Hans8891

Unless we shore up the secondary, there is no way we get to 6 wins. Offensive coordinators have to be salivating watching film on us.

Play calling was suspect when we were down at the goal line and forgot we have Housman, but for the most part, we got manhandled at the line of scrimmage. Tommy did a lot today given the pressure he was under on almost every play. Nothing would matter unless we could force at least one punt the entire game - which we haven’t done.

Our secondary may be the worst group I have seen in Sioux football ever - and that includes the defense of the Mussman years…. There literally isn’t anyone close to receivers, in the middle, in the flats, they can’t tackle if a running back gets through the first two layers, and they do nothing to contain the outside run. It’ just a sieve if we don’t stop it up front.

Halelujah. A holding penalty on NAU….

Not getting any breaks from the stripes homers today. Every big 3rd down failure for them results in a penalty and any big play for us results in a penalty. Get Tommy rolling out - has been open every time.

The earlier post about the secondary being “scary bad”?? It’s scary bad. We don’t press up and still get beat deep with nobody near the receiver. Siegel’s runback was brilliant, but that is about the only good thing we can say about this secondary….

And lightning finally struck. Good play. Good pass.

Would lightning strike the field if we threw a pass beyond the line of scrimmage other than in a scramble situation???

Tommy has done a great job in the possession passing game. When it needs to go more than 5 yards forward, not his forte….

Is there some strategic advantage to continually dumping the puck out of our own zone for the opponent to skate it back in that I am missing??? Our passing is non-existent most of the time.

Are we really this slow or was there a hell of a party in Walsh hall last night???

Can we install flashing lights on the yard markers that light up on third down that remind us we need more than 4 yards in 3rd and 6. This should not be that complicated. Run the damn route past the 1st down mark and pass it there. How many times do we need to see 3rd and long followed by a pass 3 yards short of a first down- or in the backfield…. It’s really not that complicated…

We need some help as a program on stupid penalties. And….we will be lucky to win two more games this year unless we figure out what an offense is…

Hard to recruit downfield receivers to run 2 yard routes all game long….

SD has a QB that actually has a progression and finds a second receiver. Does make a difference.

And once again on third down, we throw a pass that gets us 2 yards short of the marker. What a surprise….

In this one despite looking awful on offense. Stop dancing with players grabbing their shoulderpads and clean up tackling and we will be right in this. Absolutely have to find an offense somewhere though. If we dont’ always make it 5 yards longer every series, it would make life a little easier. Is it legal to give shock collars controlled by the quarterback???

With any pressure, Tommy settles for a check down early with no chance to complete a third and long. Needs to learn to extend play and look beyond 2 yards when we need 6 to 10 yards to the marker….

Tommy threw a great catchable ball that should have been caught - not in a position to be intercepted. Great throw. Then we take a sack to take us out of field goal position. Can’t seem to get out of our own way….

Imagine that. Look at a pass beyond the line of scrimmage and we are wide open over and over. Good job Tommy. Hopefully this will be a trend. Will make Otis job way easier if we can stretch the field and not allow 9 defenders sitting on the line of scrimmage waiting for the run or the pass to the flats…

Sure, until they made adjustments and took that away. We didn’t counter those adjustments. Intermediate for us is about 5 yards. We do well with that, but credit to USU’s coordinator who clearly took that away after the 1st quarter. Slants worked well, other than leading to 2 picks. I just think we are going to see a lot of stacked boxes by anyone watching this film unless we prove we can make a play more than 10 yards downfield. Teams will dare us to beat them deep, choosing instead to cover the short routes and Otis. Having at least a threat of going longer than 10 to 15 yards backs the defense up a bit so they can’t cheat continually and clog the box up front. Certainly, the announcers (who probably are not big UND fans familiar with our game plan) recognized it as well, commenting on it continually in the second half. I don’t think it is a secret. USU is FBS and probably more skilled at most positions. The sky is not falling by any means. I have every belief we will be a good team this year. We do have some learning to do and I hope we can make some adjustments so that other teams don’t do what USU did last night and take away our strength without an answer. Tommy is a great possession passer - hopefully a deep threat emerges as the season goes on. Should be a rout next week and tailgating begins. Can’t wait!!!

The good news is that we aren’t likely to see another offense like Utah State’s in FCS. We aren’t well suited to defend a spread no-huddle offense with a lot of receiving weapons and a coach who is willing to trust his offense on 4th down virtually every time, no matter where its at. We will need to tackle better as well, but the defense was gassed from spending the bulk of 3 quarters on the field with a team that wastes little time between plays and spreads the field very well.They are an impressive offensive team. They are not as good defensively, but they made adjustments and we didn’t. Plain and simple. We had a great offensive first quarter, but most of those came on short yardage patterns with good yards after catch. Move everyone up in the second quarter and dare us to go over the top and those are no longer open - and there is no running room for Otis,. To me, that was the story of the offense.

Bison are going to stack the box, key on Otis, and dare us to beat them deep. So will everyone else that watches film on this game. Not sure I agree that the O-line got worn down. They didn’t spend a lot of time on the turf in the last half. Lot of time to rest after 3 and outs.

Because we don’t do that and haven’t done that since Mussman was here. We do a good job in the possession passing game, but adjustments of stacking the box and daring us to connect long are going to kill us unless we find a way to have a threat at least 15 to 20 yards downfield once in a while…

Utah State is a very good team. I’m not disappointed that we are losing to a good FBS team. I am more than a little nervous that every MVFC team is going to look at film and put 10 guys in the box, daring us to throw longer than 5 yards - which we haven’t shown we can or are even willing to do, other than in desperation situations.