[NU Sports] El Painful El Paso

[Jeff Beamsley]

Letting UCLA back into the game after they handed us 22 unanswered points
was evidence of RW getting out coached, not a claim that we should be a ball
control team or criticism of the "bend don't break" philosophy of defense. 

Dorrell got his kids back into the game by changing both their offensive and
defensive game plans on the fly.  Walker didn't seem to make any defensive
adjustments until half time.

Dorrell scored with a walk-on kicker getting his first start and had another
one ready to go if the first one faltered. Walker wasn't able to make his
kicker switch until half time.

Special teams gave up two TD's when the same guy blew up the same play
twice.

RW's response was that sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't work.  My
thought is that there is a big difference between not working and giving
back a TD that you just fought for.  This wasn't an accident.  Dorrell is a
smart coach.  He saw the Iowa game.  He knew how that onside kick play was
supposed to work and taught his guys how to beat it.  So why run exactly the
same play again and expect a different result?  That is the classic
definition of insanity.  

Jeff

-----Original Message-----
From: nwu-sports-bounces at tssi.com [mailto:nwu-sports-bounces at tssi.com] On
Behalf Of mlinhardt at netzero.net
Sent: Tuesday, January 03, 2006 12:36 PM
To: nwu-sports at romaine.tssi.com
Cc: Maureen.Linhardt at plexus.com
Subject: RE: [NU Sports] El Painful El Paso

Jeff B. writes...
Hard to disagree when you opponent spots you 22 points and you let them back
into the game.

What about a 28 point lead that WV almost blew last night?  For those who
argue that ball control would prevent the blowing of leads this is a good
counter example.  WV barely passes, being almost entirely an option team,
yet Georgia came back and almost won.

Our defense this year was porous, but they were also opportunistic and bend,
but don't break.  They caused the 30 turnovers, which is the 2nd most in our
history(33 in 1995).  Special teams were by far the number 1 reason we had
tight games/losses this year -- bad placekicing, bad punting, bad kickoffs,
and bad coverage.  Our porous defense and an offense that would go into
funks for quarters at a time(see Q3 vs. UCLA, Q3/Q4 vs. Michigan) were also
contributing factors.

Next season our defense has to improve to be competitive, but it does not
have nearly as far to go as special teams.

Marc Linhardt
Tech '93


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