Hungover thoughts this morning:
Louisville did not appear to have many fans at the game. I sat in a Louisville section the first half, and it was still 50% Tech fans. Switched to a Tech section 2nd half which clearly caused this loss, so I apologize for that. Tech section I moved to had some Louisville fans, but maybe only 10%. The other side of the field looked like it had no Louisville fans. Announce crowd was like 36k, and it felt like 5-8k Louisville and 28-30k Tech. Lots of empty seats all over the place which probably looked terrible on TV, third level was not covered like I think has been done in the past. Louisville fans around me were mostly pleasant the first half.
1st half slow start for Tech's offense, but once they got rolling it was enjoyable. I thought the D did a good job holding Louisville to a field goal after the interception, obviously would have preferred not to turn it over in field goal range for them though. 2nd half the offense was mostly bad, and I think the D wore down and made more and more mistakes. They played to the end and didn't give up.
If you had told me pregame that we would score 28 points in the 2nd quarter, I wouldn't have believed you. To then surround that with three almost scoreless quarters is kind of baffling. Can't play to not lose, which definitely felt like what we were doing the secons half. Very Gailey-esque.
I'm not 100% sold on King just yet. Overall he played well, threw some really good passes and ran well, but he had several dangerous/terrible throws, one of which almost ended up being another interception when it had no business being directed near the field of play. I don't think he necessarily shoulders all or most of the blame on the interception or fumble, that goes to the O line, but I think he deserves some of it and both of those were costly mistakes that resulted in 10 points for Louisville. I don't really get the feeling he can will us to victory like some of the other QBs we've had/have, but I'm sure he'll get more opportunities to show us.
Running backs were bad for the most part. Several times they pulled up instead of hitting the hole full speed, and it cost us. Made me miss the days of having a B-Back barrel into defenders for a consistent 3 yards. The running game play calling, particularly in the second half also felt terrible. Handoff up the middle for 1 yard, over and over. Really need to get better here.
Receivers struggled to get separation and dropped several good passes.
Defensively, nobody really stood out as a playmaker. The D line got no push all game, felt like they were waiting for Louisville's OL to hit them first. Plummer had all day to throw, and their runningbacks had large gaps to hit several times. Pretty disappointed with this group. The one time I remember someone made it into the backfield they completely whiffed on one of the slowest QBs we will probably face and let him escape. The secondary was okayish, but allowed several big plays with guys falling down or just being out of position. The TD they scored on Jaylon King was frustrating, he's been around a while and should be one of our better DBs, but he got beat easily. Tackling was terrible all game, every year I'm amazed at how the basics of wrapping up seem to be forgotten.
I will always be disappointed when we lose, particularly such a winnable game. But it was the first game of the season, against a real opponent, with a new staff and a lot of new players, and I think we saw some good signs. Need to clean up the mistakes, find some play makers, and get the lines playing better, and we'll win some football games. We get an easy game against SC State next week and then go on the road to Ole Miss, let's hope we can put together a good game by then and maybe steal a victory.
