I had to miss this game—I was traveling. I’m out for this week. I got to watch the replay.
I had a lot of fun watching how Babers McGuyver’ed that offense. He was limited to a mostly one dimensional offense before he ever took the field, and if he had made those changes weeks ago he’d probably be bowl-eligible already. I think his job was gone after this season, but with one game left to make a bowl, and a winnable game at that, I’m sad his athletic board didn’t let him take a swing at that last game. I think his AD was scared he’d be more difficult to fire after making a bowl game, and that he would win that game.
On defense, I tip my hat to our defensive coaches, and to our linebackers. Our LBs have caught a lot of flak this season, and they played really well and made a bunch of tackles. Moala made a great strip tackle on special teams. Efford had the game sealing interception. In the third period, Syracuse made a bunch of great plays, combined with taking advantage of some of our turnovers. Tatum made some great plays with his speed. Our DL was really active. There were five or more tacklers on a lot of plays. Stoning Syracuse on third or fourth and short a couple of times was really impressive.
On offense, Faulkner has a lot of H-back plays in the game, and it looks like it’s supposed to be a big part of his offense. We just haven’t seen as much of that as you might think, because I think the tight ends are still learning how to play that way. Syracuse used their big TE as a fullback and a bull of a running back, and I think we have the same ideas—but we haven’t implemented a lot of that. On King’s last running TD, he had an H-back escort into the end zone (with no one to block—our line crushed Syracuse on that play).
On a Haynes King sack, the blitzer came in like a flash from the edge, untouched. Syracuse played their tails off.
Syracuse blocked so much better than us on kickoffs, it’s amazing. That was one factor that kept them in the game.
On offense and defense, there’s a lot we can do and add in once we get to a basic level of play. When we started the season, we had a steak and lobster appetite for what we’d do, but we had a value meal readiness for tackling, fundamentals, and what the TEs were ready to do. On defense, especially, there’s a need to stay low on the DL and there was a need to tackle better and try to get 11 men around the ball. I think the TEs looked better against Cuse than they did in some other games.
Bowl practices have the potential to make a huge difference in this team. There are a lot of areas where players need extra reps and still need to learn the offense we put in this year.
