but I really would love to see a bigger back at some point. I think in the future TJ would be a LOT more dangerous if we had a big man to take 15 carries a game and wear down the D a little first. I know a UT frosh RB left the team this year and was supposed to be a beast coming outta HS (also supposed to be really big) There was some rumor weeks ago about him deciding to transfer to CU or LSU I think. But I have not heard anything about it. Anyone else have some info on that. I would love to have 2 five star UT transfers starting in the backfield next year.
 
It was a very pleasant surprise to see the effort from start to finish and the team hang in there, particularly on the road, even when Utah seemed to have the full momentum at times in the 2nd half. We had more than our share of bad or stupid mistakes which were very frustrating but at least we hung in there and didn't fold or look completely inept like we have for long stretches in just about every road game this year.

The tough part is that if we had this kind of effort all season we'd be looking at 5-7 wins and a possible bowl game. :huh:
 
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