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Good God, woke up this morning physically and emotionally exhausted and with a sore throat. Don’t even know if I’ve lost my voice yet because my wife isn’t up yet and my dog doesn’t want to hear my voice after driving him crazy yesterday. So let’s see if I can put a number of things into focus.
1. Congratulation to mostly the players, but also the coaches, staff and everyone in the program who helps the performance on the field directly or indirectly for a 9-3 regular season. I am not going to analyze the season here — I’ll let a few days pass for perspective and post over Thanksgiving weekend — but winning 9 games for the second straight year is a huge accomplishment for this program regardless of who you were beating along the way. Without even remembering that we went 14 years between winning seasons. So no criticism below should be read as not realizing we had a good season.
2. I know it’s a matter of taste, and absolutely a win is a win, but 1300 yards and 12 TDs is just not my idea of football. If that’s being old and cranky so be it, but by the middle of the third quarter the only question was who was going to score last and therefor win, because it was damn clear that neither team was going to stop the other. The only suspense on any drive was not whether a team was going to score, but how and how quickly. To me, that’s not the same tension as a physical balanced football game where on every play there is doubt as to whether the defense or offense will win the play. But again, that doesn’t take anything away from the win.
3. Now, as to the game. As hard as it is to believe, I don’t think our offense has gotten enough credit for how it played yesterday. Yes, everyone has said how great we were, but: (i) we had to overcome the zebras in the second half. I am not one to jump all over the refs, but after the intermission it seemed to me that penalties were about 80 yards to zero, and many of the calls were borderline. Like the late hit on the sideline (it wasn’t a hard hit and the player took off from inbounds and hadn’t even landed yet) or the pass interference call on the 4th down where the WR was hand wrestling with the DB and gave as good as he got. So remember that while those examples were both defensive penalties, the offense was put behind the sticks by the zebras again and again and again and just overcame it again and again; and (ii) they were playing without Juice, with Neider going down during a game in which he started having a big impact, with Bell missing some time and then playing through an injury, with Mel Brown showing rust and with Cam Edwards (more on him later) clearly being limited in snaps. The offensive performance wasn’t just near perfect, but it showed a lot of guts.
4. Fagnano was just fabulous. I’ll look at his season next week, but throws and decisions left little to be criticized. I know we are deep at TE but Lou Hanson has been absolutely capable of that performance for at least last year and this year. We really couldn’t make him a big weapon until today? On the other hand, credit to the former Michigan man for stepping up big time when needed. A Shamar Porter sighting — wow. The WR room next year will look a lot different if, alongside Neider, he can reach his physical potential. Nothing to say about Bell — even after getting banged up he still puts up his numbers and makes all the plays. Which gets me to Cam Edwards. The staff can’t believe that we’re not a better team with Edwards staying on the field as much as possible, and yet his snaps are clearly managed. I have to assume that while he’s not “injured” — he is far too effective to be injured —- he is clearly hurting and playing with pain. And yet, he performs and performs and performs. In this era of NIL and players at larger schools spending seasons looking at what their offers for the next season will be, his desire to help his team and his teammates — frankly, the buy in from the whole team to play for Mora — is really special.
5. Finally on the offense, two turnovers for a 12 game season in which you’re throwing the ball so much is frankly unbelievable. If you believe in the Phil Steele theory of turnovers evening out over the years, we have our work cut out for us in the future.
6. Once again, mistake free work from our kickers plays a quiet but material role in turning games that could be losses into wins. And but for our long snapper (who was fine yesterday) and the absurd facemask on the last KO return — was it Amir Renwick? — where someone grabbed the facemask of a returner who had already stopped running after bumping into a teammate and there were other defenders to help with the tackle — we don’t make mistakes on special teams. Freeman has hit almost 90% of his FG attempts and missed 3 all year — his first kick, one where he slipped on a wet field and one true miss since opening day. It’s not that easy. And while our punts didn’t help yesterday since putting them in poor field position was utterly irrelevant, another great game for Stutz. Some big shoes to fill next year.
7. Did I leave out a unit? I think I reviewed every unit that showed up to play yesterday.
8. There is really no nice way to sugarcoat a defensive performance that was absolutely embarrassing. I wouldn’t have thought it possible to have a worse defensive game than against Delaware but my bad — I was clearly wrong. I can’t even review particular performances — players or coaches — just no point. Both the 4th down defense (after the first stop) and the (lack of) defense for the last two plays after we took the lead back were shockingly, shockingly, bad. That we overcame our D and the zebras on the road is frankly hard to believe. But there we are.
9. So an outstanding 6-0 at home and a really really shaky 3-3 on the road, against mostly bad teams, that easily could have been 6-0 and just as easily 1-5. Another way to look at it is after a 1-2 start and an unthinkable loss to Delaware, we went on a 8-1 run through our schedule. 8-1. I will not spend the next two weeks worrying about where we’re bowling but I have zero doubt we’re going bowling. We’re too good a story right now for ESPN to not make sure we’re playing somewhere between the big 3 on offense and an NFL coach who has quickly brought about a strong turnaround. And have proven an ability to bring fans to games way beyond much of the 6-6 and 7-5 G5. Not worried at all.
Have a good week all.
1. Congratulation to mostly the players, but also the coaches, staff and everyone in the program who helps the performance on the field directly or indirectly for a 9-3 regular season. I am not going to analyze the season here — I’ll let a few days pass for perspective and post over Thanksgiving weekend — but winning 9 games for the second straight year is a huge accomplishment for this program regardless of who you were beating along the way. Without even remembering that we went 14 years between winning seasons. So no criticism below should be read as not realizing we had a good season.
2. I know it’s a matter of taste, and absolutely a win is a win, but 1300 yards and 12 TDs is just not my idea of football. If that’s being old and cranky so be it, but by the middle of the third quarter the only question was who was going to score last and therefor win, because it was damn clear that neither team was going to stop the other. The only suspense on any drive was not whether a team was going to score, but how and how quickly. To me, that’s not the same tension as a physical balanced football game where on every play there is doubt as to whether the defense or offense will win the play. But again, that doesn’t take anything away from the win.
3. Now, as to the game. As hard as it is to believe, I don’t think our offense has gotten enough credit for how it played yesterday. Yes, everyone has said how great we were, but: (i) we had to overcome the zebras in the second half. I am not one to jump all over the refs, but after the intermission it seemed to me that penalties were about 80 yards to zero, and many of the calls were borderline. Like the late hit on the sideline (it wasn’t a hard hit and the player took off from inbounds and hadn’t even landed yet) or the pass interference call on the 4th down where the WR was hand wrestling with the DB and gave as good as he got. So remember that while those examples were both defensive penalties, the offense was put behind the sticks by the zebras again and again and again and just overcame it again and again; and (ii) they were playing without Juice, with Neider going down during a game in which he started having a big impact, with Bell missing some time and then playing through an injury, with Mel Brown showing rust and with Cam Edwards (more on him later) clearly being limited in snaps. The offensive performance wasn’t just near perfect, but it showed a lot of guts.
4. Fagnano was just fabulous. I’ll look at his season next week, but throws and decisions left little to be criticized. I know we are deep at TE but Lou Hanson has been absolutely capable of that performance for at least last year and this year. We really couldn’t make him a big weapon until today? On the other hand, credit to the former Michigan man for stepping up big time when needed. A Shamar Porter sighting — wow. The WR room next year will look a lot different if, alongside Neider, he can reach his physical potential. Nothing to say about Bell — even after getting banged up he still puts up his numbers and makes all the plays. Which gets me to Cam Edwards. The staff can’t believe that we’re not a better team with Edwards staying on the field as much as possible, and yet his snaps are clearly managed. I have to assume that while he’s not “injured” — he is far too effective to be injured —- he is clearly hurting and playing with pain. And yet, he performs and performs and performs. In this era of NIL and players at larger schools spending seasons looking at what their offers for the next season will be, his desire to help his team and his teammates — frankly, the buy in from the whole team to play for Mora — is really special.
5. Finally on the offense, two turnovers for a 12 game season in which you’re throwing the ball so much is frankly unbelievable. If you believe in the Phil Steele theory of turnovers evening out over the years, we have our work cut out for us in the future.
6. Once again, mistake free work from our kickers plays a quiet but material role in turning games that could be losses into wins. And but for our long snapper (who was fine yesterday) and the absurd facemask on the last KO return — was it Amir Renwick? — where someone grabbed the facemask of a returner who had already stopped running after bumping into a teammate and there were other defenders to help with the tackle — we don’t make mistakes on special teams. Freeman has hit almost 90% of his FG attempts and missed 3 all year — his first kick, one where he slipped on a wet field and one true miss since opening day. It’s not that easy. And while our punts didn’t help yesterday since putting them in poor field position was utterly irrelevant, another great game for Stutz. Some big shoes to fill next year.
7. Did I leave out a unit? I think I reviewed every unit that showed up to play yesterday.
8. There is really no nice way to sugarcoat a defensive performance that was absolutely embarrassing. I wouldn’t have thought it possible to have a worse defensive game than against Delaware but my bad — I was clearly wrong. I can’t even review particular performances — players or coaches — just no point. Both the 4th down defense (after the first stop) and the (lack of) defense for the last two plays after we took the lead back were shockingly, shockingly, bad. That we overcame our D and the zebras on the road is frankly hard to believe. But there we are.
9. So an outstanding 6-0 at home and a really really shaky 3-3 on the road, against mostly bad teams, that easily could have been 6-0 and just as easily 1-5. Another way to look at it is after a 1-2 start and an unthinkable loss to Delaware, we went on a 8-1 run through our schedule. 8-1. I will not spend the next two weeks worrying about where we’re bowling but I have zero doubt we’re going bowling. We’re too good a story right now for ESPN to not make sure we’re playing somewhere between the big 3 on offense and an NFL coach who has quickly brought about a strong turnaround. And have proven an ability to bring fans to games way beyond much of the 6-6 and 7-5 G5. Not worried at all.
Have a good week all.
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