Reliving the Moment - You Know you did too

[Longestday]

There I was, sitting watching the game. UNC decides to punt with 5 minutes left in the game with a 5 point lead. I smiled and knew this game was in the bag. The penalty made it 1st and 25 and I still knew we were in the game. Don't pass, just run the triple twice.

My wife was sitting beside me sharing my emotions and wondering why I was smiling with a 1st and 25. Then came the reverse and I knew we had a first down. My wife cheers as Smelter looks to go all the way. I shouted NOOOOOOOOOO. My wife looks at me as if I was insane. I shouted to go out of bounds, but Smelter never heard me and took the ball in for a TD.

I said ok, damage done. Now give them 3 plays and then let them score. Please CPJ, call for the go ahead score and get the ball back. Replay history were we let them score and marched back to score again. Nothing doing as the clock ticked down and the last one with the ball won. Oh the humanity, Oh the humanity!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[AlabamaBuzz]

That is exactly how I felt. I yelled down the hall to my wife that we would lose when I saw the amount of time we left them. This is SAD that we knew this.

 

[Jackethawk]

Yep. My daughter thought I was crazy when I yelled fall down.

 

[AE 87]

Yep
I typed into chat two words. Too quickly.

 

[COJacket]

Yep, me too.

 

[buzz_wiser©]

There I was, sitting watching the game. UNC decides to punt with 5 minutes left in the game with a 5 point lead. I smiled and knew this game was in the bag. The penalty made it 1st and 25 and I still knew we were in the game. Don't pass, just run the triple twice.

My wife was sitting beside me sharing my emotions and wondering why I was smiling with a 1st and 25. Then came the reverse and I knew we had a first down. My wife cheers as Smelter looks to go all the way. I shouted NOOOOOOOOOO. My wife looks at me as if I was insane. I shouted to go out of bounds, but Smelter never heard me and took the ball in for a TD.

I said ok, damage done. Now give them 3 plays and then let them score. Please CPJ, call for the go ahead score and get the ball back. Replay history were we let them score and marched back to score again. Nothing doing as the clock ticked down and the last one with the ball won. Oh the humanity, Oh the humanity!!!!!!!!!!!

As I'm reading this.. I'm picking up pieces of remote Control that I trashed as our demise was met lastnight...
It is amazing how many of us knew what was going to happen yet couldn't do s##t about it....

 

[rodney]

Yes everyone saw that but I was hoping our defence would do what we had been waiting for them to do for two games stop somebody. Disapointed it takes us everybody to get pressure on their qb wish we had never let tenuda go even though ted roof isn't the problem its going to take time for him to recruit players on defence which he seems to be doing.

 

[Sean311]

I just started shaking my head and said "too fast!!" I knew we lost then. It's funny cause CPJ said it too in his press conference.

 

[swampsting]

There's no guarantee we score if Smelter steps OB or slides to a stop before the goal line. None at all. We could bobble the snap, throw a rocket toss into Gnonkonde's hands, anything. If you have a chance to score and need to score, score. There was still 3 minutes and change left and they had all 3 timeouts. I was more than OK with Smelter scoring. UNC did the right thing by knowing they could just slice and dice their way down the field. They wound up using two timeouts but they didn't need them to stop the clock. Besides, all they needed was a field goal and the way they were moving the ball on us, they could have gotten to the 20 from their 20 with no timeouts with very little time elapsing.
We had just turned them out on defense the possession before. Smelter scoring was not the worst thing in the world. Giving up a TD on fourth and 6, giving up three third down conversions, jumping to negate a TD all top Smelter scoring "with too much time."

 

[swampsting]

I just started shaking my head and said "too fast!!" I knew we lost then. It's funny cause CPJ said it too in his press conference.

He said he "almost wished" someone had tackled him. I think he was being a touch facetious, trying to find something from a dismal evening.

 

[jwsavhGT]

Take the TD. We missed previous 2pt conversion so no guarantees. Yes, this one hurts.

 

[Declinometer]

Proud of the team.....truly. The guys fought.
Disappointed in TR.........truly. I never saw an adjustment.

 

[danny daniel]

There I was, sitting watching the game. UNC decides to punt with 5 minutes left in the game with a 5 point lead. I smiled and knew this game was in the bag. The penalty made it 1st and 25 and I still knew we were in the game. Don't pass, just run the triple twice.

My wife was sitting beside me sharing my emotions and wondering why I was smiling with a 1st and 25. Then came the reverse and I knew we had a first down. My wife cheers as Smelter looks to go all the way. I shouted NOOOOOOOOOO. My wife looks at me as if I was insane. I shouted to go out of bounds, but Smelter never heard me and took the ball in for a TD.

I said ok, damage done. Now give them 3 plays and then let them score. Please CPJ, call for the go ahead score and get the ball back. Replay history were we let them score and marched back to score again. Nothing doing as the clock ticked down and the last one with the ball won. Oh the humanity, Oh the humanity!!!!!!!!!!!

And at that point that Smelter scored our only real hope was to abandon the soft D and gamble with a big rush to either get a stop and win, or give up a long TD pass and leave us some time on the clock for a chance. The bend and don't break shot was not a good scheme for the situation, all previous D events considered!

 

[jacketjp]

Yep. I changed the channel before Smelter even crossed the goal line. My wife was in the middle of cheering and turning to give me high five. When she saw that I had changed the channel, she stared at me in completely bewilderment. I explained to her that we had just lost the game, but she insisted on changing it back to see the inevitable unfold. The only positive is that she has now stated she'll never doubt me again when it comes to GT football.

 

[Jonathan Dees]

hahaha.... This was almost the same scene at my house.

 

[GTJackets]

@swampsting, I don't think anyone has said yet "if Smelter had just laid down, stepped out, been tackled, etc, we would have won." Everyone I've seen has just been saying the same thing I said in the post game thread. In the heat of the moment having watched the game, we thought we scored too soon and left them too much time. Not blaming anyone. Just the way it worked out.

Yes, if Joe doesn't flinch, we have an extra 4 points that would have helped. Yes, if we can knock down a pass on 4th and 6, we likely would have won. If both happened, I think we win easily. But this particular discussion was about what was going through your mind as Smelter was sprinting down the sidelines.

As Tech fans, we are an analytical bunch. We have to look at odds and percentages. Having watched the entire game, at that moment I was analyzing what is most likely to happen:
1. Smelter to be stopped somehow, but the O to find a way to get into the end zone with less time on the clock
2. Smelter to score the long TD and our D to be able to keep them out of FG range for the final three minutes

Sure, the TD wasn't guaranteed. We could have turned it over. Hadn't since the first drive, but it could have happened (not likely, but possible) . They could have stopped us short of the end zone. They hadn't shown the ability to do that very often either (slightly more likely, but had confidence in the O based on watching the game). We could have gone on to score the TD even if Smelter didn't make it all the way (6 TDs on 10 real drives not counting the two end of half drives, two punts a fumble and a FG, pretty good odds). Our D could have held them out of FG range for the final 3+ minutes (they had 7 TDs on 11 drives, 3 of those TDs took less than three minutes, not very good odds).

It's simply a logical discussion of what we were thinking at that point of the game. Yes, there were huge mistakes that could have saved us from hoping one of our guys didn't make it to the end zone. This wasn't a mistake by Smelter. It wasn't what cost us the game. Just what I (and others apparently) was thinking at the time.

 

[Jean-Baptiste Rochambeau]

He said he "almost wished" someone had tackled him. I think he was being a touch facetious, trying to find something from a dismal evening.

Then fix it. How can you have that little confidence in the defense? I hope we don't get to the point that Tenuta had us to when we were two separate teams, the offense and the defense. It can be polarizing when one side is so much more effective than the other. This is ripe for fingerpointing.

 

[Longestday]

Personally, I would have rather lost on a long drive or lost after being super aggressive on defense. There is no good loss, but I gave us a higher chance to get down the field than to stop them from running out the clock.

 

[redmule]

I kept telling my wife, "If we had only run two more plays before the reverse!" If there had been less than a minute and a half left when we scored, we possibly could have held them out.

Some things don't change. I remember the same feeling when Nesbitt scored on a long run late in 2009 against VT. My brother-in-law, an OSU fan that was at the game with me, couldn't believe that I was yelling, "Don't Score". I wanted him to go down so we could run out the clock. I told my BIL, now we are going to have to recover an onside kick to win. I was right of course. Might as well go ahead and make the prediction now. Whoever has the ball last against Pitt, UVA, and NC State wins.

 

[Northeast Stinger]

There's no guarantee we score if Smelter steps OB or slides to a stop before the goal line. None at all. We could bobble the snap, throw a rocket toss into Gnonkonde's hands, anything. If you have a chance to score and need to score, score. There was still 3 minutes and change left and they had all 3 timeouts. I was more than OK with Smelter scoring. UNC did the right thing by knowing they could just slice and dice their way down the field. They wound up using two timeouts but they didn't need them to stop the clock. Besides, all they needed was a field goal and the way they were moving the ball on us, they could have gotten to the 20 from their 20 with no timeouts with very little time elapsing.
We had just turned them out on defense the possession before. Smelter scoring was not the worst thing in the world. Giving up a TD on fourth and 6, giving up three third down conversions, jumping to negate a TD all top Smelter scoring "with too much time."

Well, of course you are right. You are just being rational. I think the other comments were capturing a particular moment in the game when we knew we had lost because we scored "too soon." Rationally, you score when you can. Emotionally, we saw that our defense was going to be asked to do something they had not been able to do all night and we railed against the gods.