Wow, what a win. What a win against a darn good defesnive team.
Hockey-style, three stars from the game:
- Eli Harold -- 11 total tackles, 2 sacks, 4 TFLs (tackles for loss, or tiffles if you're phonically-inclined). Great pressure all game. Stepped up as the fiery tone-setter for the defense.
- Anthony Harris -- 11 tackles, a blocked punt, and the most enormous interception in recent memory. It was the game of his life.
- Alec Vozenilek -- many, many key punts. We don't win that game without him.
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| Hey-hey, aaaaaeeeeeyyyy, it's the Voz! |
A few quick off-the-cuff instant takeaways:
-- Our defense is awesome. Love the pressure.
-- David Watford showed some flashes, but was mostly too jumpy and inconsistent. I know the BYU defense is super-legit, but D-Wat didn't look like a guy who is stepping up and taking the reins. Jury's still out.
-- Not enough targets for Jake McGee.
-- Khalek Shepherd, you're fired. (But you did throw a nice block in blitz pickup at one point.) That fumbled KO return is unacceptable, especially so late in the game.
-- We needed to throw a few deep. Hard to run against a 9-man box.
-- KP's touchdown run to take the lead was a thing of beauty.
-- Did I mention our defense is awesome? God bless you, Jon Tenuta.
-- Ian Frye's booming 53-yard field goal. Manna from heaven.
I'm out of time for now. More later.
Spot on, K. Harold was big early and Harris was big late. Watford throws MUCH better on the run than stationary from the pocket. Hopefully we'll see more designed rolls. Jennings catch was redonk. Lots to love and hate from that game. So glad to get a win.
ReplyDeleteAgree 100% on your key player choices - what a great turn around to start the season with
ReplyDeleteAgree with every word written. Definitely need to see more McGee targets and man, can we go deep to Smith once or twice. We finally have a QB that doesn't throw wounded ducks when trying to complete passes longer than 25 yards and a receiver that would have blown the top off their garbage secondary and we just decided not to or maybe DW just didn't pull the trigger idk. To me it just seemed like everything else we wanted to do on offense would have fallen into place if we went deep. But whatever, glad we pulled out a win though.
ReplyDeleteThis point will be developed further in the upcoming podcast but it seemed to me that the playcalling yesterday was predicated on using the ground game to put the defense in position to open the deep pass. When that wasn't working it appeared as if the staff did not feel confident that they could try and use the deep pass to open up the run. Ultimately I think they were taking caution to protect DW, but at some point they are going to need to let him open it up.
ReplyDeleteAgree Watford wasn't great. But from a pure numbers standpoint, 18-32 with a td and int is very acceptable against a defense of BYU's caliber. If you take away just the Tim Smith drops, the numbers look a lot better at 20-32.
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