So, after a night to sleep on it here are my following thoughts.
Offense - continues to show promise. Overall yardage stats are good (300-170 ish split). However we still had only 3 points until about 2 minutes left in the third, and were down 24 - 3. Now, we had moved the ball and you could argue that we should have had at least another 10 points based on the offensive production until then. While that is true, the same came be said for Ole miss with their own blocked FG and dropped TD pass. Now if it was 34-13 late in the third it would have been a bit more indicative of what went well vs what went wrong, but it's the same deficit. The other thing to note is that had the game been more competitive we likely don't go for it on 4th and 8 from the 15 and instead kick a FG. We also likely don't go for it on 4th and 1 from our own 35 on our last TD drive. And that is just a general dynamic of lopsided scores (3 possession games). The risks tend to "favor" the offensive stats at the cost of the defensive stats (they had 3 TD set up off short fields because of forced aggressive playcalls late). So overall, I'd say the 23 points is a fairly good number to represent how our offense did. Some missed opportunities that could have let us score more, and some points added on due to the game situation dictating gambles.
The only other thing I wanted to mention is the offensive game plan made sense but I don't think it's the right approach for this team going forward. We tried shortening the game playing fairly conservatively which I think both was to try and limit Ole Miss' strength but also to protect King a bit who has a history of turnover issues of his own and our OL who has shown some pass pro issues. And it worked about as well as it could have. We had drives of 12,13, and 17 plays in the first half. But we scored 3 points, because we had 9 third downs and converted "just" 6 of them. We had no penalties, and few negative plays. Basically, it went as well as could be expected. But it still got us just 3 points. And even if we get the FG that was blocked and kick the one instead of going for it on 4th, that is still just 9 points, and FGs aren't going to get it done with our defense against better teams. Feels like we'll need to be a bit more aggressive earlier in the game.
Defense - this was just bad. Sure, it was hurt by short fields because of issues we had elsewhere (scoring drives of 34, 28, 34, and 50) but it pretty much didn't matter where they got the ball. Only time we forced them to punt was spurred on by a hold that didn't effect the play and a false start putting them at 1st and 25. Otherwise about the only positive is that we forced them into 4 FGA (one of which they went for). Even then, one of those was a end of half attempt that went 32 yards in just over a minute to get in "range". Like the offense I think the score had both inflation due to the game state, but also missed opportunities by UL that could have added more. Also, the offense in the first half kept the ball so much also kept the score "down". Yeah. Just awful. Best silver lining I can see is we did do a good job on limiting Judkins.
Special teams was special.
Anyways, looking forward, our schedule seems to have 3 distinct groups to me at the moment. There is the tier of teams that seem to be solidly above us which I would say is UGA, Clemson, UNC, and Miami. It's possible we could pull an upset, especially UNC at home based on recent history, but unlikely. There is the tier of teams that we are, hopefully, solidly above which would be Bowling Green, UVA, and Boston College. We shouldn't lose to them, but I could also see BC pulling an upset if the second half of their FSU game is something they can build on and they are coming off a bye week against us (and we are as well). The third group is of teams is Wake and Cuse who I view as being bowl hopefuls that are solid but beatable teams. I pretty much lump the three teams we've played into those groups as well with Ole Miss being in the first, SC State in the second and UL in the third. To be on schedule to make a bowl, I think we really have to beat Wake. If we go 1-3 it will both be a bad look symbolically, not that that is really important, but also means we would then have to pull a pretty major upset and avoid any other unexpected losses.
It'll be interesting to see how wake's QB (Griffis) does. He's a sophomore but he's in his 4th year in the program (same year Hartman had his real breakthrough), and put up fairly good numbers (279 ypg, 62% 8-3 TD to INT) against fairly weak competition, and has eaten 10 sacks so far. I would guess he'll be able to have success against our defense, but maybe we can get some pressure on him. If we can't get much pressure in this game, then we likely won't be getting much at all this year. Very winnable game, but also loseable, and it's really important we get this road win.
