Tulsa game thoughts

Cougar Football
1

I have some thoughts on the game and I love to hear from everyone else. I’ll share the good and the bad starting with the bad.

THE BAD
I realize the team had a bye week and it’s pretty common to come out a little flat with so much time off. I don’t think it helped to have weak attendance for tonight’s game either. Nevertheless, it’s up to the HC to have the guys prepared and focused, which they clearly were not, as evidenced by the 3 turnovers in the first half and all the penalties. That’s never a good recipe for success.

Honestly, I’ve seen the same mistakes by certain players through the first five games. I don’t know if Williams is still recovering from an injury or what but he needs to work on ball security. There are way too many dropped passes as well. Personally I think it’s time to give some of Lark’s minutes to guys like Mark and Singleton, or even Bryson’s Smith. Regardless, the drops are total momentum killers.

Speaking of which, we had numerous penalties tonight and looked sloppy throughout most of the game. That needs to get cleaned up ASAP. King was clearly off his game but hats off to the Tulsa DC for a great game plan.

Defensively, I keep seeing the same mistakes being made over and over again. Players look out of position, the formations and schemes look aweful, and we seem to blitz with guys that are way too slow to run down a quarterback. The result was the same once again. We continue to give up a ton of 3rd and long plays, particularly the passes over the middle to the WR or TE. Perhaps this is why our defense has allowed opponents over the last two games to have career games. Starting with Bowman the QB at Texas Tech and now the RB for Tulsa, who apparently had a career night rushing.

THE GOOD
It was gut check time in the middle of the forth-quarter and the team responded. Despite a little adversity they showed no quit and our OC never got too conservative. In fact, he became more assertive and creative as the game went on. I know we score quickly sometimes but still like what I see from baby Briles. I also like what I see from Carr and Car at RB. Both of these guys play hard and mostl error free. Stevenson is money at WR and Booker made some key catches down the stretch. It was just a matter of time before King caught fire and he showed another gear when he ran for the long TD.

Defensively there a few players that stood out. I thought Watson had a solid game as did Anderson. I love the energy from the freshman Elijah Gooden as well as Grant Stuart. Both freshman can run, and that’s important playing against a spread offense.

Another area that often gets overlooked during wins is special teams. The FG kicker Witherspoon was 5/5 xp’s And Novikoff booted most of the kickoffs through the end zone. Witherspoon’s 40 yard FG was key to staying in the game when we were down.

Overall I’m happy we won but, man, this was way too close for comfort and way too sloppy for my liking.

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Soft Defense again. Offensive struggles due to long layoff…you are totally correct. I am really worried about the defense…

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Off week no excuse ! Tulsa had off week also and tore our ass up first 3 qtrs that’s on coaches for not having us ready

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No personality. One play we’re awesome, the next we’re giving up 35 yards even when we know what’s coming. The soft tackling in the secondary is a reflection of the DC IMO.

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CKB is not going anywhere any time soon. Book it danno!.

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Coming into game we’re close to the best offense in country. There are p5 programs out there thinking what Briles could do with their talent…and salivating.

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Worse pass defense I’ve seen as long as i could remember.

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Honestly it was basaically two bye weeks counting tsu. So almost 3 weeks without playing a fbs opponent. I thought our offense and king were rusty for sure.

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??? Really? Tulsa only completely 42% of its passes. The norm today is 60-65%. We intercepted one and had four sacks. I thought the pass defense was pretty good.

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I thought Coach D showed a little bit more creativity tonight. He brought a cornerback on the blitz a few times at the snap. Also, the radio post game mentioned that we switched between a 3-4 and 4-3 at times during the game. The defense did seem to play a little more aggressive tonight in the passing lanes. We force turnovers and could have had a few more if INTs were not dropped. I think going in id you told people on this board we only gave up 26 points they would be very happy. Plus if the offense did not have that terrible first half it would have been a blowout. Especially since we did limit some Tulsa drives to FGs

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I thought the defense made improvements and at times the offense looked like it regressed.

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People on this board look for a reason to whine and moan about. The team is 4-1. The offense looked horrible, the defense held the opposing team to 26 points despite all the turnovers on defense and all they can see is how bad the defense is in their eyes.

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We had 2 or 3 knock downs (were these the first of the year?) by DB’s. Whether the secondary rushes the QB into a bad pass, or the secondary knocks the ball down, an incomplete is a good deal . . . . . The defense was much improved tonight, on occasion . . . . . blitzes and breakup/knock down passes showed up and benefited us greatly . . . . .

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Good news. Our Coaches Won’t Be Poaches !!

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Late third quarter , started thinking we are really not that good and need to stop looking at this team using 2015-2016 goggles. The team is talented but underwhelming coached well overally.

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And we hired TWO coaches for the secondary. Just unbelievable.

Them two and the DC must go at the end of this season.

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For 5 minutes we played like a well coached all around team. For 55 minutes we were getting beaten in most every aspect of the game by one of the worst teams in all of football. A team that if they had not beaten us last year would have to go to 2016 for an FBS win.

I think what is the most irritating thing is that we now know the coaching staff can scheme defensively in a way that actually pressures someone. Or it could be that one of the worst teams in all of football lost their first 2 running backs and started a redshirt freshman.

I want to be excited for 4-1. But the defensive coaching just sucks the soul from this unit.

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I cringe when we have the opponent third and long.

Last night, I pointed out to my wife on 3rd and 11 that we were going soft and they would pick us apart and sure enough that’s what happened. It’s seems when we pressed the receivers on the line and blitzed the qb, the result was a thrown away ball or something more positive.

Why not do that on 3rd and long? I just don’t get it. Same mistakes- repeatedly. Do an analysis of play call and result. Learn from your mistakes instead of expecting a different result running a scheme that doesn’t work.

There is a stubbornness and arrogance that No D shows on the few times he gets a positive outcome to his scheme. Like in golf- You hit 9 shitty strokes and the 1 stroke you hit well you think “see- that’s my game! That’s how I play! I knew I’m a great golfer.“. No you idiot- your game sucks and you got lucky once.

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We did give up several third down conversions. On the flip side, we did force them to kick FGs, and the defense generally did a good job of limiting the potential damage from the offense’s multiple turnovers and ineffective possessions.

I would say the defense outperformed the crowd, overall, but both did enough to get the job done. :slightly_smiling_face:

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To many critics on this board. We won the game when we had to against a team that is better than their record. The D played great when the game was on the line. The O woke up from their 3rd quarter slumber and played the 4th quarter reminiscent of the Pittsburgh bowl game. I couldn’t be more proud for the team with the win.

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