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Again, I did not get to watch. Was in a convention in Canada (the real one north of the lake — not the yucky one that may actually be in New York that we played in two weeks ago) and beyond being stuck in a conference room my CBSSports app was blocked at the border and wouldn’t show me the game. So again, this week we’ll only be discussing where we are and are not, as opposed to me pretending I’m going to analyze the game to a group of you who actually saw it.
So first, yes, after the heartbreaking losses of the last two weeks, I was ready for this team to blow (out) Ball U (pun intended) but it wasn’t to be. We got to 2-2 but I fully expected to be 3-1 going back into the upstate NY tundra, and I at least hoped that yesterday would remind me how close we were to being 4-0 rather than how far we had to go to be as good as last year. It didn’t. But the fact is we’re 2-2 and in each loss we had multiple chances to make just one more play that would have us at 3-1 or 4-0. And (with its QB which is now not going to happen) Syracuse might have been as good as they were last year, and Delaware is almost certainly much better than anyone thought it would be. So I’m not happy but I don’t see the world as ending either. Saturday is obviously a huge moment — we have to not just be competitive on the road but able to win, but even without a huge improvement there is no reason we can’t win out our remaining 6 G-5 games. I’m not saying that we’re playing well enough to expect to do so, but taken game by game they are all winnable. So let’s get to 4-2 before the trip to Boston and see if we can’t be improved.
As to the units, yeah the defensive performance was not good enough. Getting Mills back on the field can only help, and getting the missing DL on the field for the first time will hopefully help (as getting Yates back halfway through last season did), but they have to be better. One can only hope that it’s issues really learning the D with so many new faces and not merely lack of talent, because the first can lead to improvement and the second not so much. On offense, the bashing of the offense generally and JF in particular is really childish. (Yes, I know it’s the internet and folks love to complain irrationally but still.). We’re now far enough into the season where stats start becoming meaningful. I get that JF is not Peyton Manning, but come on. He’s completing 2/3 of his passes, still hasn’t had a pass picked off and has been sacked 3 times in 4 games. The expectations that he could be doing much better than that are just silly. The offense, in fact, still hasn’t had a single TO in 4 games. That is not just good luck, it’s accomplishing something. Not something the Boneyard seems to care about, but something nonetheless. By the way — Victor Rosa on limited touches is averaging too many yards a carry to not get a real chance to get carries behind Cam. I assume too many fumbles in practice but we’re going to have to see what happens in games.
We kicked the bejesus out of Buffalo at home last year. I don’t accept that we’re going up there next week and not winning. So let’s get it done and go from there. While I agree that the D is not playing well enough to think we’re going to be 8-4, matching last year’s 8-4 is still absolutely possible. But we’ve got to start by getting to 3-2.
So first, yes, after the heartbreaking losses of the last two weeks, I was ready for this team to blow (out) Ball U (pun intended) but it wasn’t to be. We got to 2-2 but I fully expected to be 3-1 going back into the upstate NY tundra, and I at least hoped that yesterday would remind me how close we were to being 4-0 rather than how far we had to go to be as good as last year. It didn’t. But the fact is we’re 2-2 and in each loss we had multiple chances to make just one more play that would have us at 3-1 or 4-0. And (with its QB which is now not going to happen) Syracuse might have been as good as they were last year, and Delaware is almost certainly much better than anyone thought it would be. So I’m not happy but I don’t see the world as ending either. Saturday is obviously a huge moment — we have to not just be competitive on the road but able to win, but even without a huge improvement there is no reason we can’t win out our remaining 6 G-5 games. I’m not saying that we’re playing well enough to expect to do so, but taken game by game they are all winnable. So let’s get to 4-2 before the trip to Boston and see if we can’t be improved.
As to the units, yeah the defensive performance was not good enough. Getting Mills back on the field can only help, and getting the missing DL on the field for the first time will hopefully help (as getting Yates back halfway through last season did), but they have to be better. One can only hope that it’s issues really learning the D with so many new faces and not merely lack of talent, because the first can lead to improvement and the second not so much. On offense, the bashing of the offense generally and JF in particular is really childish. (Yes, I know it’s the internet and folks love to complain irrationally but still.). We’re now far enough into the season where stats start becoming meaningful. I get that JF is not Peyton Manning, but come on. He’s completing 2/3 of his passes, still hasn’t had a pass picked off and has been sacked 3 times in 4 games. The expectations that he could be doing much better than that are just silly. The offense, in fact, still hasn’t had a single TO in 4 games. That is not just good luck, it’s accomplishing something. Not something the Boneyard seems to care about, but something nonetheless. By the way — Victor Rosa on limited touches is averaging too many yards a carry to not get a real chance to get carries behind Cam. I assume too many fumbles in practice but we’re going to have to see what happens in games.
We kicked the bejesus out of Buffalo at home last year. I don’t accept that we’re going up there next week and not winning. So let’s get it done and go from there. While I agree that the D is not playing well enough to think we’re going to be 8-4, matching last year’s 8-4 is still absolutely possible. But we’ve got to start by getting to 3-2.
