I was actually encouraged. I know that's weird to say, but I feel a bit better about where we stand as a program after rewatching. We really lost this game in the 1st quarter, or at least it was the biggest factor in my opinion. More specifically (and I hate to call out one player) Sims's mistakes cost us biGTime. On offense, at least 2 plays on 2 different drives that were 100% touchdowns if even a decent pass was made, 1 to Jahmyr where he wasn't sure which shoulder to look over, and 1 to Nate McCullom that was 1 yard too long. If either one of these had been 10% better throws, we would have won the game.
The defense did have a part too, but with 2 back-to-back 3-and-outs to start the game, they did their part early. NIU's 3rd drive was where they changed to a heavy, high tempo that caught us off guard.
In short, we generally executed fine and looked like we were in year 3 minus 3-4 completely uncharacteristic throws by Sims.
There is something to be said about our 10% underperformance costing us the game against NIU, but I'm expecting that they will get those things corrected in practice.