- Joined
- Aug 24, 2011
- Messages
- 22,676
- Reaction Score
- 8,799
O.K., that was easy. And fun. Nice night for a football game, dry and warm enough. Early season night game always means filet, baked stuffed potato and red wine, so that was good. One note about parking — I pulled in 2 hours early, there was shockingly little traffic around the stadium and yet couldn’t park in blue anywhere near the stadium? Why? Because apparently no one is parking the people who come in really early, and the main blue lot only had one row of cars near the stadium instead of fitting two cars back to front between the paths. Sheesh. Crowd disappointing. Great showing by students, although they bailed really early, and the sections where the parents sit. Otherwise, very sparse. Hard to believe we will be attractive to the 12 or ACC until more paying customers are showing up, but unclear how high attendance can go just by being better until we’re playing a big time conference schedule again.
O.K., as to the game itself, wow. I think it’s possible that FAU may not have been as good as folks thought based on playing Michigan State tough (their win over FIU is far less impressive now that FIU lost to Monmouth) but that was unbelievably dominant. The defense played pretty much perfectly until the game was clearly over at 27-0 midway through the third quarter. At that point, had given up less than 100 yards of total offense and IIRC about 10 passing. I can’t even single folks out when a unit plays as perfectly as the D did through that part of the game, although Brown (who gets beat up a lot it seems) and McDonald made play after play. McDonald was a great pick up by the way. Give me a lower level FBS player who has already performed at a high level as opposed to a bench warmer P-4 player every time. And the push by the D Line was fantastic.
On offense, the performance of the OL was just beyond comprehension. Unbelievable performance. Mel Brown was very good, but Robinson was just fantastic. And only a freshman. I assume Cam Edwards was banged up because he barely played, even before we had taken over the game completely. Evers did a very solid job running the ball, and looked more comfortable passing it. We put the passing game away when it was clear we didn’t need to pass, but I don’t read anything negative about not throwing when we don’t need to. Ever’s percentage would have been great except he had two very easy catches dropped on him. The catch Bell made coming back to the ball while double teamed was unbelievable, and Porter’s TD grab late wasn’t much less of an effort.
Has there ever been a game where our punter never took the field? Good bounce back game for Freeman. Return games are much less important than they were when we were in the Big East, but we were fine in all aspects.
So some questions were answered last night. Not with the passing game (although we certainly took a step forward). We now have a home game against Buffalo, who is coming off a road upset of a ranked NIU team. But we’ve played beyond great at home, and the game is at the Rent. This is a huge game for us, both to make sure we get bowl eligible and to have a good season and not just a mediocre one. But a good season seems possible with the next 5 games at home. I’m optimistic. Let’s hope that enough folks are optimistic that we actually get someone besides students and parents to show up. And the school should consider finding more seats for students and getting them there.
O.K., as to the game itself, wow. I think it’s possible that FAU may not have been as good as folks thought based on playing Michigan State tough (their win over FIU is far less impressive now that FIU lost to Monmouth) but that was unbelievably dominant. The defense played pretty much perfectly until the game was clearly over at 27-0 midway through the third quarter. At that point, had given up less than 100 yards of total offense and IIRC about 10 passing. I can’t even single folks out when a unit plays as perfectly as the D did through that part of the game, although Brown (who gets beat up a lot it seems) and McDonald made play after play. McDonald was a great pick up by the way. Give me a lower level FBS player who has already performed at a high level as opposed to a bench warmer P-4 player every time. And the push by the D Line was fantastic.
On offense, the performance of the OL was just beyond comprehension. Unbelievable performance. Mel Brown was very good, but Robinson was just fantastic. And only a freshman. I assume Cam Edwards was banged up because he barely played, even before we had taken over the game completely. Evers did a very solid job running the ball, and looked more comfortable passing it. We put the passing game away when it was clear we didn’t need to pass, but I don’t read anything negative about not throwing when we don’t need to. Ever’s percentage would have been great except he had two very easy catches dropped on him. The catch Bell made coming back to the ball while double teamed was unbelievable, and Porter’s TD grab late wasn’t much less of an effort.
Has there ever been a game where our punter never took the field? Good bounce back game for Freeman. Return games are much less important than they were when we were in the Big East, but we were fine in all aspects.
So some questions were answered last night. Not with the passing game (although we certainly took a step forward). We now have a home game against Buffalo, who is coming off a road upset of a ranked NIU team. But we’ve played beyond great at home, and the game is at the Rent. This is a huge game for us, both to make sure we get bowl eligible and to have a good season and not just a mediocre one. But a good season seems possible with the next 5 games at home. I’m optimistic. Let’s hope that enough folks are optimistic that we actually get someone besides students and parents to show up. And the school should consider finding more seats for students and getting them there.
