thoughts on the game

[anthony e]

I was at the game last night and found it to be a good time. First, and
I realize others weren't happy about the attendance, but I found it to
be a festive enviornment. Second, the score was closer than indicated to
people that did not attend the game. As a matter of fact, our special
teams provided Wisconsin with two scores. Third, speaking of the
kicking game, it was horrible. On all of these posts, most people
were bragging on the impressive nature of our kicking game. I sure
didn't see it tonight. Granted, it was against the second best team
they will play this year and it was their first game, but both did not
impress me. The punts were horrible and the kickoffs were weak.
Fourth, I believe our coaches really prepared the kids for the game.
I had been complaining about Brandon since last year. However,
I believe the offense looked pretty good and with some work we will
be very good as the year moves forward. Branes is a great athlete.
He should be in the lineup. But I still believe his ability to pass is in question. Fifth, our defense played much better than last year. We stopped the run better. Yes, they don't have the same backs, so that
might have played a role. It is a loss, but I go away happy. BG will
be much better than I thought. The MAC will be tough. Akron gave
Penn State a good game and Toledo has a good team. In addition,
Central will be tough. In sum, I take back what I had predicted as a bad year and will make this observation that we will surely win more games
than last year. Go Falcons, I am proud of your effort.

[Falcon30]

I agree - this team will be OK. I liked most of what I saw. What I didn't like could be fixed, IMHO.

Bring on Buffalo.

[bgsufan1970]

Agree that all is not bad. The key for this team is to get better each and every week and make some plays at the right time e.g. Brantley coming up with the 4th down catch. Beating Wisconsin isn't important in the grand scheme of winning the MAC.

[Globetrotter]

I havwe always felt that injuries although, clearly not a postive, can be very beneficial if they are short term. They allow a team to build depth, allow young players playing time to see if they fit in their position and make the coach think outside the box. Having White and Turner benched and Partridge and Briggs out for the entire game and Smith out for most of the game will actually help us in the long run. We played well without 5 of our best players. That is amazing to me. Add those 5 guys in and clean up the kicking game and we should do very well this season. 5 of our 22 starters were technically out of that game, all should be back for the next game. All of their backups now have great experience in a game that we were likley to lose anyway and now we are that much deeper.

[Falconfreak90]

Agree that all is not bad. The key for this team is to get better each and every week and make some plays at the right time e.g. Brantley coming up with the 4th down catch. Beating Wisconsin isn't important in the grand scheme of winning the MAC.

The blocked punt, the punt return, the 4th down drop by Brantley and the bonehead penalty on Nystrom were the 4 biggest plays of the game. We had our chances to hang with UW til the end. Young teams make mistakes but two of those mistakes were made by a 5th yr SR and a RS JR.
Nystrom had a rough night but I'm sure he'll regroup with help from the rest of the OLinemen. He did come up with the recovery of the Parks' fumble. Our OL should be able to push any MAC D around...they looked GREAT.

[mmisbg]

I have to agree with most of what I have read. Other than Ohio State, we won't see a defense that will even compare to what we saw on Saturday. We most likely won't see an offensive line that will compare either...outside of OSU and maybe Toledo...and I'm being generous here.

The thing I have to say is that I want Freddie Barnes to get one more game before we make our call on him. I wrote all of this on another thread, so I won't elaborate too much. However, I was impressed, and I want to see what he pulls out against Buffalo. Buffalo had one of the better MAC defenses last year (if you can believe it), and while it is Temple...they did hold them to 3 points. We should beat Buffalo no matter who the QB is, and I think we should give Freddie one more shot to get some things done in the air. He did have some rather green recievers against a tough defense last Saturday. If he doesn't prove himself, we still have FIU the next week to put AT in.

Does anybody know what the ETA on Partridge is? There was a thread on this already, but it hasn't been addressed in a while.

We have some things to get figured out, but I think a lot of it can be associated with rookie mistakes. The biggest things that impressed me:

-Other than the blocked punt, I don't think the highlights reel will show us making fools of ourselves. There were those who were expecting us to give up 50 yard runs, 40 yard passes, and a long list of turnovers. We were outplayed, but the team appears to be on the right track.

-We mostly kept Wisconsin's starters on the field. We were in the game until the 4th Quarter. Once again, there were those who were expecting Wisconsin to be benching their starters before the half.

-We established a ground game. This isn't at all a knock on P.J. or B.J., but rather to say we haven't done a good job of contolling the clock in recent years. Yeah, our passing game isn't what it used to be, but I think that will improve.

So, we lost, but we did answer some questions. It is pretty safe to assume that no team in the MAC was going to beat Wisconsin. Based on the results of last week, I think that winning the East is an attainable goal. Our schedule works out well for us to get some things figured out before we face off with the MAC contenders.

Go Falcons!