The first half vs the second half sums up where we are. I surely did not expect us to be so productive in the first half. We actually played with great poise at times. We were clearly in sync. Body language tells you a great deal. The WSU players were shocked by how well we executed. Mike Leach’s face reminds me of a poker player but I have no doubts that he was majorly concerned.
Going into the dressing with the lead can have different affects on your adrenaline. Clearly ours went down a few notches. It is very common for “transition” Teams. Then the bad snap happened after a few bone heads decision on our part. In retrospect it is very easy to say that CDH reaction was over the top. At the same time he too will learn that he has to have patience. Everything else went down hill from there. Everyone has to understand on this site that we have barely scratch the surface on what a CDH led Team can do at this level. Nobody wants to hear about being patient. Personally I am ecstatic by what I have seen so far. D’Eriq has to play better but he too showed some great improvements. Just imagine if one or two of these throws had made connection. This is how close this game could have been. To win these games they have to connect. Our defense is not deep enough and good enough to contain such an offense for an entire game. At this time we have no margin for errors but we are far closer than I expected getting into this season.
Thank you, Chris, for a little sensibility.
Agree. I wonder if there is a way to just not have a third quarter next game. We seem to have third quarter blues.
We beat the spread in both our big games.
You can really see how much better the team is already. If you are open to looking.
Except penalties… Take those away in the first half we may have read away with this game
I feel a lot better about where the team is headed after this game. Yes the snap exchange changed the whole momentum of the game. We really needed to score to start the second half. If Anderson or Stuard come down with the Int, things would be different. A lot of what ifs. We need four focused quarters and this team will be hard to beat. Defense played inspired and seems up to task of giving us a chance. King is a baller, hard to bet against him.
After rewatching the game, I have modified my opinion from last night at the game. King did have 4 bad throws to open receivers when he had time to throw; but he also had the same amount of drops by the receivers and a throw away. That accounts for 9 of the 11 incompletions, a couple more were defended and I won’t call the incompletion on the sideline a drop when the WR lost the ball hitting the ground out of bouds since that would have been a miracle catch. But King actually had a better game than I thought last night. Of course there were a couple of passes where PI was called on what would have been TD’s but that was just smart play on the defenders part – better to give up 15 yards than a TD.
Our center was a liability last night. His repeated high snaps, and a couple of wide snaps, threw off the timing of many plays. Our transfer lineman had several holding calls that cost us. In general, we had way too many pnalties.
Our D needs to forget the 3 man rush unless it can prove it’s superior to the OL of the opposition. You can’t give a QB all the time in the world because, even with 8 in coverage, someone will come open.
But all in all, we showed a lot of improvement and I think with Jordon Moore we will have more depth on D which we desparately need. Our DBs were gassed last night with so many passes to cover and WSU rotating fresh WR’s to wear our guys out.
I don’t know how we will end up this season, but I see improvement and am optimistic that we can do a lot better than so many of those on the ledge ready to jump. Funny how some guys who predicted we would lose big in the score thread were all bent out of shape when we actually did lose but beat the spread.
I think we are beginning to put it all together. Defense played so much better than ALL of last year, with MUCH less talent…
I will wager that 31 may be the lowest WSU scores for the rest of the year…
And we had two other potential interceptions dropped…
I trust this coaching staff to fix the mistakes.
We need to play mistake free at Tulane, or else we will be in for a long night…
I think we could have won this one with 3 focused quarters.
The last half and quarter were our best in years past. I also recall some receivers with glue on their hands. Shoelaces or up where they needed parachutes, they somehow caught the impossible and Ward and Keenum would throw the ball beneath the defender’s armpit to a receiver in the end zone.
We’ll get there. We HAVE a great receiver coach.
All of the negative overreactions I have seen, I don’t know much about the posters. Maybe they are new or don’t have much to say most of the time. We can ignore all of the negativity. It will pass as things improve. Some who seem too excited or depressed appear to be young. Patience and peace come not necessarily with age but rather, experience.