The crowd was great. Band looked like they were having a great time. Hopefully all the flight 28 folks had a fun time and come back for more games this year and years to come.
On the field, that was not great. Hard to really digest the game in person, so maybe I got along wrong.
It felt like we tackled a lot worse than last week.
The goal line defense timeout seemed to be another substitution issue. This team is not going to out big/strong/fast anyone in fbs. They need to be a really organized and disciplined football team to overcome the physical disadvantages.
The punting game left alot to be desired. If we're going to win games against FBS teams, every yard of field position is going to matter. That pin the coverage team missed could have saved points. the block turned into points. We had a stupid 15 yard penalty after the play on a punt. After the block, he was down for a minute and none of the punts after the block looked good. Hopefully he didn't get hurt and was just in his head after the block. Our offense is limited enough that the punting unit really matters and it was a rough night for them.
I don't think we had as many coverage busts we did last week. There was the throwback where he was all alone, and the one other deep ball, but I think the cb just got beat on the deep ball and it wasn't a busted coverage.
In the first half, I think Bryson was really good in the option game. He was trusting the dive. In the 4th, he started trying to do it on his own again and getting us off schedule, but people get frustrated and try to do too much down big late when the playcalling is so conservative. I don't remember any interceptable passes, so that was good. He protected the ball well.
Would really like more qb run game that isn't option based. Also anything that has us attacking the edge more. It doesn't feel like we really threaten outside the tackles with anything other than Bryson pulling the ball in the option game. We don't get the push with our OL to make teams scared enough of the dive to give Bryson the edge. That isn't going to change for a while.
Our lines on both sides are not what you want. I think we knew that coming into the season though. I thought the oline did a good job of getting a hat on a hat. Despite being physically outmatched we were getting 3 yards and a cloud of dust in the dive game early on. We just don't have the bodies to really re-establish the LOS and give Benefield/Qua chances to create explosives from the dive game. they have to scratch and claw for that 3 yards every time. We could have Rechsteiner on the dive again and still wouldn't be creating explosives out of it.
On defense I think Poonah did pretty well at nose. They didn't have much success up the middle. Not sure what was going on where it felt like they could gash us for 5+ yards whenever they felt like it on those outside zones in the second half.
Qua showed off really natural hands again on a little swing route. I think he's skilled enough to be more than just a dive option guy.
Pass game seemed pretty good. Would like to see more RPO. It feels like that's a way to generate some explosives off the dive game. If were building this offense off 3 yards and a cloud on the dive, running that slant behind the LB's might create a little more space for the dive man by holding them at depth. We might be running that more than I think though. I'm not really paying much attention to our receivers when were running. It's looked so pretty and picked up a big chunk of yards when we hit Wallace on a slant.
